How To Build Community's Identity
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The document discusses building the identity of a community. It describes how Collab House in India started as a collaboration space for hackers, makers, and startups with low barriers to entry. Through community events and assessing what worked, they attracted over 5,000 supporters. The key to building community identity is having a vision, engaging members through events, empowering members as advocates, documenting community activities online, and celebrating successes.
How To Build Community's Identity
- 1. I D E N T I T Y Coworking India Conference New Delhi, 2016 Vineel Reddy Pindi Collab House
- 2. Community’s identity is complex. Product of: • Social • Cultural • Technological • Infrastructural and • Ecosystem forces
- 3. The Challenge • Identify ourselves in the ecosystem. • 2 & half years ago. • No awareness on Coworking, Makerspace or Hackerspace. • Cost of two memberships = rent of a single bedroom apartment. • People didn’t see value.
- 4. Collab House started with the idea of building a collaboration space for Hackers, Makers & Startups.
- 5. What We Did • Focus on community building initiatives. • Low entry barrier for people to come and explore. • Host anything and everything that came our way. • Assessed on what works and what doesn’t work. • Kept exploring on the kind of things to support with and weave into the ecosystem.
- 6. The Result • More than 90% of the paid memberships are converted from the people who attended one of the events. • Value in Community, Networking, Shared Resources, Skilled peers. • 5,000+ supporting community. • 300+ events in 2 years. • Power and potential of Collaboration.
- 8. Most successful Communities have a trademark feel to them.
- 9. Trademark feel = • Features • Amenities • Culture • Infrastructure and • More This is what attracts people to explore and join communities.
- 11. 1. Have A Vision • Create goals for your community. • Plan what kind of people do you want to join your community. • What makes you unique? • What gives your community its character? • Define your community’s core focus.
- 12. 2. Engage • Provide opportunities for locals to reflect on their shared and individual experiences. • Enable people to participate. • Plan events. • Foster a sense of belonging and ownership. • Serendipity.
- 13. 2. Engage Tap into existing events. Example: • Startup Saturday • Startup Weekend • Startup Grind • HackaDay • Design Evenings • DemoDays • Meetups • Conferences
- 14. 2. Engage Create your own events. Example: • Mentoring sessions • Hackathons • Design Workshops • Guest Talks • Screenings • Go creative! • Connect back to your community vision.
- 15. 3. Empower • Let your members be advocate for the community. • A community should build its own strategies to build its assets and market them. • Communities should use local talent to build their identity.
- 16. 4. Get the word out! • Social Media - Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Blog, Youtube. • Document what happens in your community and create a narrative for both members and the world.
- 17. 5. Community Metrics • Number of people engaged. • Number of events. • Members growth path. • Press mentions.
- 18. 6. Partnerships • Build strategic partnerships with local and global initiatives. • Influencers • “Collaboration is the new competition”.
- 19. 7. Tools and Resources • Create a public events calendar. • Leverage online tools like meetup.org. • Send newsletter to community Mailing list. • Online and offline tools for the community to collaborate.
- 20. 8. Celebrate!