| Group Forming | 2002-11-11 23:48 3 comments |
 by Flemming FunchSeb Paquet mentions there's a group for group-forming discussion, which grew our of his own inquiries into the subject. On the table are questions like: "How are new communities born?Those are big questions indeed. Creating the circumstances for productive groups to form is a non-trivial problem. Particularly when we're talking about self-organizing groups. If I have the resources to pay some people to do certain things, I can create a group. If I stand on a street corner and hand out free beer, I'll have a group quickly too. But the interesting question is how groups will come together in a less pavlovian way, where it isn't just a matter of lining up to get your treat, and doing whatever it takes to get it. If there are just a number of possible interest areas, or a number of tasks at hand, or there's just a number of people who exist in the same space, who have different interests - what facilitates that they self-organize in a useful way? I can guess at many things. Of course it helps a lot to have some tools freely available. In a physical space, some different meeting rooms, some comfortable chairs, and some whiteboards to write on, would help a lot. In a virtual space it would work in similar ways. If there are spaces available you can move into, on your own impulse, and start drawing on the boards, some fundamental groundwork is in place. And if you can easily see who is around, who's available, and what their interests are, that certainly helps greatly too. But it takes more. It takes purpose. A group needs to exist for something. A common interest or a shared space might be a trigger, but it doesn't provide the purpose. The purpose can't be faked. There needs to be something REAL that these people are together for. It might not be important to anybody else in the world, but it has to be important for the people in that group. |