A community that depends on you is just a service

If you disappeared for three months, would your community survive? I asked myself that question for real, and I didn't like the answer.

At play2match we made a radical choice: the product isn't the app and it isn't the events, the product is the community. That's exactly why the day I realised everything worked only as long as we were there hit me hard. We hadn't built a community. We had built a service with loyal users.

How we're rebuilding it

I wrote a chapter about it for CommunityLand, which then ended up among the ten most-read articles (wow, I didn't see that coming). In it are the three levers we use: a shared story that gives the crew an identity, distributed status that turns members into co-authors, and a closed feedback loop, so people can see what changes thanks to them.

The full story, with examples from the field, is in the guide How to build a legacy. And the mistakes that got me there are in The mistakes I made as Head of Community.

Letting go

For a few weeks now I haven't been working on community in the strict sense: a dedicated person is coming in. I'm still hugely passionate about it, but it's the right call. If the community has to stand without the person who created it, the first test is on me.