Even here, though, there are significant obstacles to hosting community, obstacles peculiar to the nature of media. Much of the discipline a broadcast organization must internalize to do its job well are not merely irrelevant to community building, but actively harmful.
Clay Shirky: Broadcast Institutions, Community Values [as emailed from Shirky.com, but also seen on the excellent Foop] Clay performed a version of this essay for those of us at the BBC a coupla months ago. It was absolutely fantastic (as was the preceding address by Steven Johnson) - shook up quite a few in the room (hopefully). Note to self: I had an odd idea about trying to find a relationship between the life and death of online communities (seems worthwhile trying to map/predict the shape over time of such things) and Elliott waves, on which there was a blinding article in New Scientist recently. If anyone wants to follow that up, go for it.
