Before I finished reading Maddie Grant and Lindy Dreyer’s book Open Community I was already raving about it. I passed it around the room of the leadership conference where I was speaking.

My aha for the day (maybe the week or month!): associations are approaching social media the same way they approach chapters and other components.  The aha came out of reading an insightful post from Scott Gould on How I Profile A Community’s Participation To Inform Next Actions. About four paragraphs into what Scott warns at the start is a long post, there is the statement that triggered by aha: Relationship is participation with one another.

@Marc_Meyer maybe social media is dating and community is living together...

This quip caught my eye in Rachel Happe’s recap of #socialmedia chat over on her post Fast & Furious—Twitter Chat. The topic was "The Difference between social media and community". She notes that this conversation is happening all around. She’s right. I was on a conference call whose topic was very much related. The call brought together a lively group of volunteers who are in the process of developing a more flexible, intuitive road map for communities in their association. We were grappling with the questions: when is a robust listserv group a community? When is a community an organization? When do we need structure?

What made the Buzz2009 experience special? Well, all the buzz and ...

Thursday, July 9 is the day. It's the day when we get to see if you can create an event, fill a room, get great reviews and make money without tapping any traditional marketing channels. Given the SOLD OUT sign on the registration page, I'm guessing it's a day where we in the association and meeting planning world will find out the answer is yes.

Anytime I see Liz Claiborne’s name, I stop to read. Could be because I’m one of the raving fans who have put Liz Claiborne into the top 10 US fashion brands list and within the top five most important brands on our retailers' floors.

This time when I stopped to read about Liz, the focus wasn’t fashion but community. Brandweek editor Todd Wasserman shared a conversation with Dave McTague, Liz Claiborne's evp, partnered brands, centered around the company’s use of social media to relaunch its brand.

@peggyhoffman What did you say? Sort of like how many SN friends to screw in a light bulb before you light the town?

Ha ha! We were talking about community vs. social network on Twitter. That tweet from Cynthia D’Amour made the point.

Something else Cynthia said generated a RT from @maggielmcg Community is the what; social networking the how. (via @CynthiaDAmour)<Awesome--love this!>

Actually the conversation started at the ASAE Components Section Council Meeting this week and morphed into a Twitter conversation.

Two slideshows to watch if you’re the least interested in how components – face-to-face and virtual – fit into your association.

The message of both is really about building community.

Got tagged twice and invited to test the idea of meme in SNAP – can a game of tag help nurture community – let’s see!

So Jamie Notter (my recent tagger and by the way author of "postcards from a new CEO" column in Associations Now) I’ll respond with 5 folks I recently starting following on Twitter outside my “association buds” ...

A watershed of criticism followed VP nominee Sarah Palin’s and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani's ill-placed remarks about community organizers. Barack Obama didn't shine either on the subject. Time to turn criticism to commendation. they did wide up shining the light on the power of community organizers and here's a salute to those who change the world one community at a time.