I'm a Curator. Don't get me out of here (a note on how The Hub works)

This past week, I've been learning what works and what doesn't in new-style Communities of Practice, using Facebook-type tools where the members write the content (I mean The Hub, of course!). More precisely, the content kind of falls out of conversations members have with each other. We ask each other questions, compare practices, and hundreds of other community members feed off the answers. There has been an explosion in the past two weeks of great conversations producing really useful insights in The Hub as our numbers of joined members reaches a critical amount (I reckoned on 500 being the Tipping Point. We've reached 450 joined members plus about 1,200 people a week who visit and graze but don't join).

These 'grazers' are commonly called 'lurkers', which is as disparaging as well, er, 'grazers', I suppose, so I have to stop using 'grazers' and think of....'learners', There. That's better.

The most effective form of learning is in fact teaching what we think we know and then learning from people who are the formal learners - adapting our thoughts and improving our practicces with the help of their feedback - (not just formal 'learners' -  our peers, bosses, ...in fact, anyone). We learn from each other, even when we think we are in 'teaching' mode.

But, most 'learners' think of it as a passive Hoovering up process. Hence I get a number of enquiries from new members saying "Where's the content: I can't always find it." Well, the content will grow as we all interact and create it, but The Hub is a young community (opened October 2007) and so we need to co-create together for a large body of content to develop).

 Anyway, I digress. I thought my role with this community of practice, was to pump prime it, bring people together, throw in some themes and places where people can meet and interact (the Groups, for example - where you can also make your own Group, of course), then get out of the way to see what emerges.

The danger of blog-type communities (and the underlying technology of The Hub is basically blog technology) is that they revolve around one person. I wanted to keep out of the way where possible and let weak ties between other members who connect grow into strong ties (some of them) rather than me being the Hub of a network...which isn't scalable, sustainable or even desirable in this context.

My role has turned out to be a kind of party host, which I enjoy: spotting people who have common interests and putting them in touch with each other, helping a member broadcast a problem or question to the rest of the community and then channeling answers and solutions back to them. Though I am delighted that other members now do this, too, as, again, it is not sustainable for one person to do this. We need many little Hubs within The Hub, and they are growing in The Groups and around individual members.

It's a bit like sitting people next to each other at dinner whom you know will get on and then watching their faces light up as they discover common interests and passions and start learning from each other and inspiring each other: it's a delight.

But then what to do with the often fascinating (sometimes not so) content that comes out of their conversations. I was listening to a curator at the Natural History Museum today and it suddenly occurred to me, this is as important a part of the role (the role of a community administrator, I mean) as introducing people and helping people get used to sometimes clunky Web 2.0 tools ('community literacy'), and occasionally coaxing people to find their voice (encouraging people with brilliant things to say, who say them to me, to say them to the rest of the community).

And now I know that (as I spotted over at Ted, I think, where they and other community sites spotted this before me) there is a Curator role here: grouping together interesting content that is generated by conversations between members, 'archiving' it to some extent (but not in a dusty room, just in easy-access, easy-label areas where it becomes a useful and constantly referred to store of knowledge and ideas and practice). That's what the Group areas and other areas in The Hub help with.

It's 'sensemaking' I suppose. So, I have a role beyond party host. Editing, sensemaking, labelling, spotting patterns and connections and then highlighting the bigger themes that bring the different content together. But, it's not just my role. It's all of our roles within The Hub.

This I like: Curators are behind the scenes people - like stage managers or something - that create the stage on which the creative stuff is played out, with an added light Directorial role in teasing out the theme and making it explicit and entertaining.

Anyway, just needed to get that down: I'm a Curator. All community hosts in these new-style communities of practice have a curator role that can keep them out of the limelight but help the sense of the community to emerge. I like it. But, also, this is not excluviely my role. It's yours, too, for many of you delightfully active members and not yet but soon-to-be active members. I'm learning a lot from you about leadership and thanks for that!

Phil