Can You Scale Cozy Communities? — The CMJ Group by Carrie Melissa Jones

I think this kind of linear thinking about scaling communities that I just highlighted misses a critical insight, that growing communities behave less like an infinitely scalable software product and more like a multicellular, living organism. If the community doesn’t grow in the right places, in the right ways, it’s easy for the community to colla... See more

As anything scales too effectively - from fashion to restaurants to music - the market opens for more non-scalable alternatives. Once Starbucks opens on every block, many of us crave the artisanal coffee shop. Once our favorite Italian restaurant becomes a chain of three, we grow tired of it. Why? First, so much of what we buy and do is tied up in ... See more

To scale a community, build lots of special, one-of-a-kind places for a few people at a time, and then work with the most active members to build fast interconnects between them.

The perils of designing for scale

“We are in the midst of a major social transformation — moving many of our day-to-day activities from physical places to information-based places that we experience on our phones and computers. The central question here is: How can we design these information environments so they serve our social needs in the long ... See more

I think another driver of this sentiment and behavior is that chasing scale strips you of some humanity. It puts your head too high up in the clouds. It removes you from what happens in the real world with real people. Pursuing something that can’t scale does the exact opposite: it grounds you. It’s a comforting and healing next act.