Introduction

            I am very interested in the idea of on-line community, but I am skeptical that it is possible to build real community without physical meeting, not just on-line communication. Because of this interest I would like to explore the community that is being built through a website called Meetup.com. I recently signed up on this website and joined a group called NW Creatives Social Group. This is a group of people, most of whom work in creative fields, who all have an interest in creative pursuits, art and music. The other thing they have in common, besides living in the Portland area, is a desire to meet other people who share interests.

            The main motivation for building community, as William Morris says, is fellowship, “Fellowship is heaven, and lack of fellowship is hell; fellowship is life, and lack of fellowship is death; and the deeds that ye do upon the earth, it is for fellowship that ye do them. (Smith 2001)” Based on this idea the Meetup.com groups are communities because their purpose is to bring people with similar interests together for social activities and relationship building. Although Meetup.com is not the usual way that communities are formed, I think that for this very reason it is worth studying.

            It is easy to define membership in this group, because it is self selected. Anyone who chooses to be in this group and signs up for it on the website can join as long as they can meet the creative criteria enforced by the group’s leaders. I am especially interested in the possibility of building community without meeting. I don’t know if this will work, since the goal of this group is to get people together for social “meetups” but that is my interest. We will see how it goes.

Network Map

 

 

            My network map shows the Meetup website in the middle with the members of the group in a circle around it. Each member has a strong link [solid line with arrows pointing both directions] to the website, like spokes on a wheel. In addition each member has a potential link [dotted line with arrows pointing both directions] representing the possible connections that can be made by members outside of the website.