Full Circle Associates

On Jerry Ash's fine AOK list where there is a two week focus on Joe Cothrel and Jenny Ambrozek's Online Community Survey results, Jenny wrote:
"...a number of researchers are looking at "community" building around blogs. I just noted a related conversation on Denham Gray's blog talking about some of the techniques Lilia Efimova is using to quantify this phenomenom. "

I responded on the list. I also thought it relevant to post here and crosslink to Lilia's and Denham's musings.

The example of this "KM blogging community" is a nice way into this conversation (about the field of online community) -- a concrete case to think about how we define this field moving forward -- how it is evolving into an interesting, complex social environment containing diverse social structures mediated by a fluid set of technologies and processes.

How does Lilia define the community of KM bloggers? Denham asked his readers how they see themselves within that community?

To see (situate?) myself, I have to "see" the KM blogger community in some way. The social environment.

• Without saying virtual, my assumption is that this is a dispersed community.
  
• My assumption is that while the publishing of blogs is one of the boundary definitions of this "community," it may also include readers and “commentors” of KM blogs.
  
• As Denham mentioned, back channel (or use of multiple group and private communication vectors) plays a key role in the practice of this community -- very hard to visualize.
  
• Because this “thing “ is hard to really visualize, is as much a construction of what I _think_ or perceive it to be as it actually is. (_If you could_ picture it concretely.)
  
• If there was a social network analysis of this "community" would it look more like a network that contains communities? The distinction for me is that a network does not have clearly defined membership boundaries and persistent participation by members, but a community does in some sense (not absolute.)
  
• I'm sure y'all could add much more. ;-)(And please do!)

Once I figure out “what it is,” then I have to situate myself within it: position, identity, role. Again, this has become far more complex than the early days of online community -- and even more so when we think about how many groups we can now potentially belong to online. I’ll leave my comments on that for a subsequent post . I'm already alarming myself at the length of this post!

What emerges is a complex social structure that may be perceived in diverse ways by the people within it and around it. This ain’t simply a “community,” is it? Bottom line: with the constant evolution of technologies, processes and the ever diverse and numerous types of groups, we have the emergence of complex social structures that contain many of the complexities of F2F social structures PLUS particular elements mediated by the technologies and constantly the blurring lines as the interaction shifts between technologies and online and offline. We are just now trying to figure out how to define these systems, let alone optimize them for specific purposes.

So how can the exploration of this case help us define the elements of the field? What would you say are the key emerging definitions and practices to answer Lilia and Denham’s questions around the “KM Blogger Community?”