Building Community

Guy Kawasaki was the ultimate tech evangelist, creating insane enthusiasm for the "insanely great" Macintosh back in 1984. Apple was extraordinarily successful in bringing together communities of Mac users all across the US (and the world?). Mac User groups sprang up everywhere (and without MeetUp!) and the endless fanaticism of Mac enthusiasts may owe something to Kawasaki's understanding of community dymanics. I recently ran across a piece on his blog about The Art of Creating Community. Maybe you too can, in Kawaski's words, generate "unpaid, raging, inexorable thunderlizard evangelists for MacIntosh and Apple II."

A few of the strong points from the piece:

"Identify and recruit your thunderlizards—immediately! Most companies are stupid: they go for months and then are surprised: “Never heard of them. You mean there are groups of people forming around our products?”

"Assign one person the task of building a community. Sure, many employees would like to build a community, but who wakes up every day with this task at the top of her list of priorities?"

In a global and multicultural project like Pajama Nation, we'll have more than one person – one person per continent, perhaps.


"Foster discourse. The definition of 'discourse' is a verbal exchange. The key word here is “exchange.” Any company that fosters community building should also participate in the exchange of ideas and opinions. At the basic level of community building, your website should provide a forum where customers can engage in discourse with one another as well as with the company's employees."

It's never too early to think about how to get people excitedly arguing and discussing and adding value to a company project. As Kawasaki himself says in this piece, don't stifle dissent. In fact, it's good to turn the whole ideology of the company upside down once in awhile and see what shakes out. (I'll be posting about some "Long Boom" critiques in a few days).

Read the full Guy Kawasaki post