Most “communities” are not real communities. I get the sense that the term “community” is really hot in the advertising/marketing/sales/startup/event space, because it alludes to more than just a transactional customer-company relationship. But most of the “communities” I come across, are in my opinion not actual communities. I hear the word being used, when really the authors mean a series of monthly events, a Facebook page, a group of customers that has loyalty towards a specific brand, a yearly conference, all customers of an e-commerce brand, social media followers, everyone who uses Twitter, people who happen to vote the same way, etc.
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- favorite,
- [note::This was talked about a lot in Ashley Lin's book called "Cultivating Community"]

Community = a group of people that care about each other and feel they belong together.
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“that care about each other”: this is in my opinion the absolute core of a community. The individuals in a group are not just random strangers, they have relationships with each other. They give a shit about each other. They care more about the people in this group than about the average person they meet on the street. This is where the magic of a community happens. When people care about each other, they develop trust. And trust unlocks collaboration, sharing, support, hope, safety and much more. While most organizations in the world optimize their performance towards external goals, communities optimize for trust.
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- trust, community, community building, relationships,
- [note::"Communities optimize for trust"]

Why does this matter? It matters, because ultimately project teams, companies and political movements optimize for an external output (aka whatever their goal is). But communities, in my opinion, optimize for something else: the relationship and trust among themselves. I think the two entities have very different impact in the world.
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