Since its origin, humanity has grown sustained by communities.

They are great scenarios to combine our skills and talent while achieving outstanding results.

That is why we dedicate this article to exploring some of the communities in the digital era and the effects they generate by promoting scenarios for people to interact with aligned with the same purpose.

We belong to some communities in our personal and professional lives, and we achieve results.

We are living in a unique opportunity in the history of humanity.

The Internet and communications allow us to connect with people without geographical limits stopping us.

Being able to work remotely on shared projects is a reality.

We are + 8,000 million people on our planet who can connect to grow.

We are living in a UNIQUE opportunity in the history of humanity.

And we need to seize it.

With only a phone or computer, we can launch initiatives or projects that radically change our realities and generate positive impact.

We will learn more about communities and how they can unleash our inner power. 🚀

What do we need to build a community?

I felt inspired by the community courses I took at Platzi, where I understood the main aspects that make them attractive and transformative.

Thanks to teachers like Erika Luna and Julian Rodriguez for sharing their experiences and to the Platzi community: Never stop learning.

I want to remark on some aspects that generate that feeling of belonging in people:

1. Membership, or sense of belonging, is a shared common history.
2. Influence is a sense of being important to other people.
3. Needs fulfillment / Integration, how do they feel after joining the community, how do we meet their expectations?
4. Shared emotional connection: that creates a secure collaborative space. Boundaries help us establish psychological safety.

Communities integrate these concepts to help us build strong connections that are the basis on which they generate significant transformations in the people who participate.

We start identifying the shared purposes, then we execute actions synchronized with these objectives, and during this process, we build solid relationships charged with emotions that help us grow.

A point to emphasize is that the community must be a scenario of safe collaboration. In short, we are talking about Psychological Safety.

To understand the power of communities and what key elements to integrate into them, I start with the SPACES model created by David Spinks.

He is the author of “The business of belonging”.

The SPACES model represents the areas of your business impacted by the community:

• Support
• Product
• Acquisition
• Collaboration
• Engagement
• Success

We can see that community can be the core element to unite our companies around people and purpose.

What makes a community unique and unrepeatable?

• Giving up control to people who want to lead.
• Boundaries and values form the culture that transcends.
• It is the space to solve a problem of everyday life
• Encourage the participation of those who make it up.
• The most important is the People and relationships that create the culture.

And of course, we have to consider that there are different ways in which people want to participate:

• Passive: they like to listen rather than create content from scratch.
• Active: the next step for people is when they start doing more activities or creating content.
• Power: they participate in all activities, keep in touch with leaders and present their ideas.
• Leaders are the most active. They are brand ambassadors and lead the meetings and interactions.

Some examples of tech communities.

It is natural to understand that corporate strategies consider communities key.

Almost all companies developing technology have devoted significant efforts to create communities around their products or services.

I include 3 cases of tech communities:

OpenPOWER Foundation

IBM, Google, Mellanox, Tyan, and NVIDIA in 2013 to drive open collaboration hardware development in the same spirit as the open-source software development that has found fertile ground in the past two decades.

OpenPOWER Foundation

Linux Foundation:

After seeing their milestones, I understood the strong mark Linux is making in the ecosystem.

These are some impressive numbers shown on its homepage:

around 850 projects

+2M developers trained

51M lines of code added weekly 🤯

Google Developer Groups:

The initiative gives resources and promotes communities globally.

Now, there are 1,000 chapters across 140 countries, and meet like-minded developers from all levels and backgrounds.

https://developers.google.com/community/gdg 

I invite you to look for additional examples by looking at the solutions you are using now.

And try to connect with these communities.

Some of them could be:

• WordPress, to build websites.
• GitHub, as a code repository.
• Reddit, to solve doubts and connect people.
• Python 🐍 to build artificial intelligence solutions.
• Salesforce
• HubSpot
• Ethereum…

Just name the technology, look for its community, and try to find a way to participate.

I invite you to grow through communities and unleash the enormous combinatorial effect they have.

Find valuable people to connect with, identify purposes, and build and transform your personal and professional reality.

When two people add their talents to pursue a goal, the results are incredible, and your growth is exponential.

• “7 Communities Driving Open Source Development”, by Thor Olavsrud at CIO blog, 2015, https://www.cio.com/article/220227/7-communities-driving-open-source-development.html
• “The business of belonging”, David Spinks, a summary of his book at his personal website https://davidspinks.com/book/