Finding Inspiration

AKA proud that I know and call some very smart people friends.

I stumbled upon this post on David Crow’s website/blog. It’s an oldie but a goodie and, despite the fact that it was written in 2006 much of it still rings true.

With David’s words in mind, I’m pretty pumped for a Barcamp resurgence in the fall. Joey DeVilla threw the gauntlet down calling Toronto out to bring back Barcamp. I responded with wholehearted enthusiasm, because it’s about time I gave back in a big way to the community that has been so good to me.

These days there are all kinds of meetups/tweetups/(un)conferences, but it’s the roots of the community spirit that have definitely declined in the past few years.

Now…I’m searching for inspiration.

More specifically, to find that spark in the community that I feel has slowly extinguished. There are some incredible people doing incredible things, but I feel like it’s overshadowed by a lot of talking and not enough doing. David was one of the very first people I met in the Toronto Tech Community many many moons ago, I’m glad that his spark is still going.

As I start to define what I feel are the missing pieces I will map them out. I am hoping that I can get insight and find ways to proactively change not only my perspective but those around me.

The inspiration has begun to tingle, if only ever so slightly, otherwise I wouldn’t have turned to this here blog to get some long form thoughts out. So thank you David, Joey (and many many other people) for being a constant source of inspiration. Now to get out and shake things up.

Crisis Response, Community Management and YOU.

I have to commend Kristie Wells and Chris Heuer for all their hard work on Social Media Club. In the day and age where everything we say and do can be broadcast instantly I have never met two such people with such honor and integrity both offline and on.

They have recently been dealing with a few trolls who chose to hijack the work that they have been doing for 4 years. Kristie addressed what happened here.

I wanted to share my experiences with a similar circumstance.
In my case I had a situation where a community event was hijacked from me.

It’s a little known fact that I hopped on board to organize The “Toronto Twitter Brunch” back in 2009. I chose dates and restaurants and reached out to the membership that the “stewards” had neglected. I was eventually made an admin on the page. I planned an event at a restaurant that could cater to the demands of the earliest forms of a tweet up. Imagine my surprise when an event that had been posted for days suddenly got changed, the time was changed, and someone else’s contact and reservation information was put into the information box. I immediately changed it and found that it was changed back. After this game of cat and mouse I received a Facebook message from the other admin person on the group, there was a series of messages back and forth and not once did the person who instigated the event changes choose to hop into the conversation. The end result was that I was booted as an admin and all the hard work I had done in the past was overshadowed by the need to grandstand and take credit for my hard work.

Please understand that I’m not asking for credit for spearheading the event. I did not start it, but I did make sure it had momentum. The second I exhibited any signs of leadership that’s when my services were no longer deemed necessary. I have never really addressed what happened until today, I’m sure you can understand why.

The reason why I emphasize SO closely with Chris and Kristie is directly related to my story. Have you ever put your heart and soul into something only to find someone else taking credit for your work. Have you ever been in the position where you feel powerless against the wrongs you have experienced?

I am an experienced community builder, both offline and on. I have been active within online communities since the early 2000’s and have been planning community events since my early teens. I live and breathe community and it’s because of experiences like this that I continue to work harder on making sure my community events are inclusive and to give credit where credit is due.

I would love to hear your stories about how you addressed adversity with regards to community building. Feel free to comment or respond on twitter @rochlatinsky