Contributing to Your Community

I must say, I consistently find great content from Chris Brogan.  I was reading a post he wrote the other day titled "The Community Ecosystem" .  His post was basically aimed at social media  and contributing, but as I read, I saw how his points also fit into contributing to the community you find yourself in.  Now I want to be careful here with my use of the term "community".  I wrote a post the other day and as I do in many of my posts used the term DC Tech Community.  Ross over at Ross Notes noted that sometimes many of us tend to use that term loosely and in doing so leave out a large number of other groups, so I want to be careful in noting that I am speaking of a large community or a small subset of that larger realm in a generic sense.

But in this case I think it applies to the community you find yourself in, or an ecosystem as Chris calls it.  Here are a few of his highlights:

1.  Contribute Where You Can

Like I said, Chris is aiming at social media, but I think this is also appropriate other circumstances.  I liken it to the complimentary services idea that was in an earlier post.  Help out where you can in your community and the results with multiply.  Chris mentions a person Brian Solis, who attends events and takes lots of pics and then share them out via Creative Commons.  As I read this I could help but be reminded of our friend here in DC, Nahum.  He is a great guy and a great photographer who aattends events with us and takes terrific portrait type shots of all the people.  He will then upload them to flickr and email everyone to let them know.  It is funny, because after he does this, you see a changing of everyones avatars in all their social media accounts.

2.  Communicate When You Can
Visiting people’s websites and/or just reading their RSS feed isn’t enough all the time. Make a point of commenting, of saying “I see you.”

I think this is totally valid as it pertains to the ecosystem here.  There is a great niche and many of us frequent each other blogs and leave good feedback on the post and continue conversations we have had recently as it pertains to that post or article.

So when you can, share a little “I see you” with the places where you interact. Because it will matter. It does come back to you. People do care.

3.  Create What You Can

Some ways to create are to build things for people who don’t necessarily have the skills but you can see their need. Another way is to add value by contributing to an existing project. Other times, it’s as simple as organizing a gathering (either online or in the real world) of people with like interests, such that you can help catalyze the conversations and the shared experience. Create. Make. Do. And share.

I am not sure what to add to this, it speaks for itself and it ties back in to the idea of complimentary services we spoke about previously.  It seems all of these things he mentions, we are doing here locally in our various communities with great results.

Can you add anything else to his thoughts ?