everything is better in community

everything is better

1create experiences worth sharingeverything is betterIN COMMUNITY#BetterInCommunity

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This morning Im going to tell you the story of Dinovember, and the lessons Im learning facilitating the community that has sprung up around it.

2Introduction:SEARCH for COMMUNITY

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Community can be something of a white whale. Many people seek it out whether to find a place where they can belong, or to support a product or idea that their trying to market but few find it. When they do, its often where they least expect it to be. The same goes for organizations; businesses, products teams, charities. Individuals want the benefits of community: camaraderie, a sense of belonging, support, fun. Organizations want to offer these things in a way that associates them with their products and causes.

3A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

I was walking along looking for somebody, and then suddenly I wasnt anymore.#BetterInCommunity


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Last year, my wife and I unexpectedly found ourselves at the center of a budding community, which Ill tell you about in a moment. It was through this experience, and my parallel life in product design, that I realized: designers are, in many ways, the unsung architects of community. Design thinking and the UX disciplines are perfectly suited for community building, and if community managers and those in similar roles started thinking more like designers and designers thought more like community managers, wed all be a lot more successful at building and maintaining healthy, productive communities.

4CARNIVORES ANONYMOUS


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Community rarely develops where community alone is the goal. Think about networking groups youve attended. Put strangers into a room and tell them to do community, and youre likely to find a lot of awkward silence, or conversations about the weather.

5INTIMACY must be EARNED#BetterInCommunity


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Intimacy and camaraderie have to be earned before they can be expected. People are wary of inauthentic communities. And rightfully so weve all been burned by promises of community that turned out to be false. So, Im going to talk a little about some community building lessons that Susan and I stumbled into through Dinovember, and how those lessons can be used by some of you to begin designing for communities yourselves.

6Chapter One:the STORY of DINOVEMBER


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When Susan and I started Dinovember, community really wasnt on our roadmap. We had no roadmap.

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We were tired; up all night, every night with our one-year-old son. He had a few complications early on that werent life-threatening, but meant he was up every couple of hours in a lot of discomfort. If youve ever lived on only a few hours of sleep, especially sleep thats interrupted so often, you know what it can do to you. It has a way of making you more than a little useless during the day. Your brain doesnt work like it should, you forget your keys, you get lost in normal conversations.

8ARE WE HAVING FUN YET?


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It was hard on us, but it affected the kids, too. Our daughters were bored, cooped up for days at a time. They new their little brother was having a hard time, but they were too young themselves to really understand why our family life had all but ground to a halt. We wanted to find a way to put what little energy we did have toward reconnecting with our kids.

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One night, Susan and I were cleaning up after putting the kids to bed, and Susan found some plastic dinosaurs. Most of them were from when she and her brother were kids. On a whim, she set them up in the sink with toothbrushes and toothpaste as if the dinosaurs were trying to figure out how to use them. There was no grand plan it was just something to make the kids smile. We went to bed without giving it another thought.The next morning, our daughters burst into our room and dragged us out of bed, shouting, Mom and Dad the dinosaurs came alive last night and we caught them brushing their teeth!After the girls pulled us into the bathroom and we woke up enough to figure out what was going on, we remembered the toys.

Everything you can imagine is real.10Pablo Picasso#BetterInCommunity

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At first glance, the dinosaurs looked to be exactly where Susan and I left them standing in the same places, frozen in the same positions. But when we looked closer and saw our kids wide-eyed faces, we realized that sure enough the dinosaurs HAD come to life.

11#BetterInCommunity


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And we knew they would have to do it again.

It all began innocently enough.

12MOST IMPORTANT MEALOF THE DAY#BetterInCommunity

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After that first night in the sink, the dinosaurs got into the kitchen and tore open a box of cereal.

13DONT WORRYTHEYRE ORGANIC#BetterInCommunity


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They scavenged for eggs, just like in the good old days in the prehistoric jungle.



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Then, they tried to use those eggs to bake cookies unlike the good old days in the prehistoric jungle.

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Once the dinosaurs hunger was satisfied (for the moment, at least) they got into a little role-playing.

16WHAT WERE YOU SAYINGABOUT MY TINY ARMS?


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Things would only escalate from there.

This continued for the rest of the month. Then, on December 1st, the kids woke up to a clean, quiet house. No broken dishes, no splattered food.

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The dinosaurs were back on the shelf and Dinovember was over.

18Chapter Two:SEEDS of COMMUNITY


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By the time November rolled around again the following year, our kids were daily asking whether or not the dinosaurs would be up to their old tricks. We told them we didnt know. We hadnt really thought about whether or not Dinovember would be a recurring thing.

19YOU DO NOT LOOK LIKEDINOBOTS TO ME#BetterInCommunity


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In the end, Susan and I were powerless against the coming invasion. So, on November 1st 2013, the dinosaurs returned.This time around, the dinosaurs made bigger messes than ever. Its almost as if they knew that our eldest daughter, who was six at the time, was starting to grow skeptical, and they pulled out all the stops.

20MOM AND DADWOULD NEVER DO THIS


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(If you think this one is a little extreme, dont worry)

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(We were able to hide it with a chair.)

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Our kids werent the only ones who were excited about the return of Dinovember. Our family and friends were interested in what the dinosaurs were up to as well. They heard our kids talking about Dinovember and wanted to join in. This is really where the first seeds of community were planted.This shouldnt be surprising. If community is a collection of actual relationships not just a hallow marketing term family and friends are a natural place to start.



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So, we created a Facebook page where we could post our dinosaur photos and invited our friends to join. I also wrote up a quick Dinovember primer called Welcome to Dinovember and published it on medium.com (which is a great platform, by the way). That way, Id have somewhere to point people who were wondering what in the world was going on at our house.Fast forward 3 days. Susan and I were busy dealing with living-room graffiti, play dough fights, and frozen dinosaurs.

24NOTHING CAN STOP USWELL, ALMOST NOTHING


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But, all the while, something strange was happening. Stranger, maybe, even than plastic dinosaurs coming to life and messing up my house every night.

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#BetterInCommunity


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Almost overnight, Welcome to Dinovember was read and shared over 2 Million times. It was syndicated by major news sites like the Metro UK, Huffington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. More than 250k people liked the Dinovember Facebook page. Community had found us.

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We were amazed at the response. Of course, we had our skeptics. Heres an article someone wrote about Dinovember, suspecting it was all a clever marketing play by a toy company. The blogger writes, What really makes me critical about Dinovember is the amount of effort put into this by the so-called parents.

27CREDITS before DEBITS


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It wasnt a marketing ploy, of course, but a lot of people were telling us to cash in. Sell t-shirts and prints, agree to those corporate social media tie-ins that were beginning to trickle in. This was when the Dinovember community was only a few days old! Steve Jobs used to say that everything an organization does is either a credit or a debit to its brand. Every action either adds something or takes away. Asking the community for their money at this point would have been a serious debitthey didnt sign up to be pitched and sold to. The community was too young, too fragile. Many for-profit endeavors get this wrong. They go for the conversion before the community has the kind of self-sustaining strength to support it. Even now, as Susan and I promote our book WHAT THE DINOSAURS DID LAST NIGHT, we always get a little nervous every time we hit Post. Its not that we dont believe in what weve created we do. I havent been prouder of anything Ive made since my kids. But, we have to remember that the community isnt all about us and what we do. Before I get into any of that, though, I want to share some stats.

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Today, the Dinovember community has grown to reach nearly 50 countries. Our primary hub is still Facebook, where the page has about 267k likes. Weve received over 6,000 messages and comments, including photos from dinosaur invasions in Oslo, Helsinki, Berlin, Sydney, and London.

2950 countries268k likes on Facebook6k messages, posts, comments3.5 million readers on Medium2.8k recommendations


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The interactions weve had with these people and the interactions weve watched them have with each other have been so inspiring to us. One thing weve heard over and over is that many of these people, especially parents, had never considered themselves creative people. But, they felt like Dinovember gave them permission to be creative with their kids. A lot of us in this room probably take creativity for granted. Of course were creative thats our business. But, there are people who have been taught from a young age that there are more important things in life to focus on, more practical things, and now here they were realizing that they had the tools to create all along.Its been incredible to see the unexpected ways the Dinovember community has developed.

30Chapter Three:CONTEXT creates MEANING


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Community makes our experiences more meaningful by providing context. Varied perspectives come together to influence and inform one another so that we each have the opportunity to understand our shared situation better.

As humans, reality for us is largely based on other peoples perceptions.31Dan Harmon, Community#BetterInCommunity

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Dan Harmon is the creator the TV show Community (which obviously makes him an expert on this topic). He says it this way: As humans, reality for us is largely based on other peoples perceptions. If there are 20 bodies in your crawl space but you havent been caught yet, you tell yourself youre still a birthday clown, and thats how you keep doing it.

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Ok, maybe thats a terrible example.The positive way of looking at this is that the presence of other people with their perspectives, their wit, and the joys and hurts theyve lived through which now inform their reactions all of these things frame our experiences differently. Without them, all were left with is our own subjective, unreliable, slow-changing self.

Other peoples thoughts and feelings have to be communicated somehow because your own are so immediate, urgent, real.33David Foster Wallace#BetterInCommunity

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David Foster Wallace said, There is no experience youve had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. Other peoples thoughts and feelings have to be communicated somehow because your own are so immediate, urgent, real.

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When we include others in our experiences, the movie of our lives becomes less a star-vehicle and more an ensemble production. Everybody brings something together and the whole is elevated.

35Chapter Four:EXPERIENCES are better in COMMUNITY


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Experiences are better in community. Thats why communities rarely thrive as simply a means for community or, more cynically, as a means to market products. Instead, authentic communities spring up, often unexpectedly, from meaningful shared experiences.That doesnt mean communities dont require cultivation. If you want to build a community, and community is built on meaningful shared experiences, what do you think its your job to do?

36create MEANINGFUL EXPERIENCES to SHARE


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Community is a living testament to meaningful experiences. So what makes a meaningful experience?For us, it began with a box of plastic dinosaurs and a desire to ignite our kids imaginations. Others embraced Dinovember because it turned out that we werent the only people who felt this way. We werent the only ones who wanted this for our kids and for ourselves. Imagination and play became the rallying cries of Dinovember. It was the idea that drew in like-minded people from around the world.

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Ideas are powerful and, when it comes to community, vital. The idea that we should value our childrens imaginations enough to spend an entire month actively encouraging them to play and to believe in something fantastical thats what gave Dinovember meaning, beyond the funny scenes and likable dinosaurs. Thats what inspired people to participate. I can tell you from experience that Dinovember can be a lot of work. Why spend the time and energy to grab your own dinosaurs and join in if you dont see value in the reason behind it?What is the reason behind what youre doing? Why are you building the products youre building, or the services youre providing? Why should anybody on the outside care? If youve got a story that inspires people to care, theyll want to join you. If you dont, youll always be pushing your boulders uphill.

38Image submitted by Patti Haas


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Designing meaningful experiences also requires a little letting-go. For an experience to mean something to someone, that person needs to have some skin in the game. There need to be stakes. That person needs to have some ownership.One of the first things we did after Welcome to Dinovember started getting so much exposure was to invite the world to participate. Dont just wait for us to post our photos, grab your dinosaurs and join in. Make your kids believe.

39Photo credit: Lorraine Loots


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Let me give you another example. Lorraine Loots is an artist in Cape Town. She challenged herself to paint one original piece every day for an entire year. The pieces are tiny about the size of a quarter and recreate their subjects in incredible detail. Heres what she has to say about letting go of part of her creative process for the sake of community:

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Copyright Gareth Pon and Lorraine Loots


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(Lorraine Loots video clip).

At the end of the day, communities own themselves.41Sarah Judd Welch, Loyal#BetterInCommunity

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This letting-go is hard. We think, this is my experience. This is something that I created, that reflects on me. We dont want other people to taint the purity of the experience as we conceived of it. But, is there really any alternative?You might initiate an experience, but once others begin to participate, it can take on a life of its own. Sarah Judd Welch of Loyal said, The funny thing is that these Fortune 100s think theyre building community for themselves, for their own bottom lines. But at the end of the day, communities own themselves.

42TAKE A PART and LEAVE A PART


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It might be helpful to define what were talking about when we talk about ownership. Were not talking about leadership. Im not advising you to hand over the reigns to your community, though in certain circumstances that may be exactly what you should do. When I say that members of a community should have some ownership over the shared experiences that provide the foundation for that community, I mean this:Each member of a community should be able to take some part of the community experience and leave some part of themselves behind. Thats a bit esoteric, so let me give an example.

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Danny is a young boy who lives with his family in London. (For privacy's sake, I'm not using Danny's real name.) He attends a therapy group for children who have been diagnosed on the autism spectrum. One of the biggest challenges Danny faces has to do with what's called social imagination. He can perfectly re-enact situations, but has trouble imagining new ones of his own.

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Danny's mom had been looking for tools to help her son develop this skills when she saw Dinovember. She showed the photos to Danny, and helped him to imagine how the dinosaurs might be interacting based on their expressions and actions. She ended up doing Dinovember in her own house using Danny's toys. When Danny responded to this, she told his therapy group about it, and they decided to make it part of their program. They blew up the photos Dannys mom had taken of her dinosaur scenes and put them up around the therapy room. She took what we had done for our kids and she made it hers. She used the toys Danny already liked, and taught him something wouldnt have occurred to Susan and I. Its Dinovember, but its Dannys.

45Creating Meaningful Shared Experiences1. Have an idea worth spreading2. Share ownership with the community


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Weve been talking about designing meaningful experiences and the importance of a central idea or story. Weve also talked about the importance of sharing ownership with the community. There are so many other factors to consider, but I want to take the rest of this time to talk about just one of them:

463. HAVE FUN


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Fun.

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When someone shares a Dinovember photo, they do it because it made them laugh. People want to have fun, and the thing about fun is that it so much easier when youve got other people around you having fun too. Fun is contagious but, more than that, it practically demands to be spread. Whats the first thing you do when you find something that makes you laugh? You show it to someone else. Fun experiences take possession of us and compel us to share. Who laughs at something and then hides it away?

If youre not having fun, youre doing something wrong.48Groucho Marx#BetterInCommunity

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With Dinovember, fun played a dual role it was both the idea (part of it, anyway), and the experience. We wanted people to have fun and spark their imaginations so that theyd understand the value of doing that for their kids and communities.But, even when the idea behind your experiences are more serious, fun can still be appropriate and valuable.

49AP Photo/Elise Amendola


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ALS is a serious disease. Approximately 5,600 people in the US are diagnosed with ALS each year, which amounts to about one in every 100k people. Yet, until recently, very few people knew much about it. That began to change this past summer, when videos of people pouring buckets of ice water on their heads started showing up in every news feed in the country. Celebrities participated in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. Kids got in on the action. Entire fire departments. By the end of August the ALS Association had raised over $111 million through ice bucket challenge donations. Thats remarkable.

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One of the primary reasons the ice bucket challenge was as successful as it was, was because it was fun. People liked watching videos of their friends and family dousing themselves with ice water. People liked having the chance to participate in something bigger than themselves and share their own videos. It was fun. And, because it was fun, it was an enormous success.

51TODAYS DELIGHT is tomorrows EXPECTATION


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But, fun is fleeting. Something that makes you laugh today may not make you laugh a month from now. Something that is a big hit with your community may fall flat tomorrow. Communities are made of people, and peoples needs, desires, and tastes are never static. As soon as your community is delighted, its time to move the experience forward.

52COMMUNITY BUILDING is EXPERIENCE DESIGN


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The bottom line is this: community building is experience design. Because, whether your experiences are built around a social cause, mobile applications, designer jeans, or plastic dinosaurs, theyll mean much more in community.

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Preorder WHAT THE DINOSAURS DID LAST NIGHT:

bit.ly/DinosDidBNfacebook.com/Dinovembertwitter.com/RefeUpStay in touch:


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