Swarm the newcomers

This is probably the 20th time I’ve made a blog post referencing a point already made by Brad Feld in his Startup Communities book, but I like to reference the points made as they become relevant.

One of the problems a community can face is when newcomers have to “earn their way into the hierarchy”. It’s a challenge moving into a new community, and there’s no need for it be made more difficult with gatekeeping, “in-groups” and other hierarchies based on status or position instead of abilities and “what you can do and what you’re doing”.

How should newcomers be treated?

Brad made a point about how newcomers should be quickly introduced to a community, no matter what role they seek to play. These include recommendations to key events and people, and even inclusions into organizing community initiatives that could determine their leadership potential.

There’s a very active community now, with a whole series of regular gatherings serving different functions, some even occurring on the same day (and the community is diverse enough to support this now too). This has been the case for several years now and it continues to expand organically. March – June is the busiest time of the year for such regular events. A lot of the same people meetup and talk to one another each time.

Newcomers around here generally speaking don’t have to work their way up through some sort of hierarchy, and that’s awesome. Newcomers are generally speaking embraced and supported.

If you’re at an event and see somebody new, possibly doing the “keep myself busy in my smartphone because I don’t know anybody yet” routine, then you as a regular can break the ice and introduce yourself. If you have nothing in common with them, think of who they should know. Because you can also go one step further and offer to introduce them to the people that are relevant contacts in their field. People who share interests and whom they may want to collaborate with in some capacity in the future.

The cost for that person to get to know those people over a series of events and random run-ins is much higher than the cost for you to share those contacts. It’s good economics. By swarming newcomers and connecting them to the relevant contacts we can reduce their “settling in time” and help them collaborate much more quickly.