There's this rosy picture that people like to paint when talking about community building. A person has an idea for a community, hosts their first event, and it catches like wildfire! It grows and grows until wow, it's a global community! This narrative is misleading. It makes us think that if we can just set up the right circumstances – the right message, in the right space, with the right programming – then people will flock to our communities. It's that “if you build it they will come” energy. They won't come. If a community grows organically from day one, it is the extreme exception to the
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