Is Community the Future of Business?
I’ve heard people decry the community profession. They say that it’s the end of an era.
I say they have good intentions, but they lack imagination. They see things in black and white. They think the Internet is the same thing as the World Wide Web. I see things weaving together, tiny threads converging, networks emerging that connect us far beyond our screens.
I say the real era of professional community building hasn’t even begun.
We are only just now at the very edge of the edge of how the Internet will connect people. We are on the cusp of the cusp of understanding how AI, virtual reality, machine learning, wearables, mesh networks, and personalization will change how we discover others and build things with them.
People are longing more than ever before for connection, community, meaning, belonging.
This one truth has crystallized for me in the last year and echoes in the work we do with CMX every single day: Community is inevitable.
There is a historical precedent at play here.
In post-World War I America, people experienced mass disconnection, an overwhelming sense of ennui and disillusionment. They had seen and felt destruction on a scale previously unknown to mankind.
I see that disillusionment all around me today. We’re over-medicated. We escape through consumption, of information or physical goods. Many of us have turned away from what makes us most human: our desire for meaning, purpose, belonging.
Many of us are afraid of seeing the pain in the world (terrorism in Paris and the #BlackLivesMatter movement and the Syrian refugee crisis to name a few of the defining moments of this year alone), so we escape from it. It’s a self-propelling cycle of depression. We see so much death and destruction today, we long for meaning in all of what we cannot understand. But we don’t know where to go for that meaning.
We must find meaning in what we create. That is a human imperative. That is community’s promise. That’s what community professionals are capable of creating in the world.
What does this mean in a business context?
People are loyal to those who make meaning in their lives. Airbnb, Tinder, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, Product Hunt… some of the hottest startup success stories in the last decade, all about helping people discover others who are looking to be discovered. All about creating a sense of belonging and connection among people who were once-upon-a-time strangers.
So, sure, communities in their early 2000’s conception may decline by 2020, but businesses will be in the work of connecting humans in the next decade. If they open their eyes, they’d see that they already are.
Why do I know this?
Data on Millennials. Gary Vaynerchuk. Facebook Groups growth patterns. The changing face of software sales that necessitates developer evangelism. Article after article, story after story about what happens when the power is in the people’s hands to take action and tell stories, and what happens when other people find those stories and they resonate.
Technology will not be the primary holding space of deep community. It will be the conduit for deeply intimate offline connection. That’s not yet what my generation sees with clarity. They can’t all articulate it, but I do know the desire is there. And the generation just after mine? They’re hungry for it. They’re starved for touch. They don’t want a Her-like interface. They will see what it means to sign away their privacy with a smile on their faces. And they’ll turn the other way.
Technology will be ever-present as the connecting link between people who never before could have known of each others’ existences, wants, hopes, dreams. People will understand that to be a child in Afghanistan is not much different than it is to be a child in Alabama. They’ll see into each others’ lives with understanding. They’ll find empathy and beauty everywhere they turn.
What does this mean for you, community professional?
Community professionals won’t be sitting at the behest of other departments for long. They’ll be sitting at the hub of the most powerful and meaningful work in the world, the work of saving humanity from the darkness of disconnection. This I know with unprecedented clarity. This is the work we must do.
So go out there and make meaning in 2016. Tell me about all the light you bring to places that were previously shrouded in darkness. Tell me about the connection and joy you find there.
This piece was originally published alongside my 2015 “Year in Community” review. That piece contains tactical insights for community professionals.
