I spent some time recently reading about community building, and noticed that a lot of frameworks are unidimensional: they describe a single spectrum of "engagement" and rank people by where they are on this spectrum.
The analogy that is often used is a funnel (or, equivalently a series of concentric circles). At the top of the funnel you have people who are aware of the community, in the middle of the funnel you have people who are casually involved, at the bottom of the funnel you have active contributors - the implication is that people flow down the funnel, until they find a level of engagement they are comfortable with, preferably close to the bottom.
ugh
This didn't sit right with me and after thinking about it some more I realised that these frameworks are often written by people or organisations with a very particular kind of community building in mind: growing a community around some single movement, product, or set of ideas.
I am interested in community building for a slightly more abstract reason, I want to live in a city with a healthy diversity of niches and subcultures, where it is easy for people to explore new ideas. Getting this right is upstream of what makes cities sources of culture and innovation. I think a better model here looks more like a pinball machine than a funnel. You have a variety of pockets, which act like a multitude of funnels, but also many other things like flippers, pins and bumpers which individuals can bounce around. At some point they may come to rest in a particularly valuable pocket, hang out there for some time, before exploring the board once more.
pinball machines have various mechanisms for preventing people from getting stuck
The most obvious issue with the funnel metaphor is that it can feel overly normative: there is only one implied direction of travel. Gravity pulls people from top to bottom. This isn't surprising, the original metaphor comes from sales and recruitment, where there is an ultimate goal (sell more products, hire more good candidates) that is achieved at the bottom of the funnel.
If you aren't in the business of recruiting or selling, this can actually be an undesirable feature. Among all their diverse interests and needs, people getting stuck on the outer rim of the wrong funnel can be quite bad for everyone involved.
A related effect of this approach is that growth-focused communities are often worried about scaring people at the top of the funnel away, and as a result, will sand down their edges. This is also bad for everyone involved, as it sacrifices their individual identity in favour of trying to be generically appealing. Many of the best subcultures I have interacted with are the ones which are open and direct about what they are trying to be.
This is not to say that you shouldn't host events with broad appeal, but these broad events should serve more like the pins at the very top of a pinball machine - helping people decide early which parts of the board they want to explore next.
I think getting this balance right is important because:
- There are several niches that people might want to be a part of.
- Events aren't just about giving people an option to go deeper in one direction, often they are about presenting people with several options.
- Sometimes someone "bouncing off" an event can be a good thing.
When I look at healthy communities, one thing I notice is that they feel like a patchwork of different cores. These cores are held together by a combination of gatherings taking place at various levels of depth. At the high level you have events which bring together many different people to get an idea for who else is involved and what kinds of activities are taking place. One level deeper you have events which can help people decide whether a specific niche is for them. Deeper still you have recurring events curated and directed specifically at people who are firmly in those niches. But a funnel implies much fewer events of the last category, all converging on a single “core” group.
Also, like in any good game of pinball, bouncing around niches should actually be fun. Not enjoying something can be as informative and important as enjoying it. And if events are organised well, this doesn't need to be an unpleasant experience, it is part of the fun sometimes for people to dip their toes into something they've never tried before.
I think the pinball analogy leads to some pretty concrete advice for how people should flow through these different kinds of gathering.
- At the top of your pinball machine you want pins and gates (events which help people quickly decide which part of the board they will explore next).
- In the middle of your pinball machine you want a lot of bumpers (events which help people quickly decide if some subculture is for them, or which will safely bounce them away otherwise). Tasters, "intro to X" events, etc.
- Dotted around the whole pinball machine you want a variety of different pockets (niche places for groups of similar people to cluster and hang out for a while). Book clubs, competitive programming events, meditation groups, writer's feedback circles. Generally there will be higher barrier to entry, in terms of skill or commitment required.
- Finally you want flippers (intelligent ways to to send them back up the board towards something they might have missed, or to help them create new niches of their own). This function tends to be performed not by events, but by individuals, who have been part of a broader scene for a long time and can help connect people across niches.
Funnels probably remain a useful analogy for people trying to assemble very specific niches, but even then I suspect it is better for organisers to think about their funnels as pockets on a much bigger pinball table. This prevents what C.S. Lewis warned about in his essay The Inner Ring: groups that people join for reasons unrelated to shared interest or purpose, but just from a pressure to progress towards the center. Few people actually enjoy being in a funnel - playing pinball is much more fun.
Reject tree Embrace rhizome