Ming the Mechanic
The NewsLog of Flemming Funch

Sunday, March 11, 2007day link 

 The Art of Creating a Community
Guy Kawasaki's advice on how to build a community, in particular a user community. These are the bullet points:
1. Create something worth building a community around.
2. Identify and recruit your thunderlizards—immediately!
3. Assign one person the task of building a community.
4. Give people something concrete to chew on.
5. Create an open system.
6. Welcome criticism.
7. Foster discourse.
8. Publicize the existence of the community.

[ | 2007-03-11 01:44 | 2 comments | PermaLink ]  More >

 One Million Splotz of Glue
Lloyd Y. Asato's One Million Splotz of Glue Campaign:
It begins with a question. What do you do to build community? Your answer, the action that you do to build community, is what we call Splotz of Glue.

Splotz of Glue are the key everyday actions that we do to be better informed, to connect with others, to build trust, and to get involved. Splotz of Glue, when done together and in abundance, have the cumulative effect of improving the quality of life in our neighborhoods...

I will collect, catalogue, and contemplate One Million Splotz of Glue. I will shine a spotlight on the everyday things we do to BuildCommunity. I will encourage new acts of Splotzing, and facilitate a larger conversation about Social Capital and Community Building.
That sounds good. I don't understand exactly what it is. ... Hm, of course it might be just that: gathering little stories and ideas about building community. Maybe that'll just work somehow. The actual site for the Million Splotz thing is here, and is a blog, basically. Some commentary here from Doc Searls, who, when asked how he builds community answered this:
The short answer: I don't.

The longer answers: I start fires. Or I roll snowballs. Cluetrain was a fire. Still is. It took communication (not community) to start it. The four authors of that tome have only seen each other in the flesh, as a group, twice. If there's a cluetrain "community", I'm not sure what it is. A lot of friends and fellow-travelers, sure; but not "community". User-centric Identity is a snowball. It's also a community, to the degree that it's organized, sort of.

[ | 2007-03-11 01:52 | 2 comments | PermaLink ]  More >

 Spiritual Castro
Sides of Fidel Castro that maybe are little known. This Washington Post article talks about a collection of letters he wrote while in prison in the 50s, which hadn't appeared in English before. Which in part show spiritual depths one maybe wouldn't expect of a future communist dictator. Like, addressing the father of a fallen comrade, he writes:
"I will not speak of him as if he were absent, he has not been and he will never be. These are not mere words of consolation. Only those of us who feel it truly and permanently in the depths of our souls can comprehend this. Physical life is ephemeral, it passes inexorably. . . . This truth should be taught to every human being -- that the immortal values of the spirit are above physical life. What sense does life have without these values? What then is it to live? Those who understand this and generously sacrifice their physical life for the sake of good and justice -- how can they die? God is the supreme idea of goodness and justice."

[ | 2007-03-11 02:09 | 3 comments | PermaLink ]  More >

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