Communication is crippling Corporate America.  I know what you’re thinking, “That statement is preposterous.  Communication is the bedrock of productivity today”, but if you bear with me I’ll explain my thinking on the subject.  Communication may be the bedrock of business systems today, but it has also become an albatross around our necks and is draining us of our productivity.  As organizations have flattened over the last two decades and command and control hierarchies have been replaced with matrix style organizations, communication between an ever increasing number of interested parties has sapped nearly all productivity from today’s corporations.  Our goals aren’t related to corporate strategy anymore.  We simply try to keep up with the ever increasing amount of email, meetings, and IMs that come our way all day, and if there’s any time left over for real work…. we’ll figure out someway to distract ourselves from getting it done. (more…)

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Trust influences nearly every interaction we have during any given day.  Every communication, every action, every conversation is shaped in some way by the trust and reputation that we infer on the interacting party.  It is the currency communities, both online and offline, trade in.  Without trust, lasting relationships can’t be built and authentic communities can’t be maintained.  As a Community Leader, part of our job is to build reputation and trust for our communities and the people associated with them.  This may sound easy, but it can be very hard since you rely on the actions of others for much of your community’s reputation and trust.  Think about it…  You may be the most trustworthy and reputable person in the world, but if your community is acting in the wrong way, your efforts may be for naught. (more…)

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Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about what forms the foundation for communities?  What matters most?  Which things are the building blocks for all other activities that go on?  I’ve identified what I believe to be the four most important building blocks for community.  Tell me if you agree or not.

1.  Leadership and Vision

I recently wrote a post about leadership and its significance to open source projects.  Leadership may be the single most important factor in your community’s success simply due to the fact that people want to belong and believe in something.  In essence people want to follow an inspiring message.  Some want to lead, but most want to be led towards a vision of the future that they believe in.  Well functioning communities lead their members towards an objective that solves real problems and is well (more…)

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I’m a community guy in a company that has lots of products, both open source and commercial, I’m lucky enough to get paid to work on open source projects. What I’ve learned in my work with the community is that building a successful project takes more than many people think.

Some folks in the corporate world have a distorted view of how open source projects work. A lot of the corporate types hear about open source and think that sprinkling magic “open source” dust on their product will suddenly make it successful. They’ll have contributors pile on and massive marketshare will follow. Soon they’ll have a “best of breed” product and do very little actual work since the community will be writing the software, testing it, providing support, etc. Admittedly, I’m exaggerating to some degree, but only slightly.

Read the entire article @ Linux.com

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I recently saw survey results from a 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll that stated only 15 percent of Americans believe Twitter to be an important new tool for communication and I believe it.  Not because it’s true but because Twitter can be hard to understand and get the hang of at first.

I distinctly remember my first experience with Twitter when I noticed someone casually mentioning they were “putting lipstick on at a redlight”.  My first thought was “this is totally worthless”.  My how times have changed.  Not only has the growth of Twitter been off the charts (1382% to be exact), but I’ve actually started using Twitter on a regular basis and find it extremely helpful and useful in my job. (more…)

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