communities of practice
People are an essential ingredient of social infrastructure.
New_ Public • 🤔 Revisiting Discord, libraries, and Somewhere Good
the best ways to imagine may be the ones that position this work as a collaboration—done with people rather than to or for them—giving people and communities the freedom to learn by doing and to adapt the general into the particular.
Geoff Mulgan • Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination
Relational infrastructure refers to the social connections, interactions, and collective intelligence that underpin a community, network or group's ability to collaborate, solve problems, and drive change. It is an emergent framework of trust, shared values, and common goals that allows individuals, groups, and organizations to work together
... See moreSam Rye • On Relational Infrastructure
If we want a better democracy, we need the same for community entrepreneurs. For too long now, these people have done this work without being paid, recognized, or even acknowledged. On Facebook, they are called group admins; on Reddit, they are moderators. But they aren’t just admins or moderators. They are leaders. They are entrepreneurs - forging
... See moreNew_ Public • Celebrating the labor that holds up our democracy: the community entrepreneur
While we might use these spaces, open communities have particular needs. They are formed not from shared identity but from entwined attention and collaborative work on shared resources. They thrive on diversity and so require the creation of an environment that is proactively inclusive and welcoming. They need fluidity, iterativity, and a... See more
Creative Communities
Relations make up our “I,” as our society, our cultural, spiritual, and political life. It is for this reason, I think, that everything we have been able to accomplish over the centuries has been achieved in a network of exchanges, collaborating.
Packy McCormick • Web of Relations
A much more humane, and ultimately more appropriate, approach would be to treat our relationships and communities, as well as the benefits we receive from them, not as a form of wealth, but as gifts. They are received, not chosen; valued but not earned; given but not traded; appreciated but not capitalized. They have an inherent, unquantifiable... See more
The Relationship Is the Richness
Campus provides a low-stakes way to “try on a new way of being”, learn with social accountability, and experiment without hard committing. Each quarter we ask our members for classes, events, bookclubs, or circles they want to host. Many use this opportunity as a chance to engage with an interest more deeply - both as a leader, constructing the... See more
This infrastructure will be more than a set of foundations or a scaffold. It will look, in fact, more like a playground: which exists, not subordinate to or below some other, more important work, but as a structure in its own right, one which supports, co-creates, and constantly re-produces play, creativity, imagination. Not something which can be
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