For those with "building community" on their list of goals for 2010, check out SmartBlog on Social Media's posting by Merritt Colaissi - Spike Jones' 11 Lessons to ignite a fan community. It was lesson #9 that caught my eye:

Movements live online and offline. 90% of WOM happens offline. It’s important to get people together offline.

We are spending much time, energy and dollars on our IT and virtual communities that we fail to see the importance of being face-to-face. Some associations are even going so far as to replace traditional events and, yes even chapters, with online learning and virtual chapters. But it's not a either-or proposition. As Jones learned in building Fiskars successful crafters movement, its the combination that wins.

I just ran across an older posting - a challenge sort of - on Acronym where Lisa Junker, one of the bloggers behind Acronym asked us  to take 5 minutes to spread the word about our association. She was prompted by a very cool conversation with Andy Sernovitz of GasPedal who’s a word-of-mouth expert (and three-time association CEO) in which he offered up a few idea starters.

It all started with the Lindy Dreyer’s feature in January issue of Associations Now “Get your members talking! Word-of-mouth expert Andy Sernovitz tells you how.” Catch more of Andy's WOM insights in his book Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking. The idea goes that in a down economy, word of mouth can make all the difference.