Sunday May 22, 2005
Sunday May 22, 2005 I had an email conversation the other day with Hal about how to foster teamwork and my gut level reaction was that it's about creating a sense of community among people.
People are more likely to work well together well not only when they have a common interest or shared set of goals - but also when there is a personal connection. I try to work well with most people, but I'm much more motivated to to cut people slack when I know a little bit about who they are, when I can tease them about their taste in a band called FloggingMolly, when I know that they like to delve into 1337 5p34k on occasion, or if I know that her talented brother went to RISD and is friends with the infamous creator of of Andre The Giant Has A Posse.
Caterina Fake of Flickr fame recently blogged about building a flickricious sense of community (gotta love that word) - and the importance of personal connections caught my eye. One relevant quote from Caterina - the part about personal - and authentic - communication is at the end of the paragraph:
"In the beginning, the creators of the community space have to create the tone and attitude of the place, set the parameters of what is and what is not allowed, and participate heavily, engaging directly with other people, mercilessly kicking/banning trolls, creating a real sense of there being a there there. Friendster, and the banning of "Fakesters" is often used as an example of a misunderstanding of online community -- but I think this misunderstanding went back further, to the beginning. I was an early member of Friendster and, the first message I got was from the founder. "How do you like the service?" he asked, and not -- and this is really the crux of it -- "Pynchon! Man, how can you read that stuff! DeLillo is 10X better." or "ZEPPELIN ROX! Zoso is my favorite album!!!" I'd filled out a profile. See what I mean?"
What's the conclusion? Growing the OpenSolaris community is going to involve building lots of these personal connections. Personal and authentic, not stiff and corporate. Cool.
Technorati Tag:OpenSolaris
Technorati Tag:Solaris
(2005-05-22 13:50:21.0) Permalink Comments [1]
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Your co-blogger Eric Boutilier pointed me to your last blog entry, and indeed, it's something I'm interested in: I'm co-moderating the Solaris fr mailing list, for which Sun, via Eric's help, provided the system resources. I'm currently trying to know what Sun could do in Europe to help build an OpenSolaris community around here.
Is there somebody I might contact, in Sun France (I'm located there), that could help organizing OpenSolaris User Group meetings? There's already is somebody in Belgium that proposed to provide the location.
Thanks in advance for any help you may provide! And for your blog, which I should follow more closely.
Laurent
Posted by Laurent Blume on May 23, 2005 at 12:55 PM PDT #