I'm writing as Jim Cashel's Community Unconference is going on... having just missed (due to a meeting conflict) the session that intrigued me most. The title was community and culture, and it highlighted what has come to be, to me, one of the key ways of understanding the nature of an online community, and especially as a working framework for the community manager - perspectives that are not (yet) current in the profession. This was especially highlighted given an amazing chat I had last night with my dear friend M., a member of the Burning Man community who's become an avid WoW player also. The conversation last night had a lot of different aspects, but two struck me as especially fun in this context.
First, since we shared both the experience of Burning Man, and the relocation to an event which definitly immerses the participant in a new culture (we've shared the direct experience of this - new values, new expectations of interactions with others, new social rules, new freedoms), and the experience of WoW - a very rich immersive experience, with it's own cultural specifics - we were able to very much agree on how analagous the two experiences were... and how clear it is that the culture we live in is a creature of context, that changes when the context changes. Her dreams with a WoW setting, for example were a great illustration of how we interpret online experiences as real and meaningful in a way that's, fundamentally, no different from any other experience. And in both cases, being able to enter a cultural context where the repercussions of experimental identity creation are reduced - ie., where we can publicly play with who we present ourselves to be - creates a very rewarding freedom to experiment, to learn, and to grow. Indeed, I think this is a large part of why we do these things.
She also hilighted an aspect of WoW that I've somewhat neglected... WoW does a great job of creating social interaction mechanisms. I'm not talking here of the technology so much as the design. M. pointed out how well it creates a variety of ways for people to interact... and how crucial that is to forming social connections. We need the catalyst, the topic, the context... One example: in WoW, two characters of differing levels cannot play together as equals - and there's no "buddy" mechanism as in City of Heroes for example (where junior players can buddy with higher level players, to their mutual benefit). In Wow, however, one thing that's happened is that the disparity creates the opportunity for higher players to gift their powerful characters, escorting junior characters through difficult dungeons, etc. It doesn't easily play in the standard way - we can't both gain experience grouped together. But that creates the possiblity for a different dynamic, one that can certainly be the basis for a rich interactive experience.
But to return to culture... the community manager has a very powerful position as a cultural leader. As such they must know the crowd they want to run out in front of, know how to find other community leaders and support them, know how to influence the community by their support (and castigation) and know how to communicate all that internally. Carly Staelin and I used to talk about this dyanamic as "culture management"... understanding the participant community as a community, and using one's position as a leader in that community, and as a member of that community, to create positive interactions, and a value and behavior structure (a culture) that supports them. Lots of fun stuff there...
OK, back to the unconference!
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