Community Engagement

A more sensible way to think about where conversations need to be broken up, that’s not topic, is format. In a physical space, the analogy might be—if half of my guests are drinking wine from expensive stemware and half of my guests are playing Twister, I might send the Twister players into another room so they don’t elbow-knock a glass of Chablis.... See more

Maybe it’s time we grow out of the idealism of the first 30 years of the web and start looking at what we’re really doing online with each other. It’s not always healthy, but we do it anyway. It’s something that adults do because we have a deep need to gather and talk, but we can’t include everyone all the time. And maybe sometimes it gets too... See more

In the 25 years I’ve been studying communities, the most depressing part is that people still start communities (social apps, sites, any company that lets people talk to each other) without thinking through who, exactly, is going to manage the community and how. But it would be ridiculous to start a bar without a bartender.