Moveon.org and Howard Dean's presidential bid have proven that the internet – when paired with "meet-ups" to bring people together – are powerful forces for community building. It is the pairing of "High Tech" with "High Touch" that gives these groups their amazing breadth and agility.
But it takes planning.
When I met the Chief Culture Officer at Cisco – a company with a broadly distributed workforce that prides itself on its ability for any employee to work from any location with the right tools - I asked, "How do you promote Cisco's ‘culture' with a workforce that's so distributed?" He deadpanned, "We have more picnics."
What can Cool Community leaders learn from Cisco? First, "High Tech" is good for many things: sharing information; collaborating on static content like research reports and software code; managing projects and databases; keeping in touch; and streamlining systems. But high tech cannot replace the person to person mojo generated by being together. When you're selecting a Chamber leader, you can study their DISC report, exchange email with them, and interview ad nausea via videoconferencing.
But bringing them to your office and dropping them in the membership and events shark pit is infinitely more telling about whether they'll add value or not.
High tech has its place. We need the right technology doing the right things. Young Professionals organizations, for example, must use technology to build their database and email their newsletters. But in human systems – where trust, teaming, and their subsequent magic are valued - high touch is irreplaceable. As community builders, we must continue to value and host the "picnics." Social hours and networking time provide what the best computer database can never provide and what our communities so deeply need: "touch" and a sense of belonging.
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