Motivation and Online Communities

Not everyone will participate, here’s how to build an engaged community

When I moved to San Francisco early in my career to pursue my Dot Com 1.0 Internet millionaire dreams, I did not know a single person. Over time though, I built an oddball collection of friends, including a small group I met in Golden Gate Park one weekend playing flag football. They were down one person for their 5-on-5, so I joined in.

Several weeks later, our 5-on-5 turned into 12-on-12. Everybody wanted in, so we just made the teams bigger. It got complicated and crowded and confusing. Then I ran a route, caught the ball, and got leveled by five guys at once. That was the end of my flag football glory. I heard the guys did not miss me though, they were now 15-on-15…

Participation is a tricky thing to get right. Too many people, it becomes messy. Too few, and it feels like a ghost town. It is a market dynamics problem, ideally you want to get the balance right between too much and too little involvement.

“Will people participate” is a common question when discussing how to build an internal developer community. Organizations are right to be skeptical as almost all attempts at implementing social collaboration platforms end in dismal adoption. This leads to the inevitable discussion of…