Rambling about Community Building

A post about what I’ve been up to specifically Hive related. I’ve been given the community lead role for HivePH, a community for Filipinos on Hive. There’s no content here but self-absorbed ramblings about the experience so far.

I got suffocated with work and my Hive time is spread out with most of the focus is on building up HivePH as a community. I think it’s the mental gymnastics of going brainstorming ideas of what works from trial and error, then experimenting with other concepts to increase community participation that eats up a chunk of my time.

Perspective changes for different roles and it’s even more apparent if you take what roles you’ve been given work towards the ideal. When I was just a mod or member on the server, the routine wasn’t as complicated, let the other admins figure what other gimmicks for the community to do next and it’s just up to you to get in on it or not. Lead role just means you get more calls to do socially responsible stuff that benefits the rest of the community.

So why go through the different hoops just to make things work for the community, I mean it doesn’t really benefit me at the individual level when I could use the same amount of time and effort to build on my own blog? Well I’ve already mentioned this is all hobby blogging and my desire to go serious at content creation is just floating around here and there. I do try to take a dip but cancel on it once real life happens. It’s visible in my posting habits that it’s all for kicks and giggles.

I like the challenge of creating something of value or at least improving what exists. The steep challenge can be frustrating especially when it involves people. It wouldn’t be a real accomplishment if it was that easy. The fact that HivePH and its few active members are still there and growing slowly. There a lot of work to be done and it’s amazing how many flaws this community has that makes me excited of removing those, for real.

By chance you may have seen the recent updates I’ve been posting on the @hiveph account about what the community has been up to. I post my creative rants there too. The biggest hurdle has and always will be answering the question of what’s in it for them if they get involved with the community? That’s a tough question considering participation would only yield one a few cents or a dollar for their time. I don’t have answer, but I’m building the stuff needed to arrive at that answer.

Community building isn’t something like having a fixed input in and you get a fixed output. Some of the value can get lost along the system, people can just opt out when they don’t feel like building anymore and ghost you.

Having the first 10 active members in a community is the hardest. Acquiring the next few active members that will lead up to the hundred would be easier. I learned that only on Hive where less than 8 members I have been with from the bear market days are still the same people I know since the previous bull run and so on. New names can come and go but I think it’s fair to play favorites for members that have withstood the test of time.

When I’m doing the occasional webinars on the server talking about stuff I think is useful for members to get to maximize their Hive experience, some show up but most don’t. Everyone seems to be busy or already figured out what they need to know, that’s great. Out of 250+ member that got the memo in advance for the webinar, when only 3 members show up, one continues the show and does it for those that show up, not for those that don’t.

It’s a humbling experience and probably one of the needed wake up calls to value members that show up than begging for attention of those that don’t. Now I don’t mean it like showing up to the webinars, I mean it as being more receptive to what the community has been up to.

Red mark at the bottom: Time I became active again on crypto stuff.

Second red mark at the top: Where we’re at now.

Same names plus more on the list populating the server. I don’t have an optimistic view that new members will stay and build especially during the tough times but it’s nice if they did. Names that learned to toughen out the markets are always nice to have on the list. Out of 250+ names on the server, less than 15 people toughened out the previous bear market.

What any newcomer will see is a price chart and some candle sticks there. But each candle stick represents weeks that tell different stories to arrive at where the community is at right now.

I think it’s great that Hive offers a level of low risk for people with no capital but want to learn more about the world of blockchain. But Hive isn’t a charity blockchain and people need to earn their audience for those social rewards. A lot of the stuff that’s been made easy for community members had several layers of effort planned and coded into the program to make it work.

Whenever I make an announcement, it’s more reasonable to expect low participation. That’s just the way things are at the bottom until things get bigger. Just like any community or content creator that started with a few followers, once they blow up, the story hits different for those that stuck around since the beginning compared to new followers seeing something already built.

The project HiveBotPH created by @jazzhero is probably the most successful contribution of this community to the general Hive ecosystem. What used to be community bot that assists us at semi-automating the curation has evolved into an anti-abuse. The bot has been on other servers on this list with the corresponding stats. I don’t even recognize some of the communities listed here but ok.

It’s good that it has expanded to become a good service to the curation initiatives on Hive. I plan on nagging Jazz to add more features on it in exchange for the peanuts this community is paying him.

If you made it this far reading, thank you for your time.