I was totally bummed that I missed the recent Online Community Summit. Hopefully I’ll get an invite next year.
In his notes from the event, Lee had an interesting thought that I think is pretty significant thought about the state of community now:
I think that this is an important point across the board with community, online and off. We now able to connect with other people through social networking sites, local fan clubs/user groups, eBay auctions, dating sites, etc. But unlike just a year ago, the idea of telling someone that you "met online", whether as a dating situation or as a frienship, isn’t bizarre or sad anymore.
As I’ve been saying for a while, the next big thing in community will be (or at least should be) a better way to profile ourselves so that others are more comfortable with the idea that we really are who we say we are. That’s the missing step to making this as mainstream as it’s going to get.
