Mernits asks us what do you not know and what do you want to know

“Any community that is large and diverse, will have sub-communities” says Elisa, but these sub-communities need rules that apply to everyone to lead to express disagreement without flaming. Blogher did not “silo” women’s interests. Members hop around from topics. Knitting and mommy blogs were here examples of different communities and you should be social online just like in life, with people you want to hang with, and sore to match with the community.This was said in response to one fellow who was kind of put out by the sub-group of twitterers. Dean Isaac puts bridging and bonding out there as important differences. Communities of exclusion need to balance bonding and bridging so they don’t become communities of hate like the Nazis.Todor brings up Meetup.com as a method for facilitating bridging and bonding.Now Elisa brings up the diversity issue — how come there was only black guy on a panel? In Blogher, of course all the speakers are women, but she needs to reach out to gays, women of color, and women of a different political view.Susan is wrapping up now — “it does take work, even if the tools are easy to use.”  Bringing it back to business, how can you bring this back to clients and selling and business. She tells an anecdote about Hallmark cards and now Hallmark has built relationships with bloggers. Now Dean Isaac says a community without values, without a sense of community, says that marketing can be antithetical to true community — if you have to make someone think there is something wrong with their body to sell as product, what kind of community will be built around that? Yet, communities share values. Mernits notes the “inherent tension” that arises when community, products, and commercialization meet. Off to Mojitos, I think… 

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