This week in community building — Issue 137

⛈ We had a little thunderstorm a few days ago in Rosieland, exciting!️

🌈 I recently wrote how I felt uncomfortable about Discord, alongside requests for Slack from a variety of people I've decided to shut down our Rosieland Discord and open up a Slack for paid members only.

I'm working towards creating a supportive and independent community, throwing in all my work, curation, teachings and conversations into one membership fee.

However, crucially, this is not about me, but about community too. My goal really is to co-create together, I hope you'll consider joining the journey with me. ❤️

Connecting the community dots this week...

This week in my community research there were a few things that tied back into 'real life' or valuing community for what it used to be. These are the things that are top of mind for me right now.

Paul reminisces and took a dive into his experiences of the not too distant past. I very much personally identify with the all-the-things he talks about. I suppose this comes with having plenty of lived experience, ahem. 😬

New_ Public (I ❤️ their work) talks again about making digital urban spaces better and hiring a 'digital urban planner'.

Strong Towns talks about how streets create wealth. And David Gurteen talks about the simplicity of just making time to talk, saying:

How much time is wasted in organizations every day because people repeat mistakes; do work that is not needed; do things the hard way when there are easier ways, and miss opportunities to do transformational things?

And worse, how much time is wasted when people do not know each other well, distrust each other, miscommunicate, compete and even fight and backstab each other.

I feel like learning to be one's self also ties into this. At least I feel it within me. The need to push back. To push for my values, beliefs, ethics and personal ways of being. It's hard in a world that is constantly pushing for more. Or pushing for things that your heart says no to.

We don't listen to our hearts enough, a community without one is nothing.

Not quite related to all of this is the 'glue work', the tedious, repetitive and often unseen needs of communities. Often this can be seen as 'community operations', but glue work goes deeper than that. It is this glue work that most people on the outside cannot see. And perhaps it's why people think that communities can just run themselves when they get to a certain size or stage.

🤓 Other interesting things this week:

• Introducing the Community Power Compass — John Willshire
• Defining glue work — Mark Birch
• The art of conversation — The Collector
• Rows — makes a splash about their community for spreadsheet people

🌈 On Rosieland:

• A guide to curation in community
• The community experience flywheel
• Valuing conversation

🤝 Latest jobs:

• Digital Communities Advancement + Growth Director — Fidelity Investments
• Digital Communities Engagement + Operations Sr Mgr — Fidelity Investments
• Customer Support + Community Lead — SuperHi