A twice monthly dive into the most successful online communities
Preview
Your Zoom calls are boring
When the most interesting part of a Zoom event is the chat, something is really wrong. The calls are boring, but the people are ready to engage and eager to connect. In night 1 of Monday Night Magic we look at the suuuper simple trick (as in, zero effort from the host) that made community members literally say every online event “is a blast”.
Featured communities
One day, I decided to talk to 100 community builders in 100 days.
I was deeply curious about how online communities succeed and fail. See, I’ve been in quite a few. You probably have too—Slack or Discord groups, meetups on Zoom or Circle, and a handful of Facebook Groups that you can’t bring yourself to leave… just in case.
The most active members of most communities are crickets. In other words, 99.9% of these online spaces are dead. But then there are some that last for 23 years, like Patrick’s martial arts group. And others that lead to adventures across the world, like Kernel. I’ve been in communities online where I made new friends, learned new skills, and experienced a deep sense of belonging. So what makes some communities succeed and others fail? I figured I should ask as many community building experts as I could find.
Liv was in the first dozen people I talked to. She described her favorite community, RADAR, as “magical”. That word hit me in the chest. It’s the perfect way to articulate the most successful online communities and after she said it I started hearing and seeing it everywhere.
It became the centerpiece of my exploration: I was setting out to uncover what makes communities magical and how I might be able to create a feeling of magic in any community.
Monday Night Magic is one manifestation of the work I’ve done so far. Every two weeks I take you inside the most magical online communities and we learn about their secrets to success.
Seek conviction
Most community guides say to start with purpose, mission, vision... Meanwhile Kernel embraces the messiness that life and learning can bring. Despite uncertainty they get things done because they have conviction and you should too.
How to not dox your community
In my opinion, the best way to avoid doxxing your community members when working on collaborative documents is to not set permissions. Open access to anyone with the link. It may sound uncomfortable or flat out wrong to you, but hear me out—