Chris Pirillo, Founder, Lockergnome, talked about “communities” this afternoon at LeWeb conference. It was a refreshing presentation, very much right-brain. Here are his nine statements on “community”:
- Community is already there, inside everyone. Pirillo defines himself (amongst other things) as “I live in Seattle”, “I love coffee” and “I have an iPhone”. This is “Chris Pirillo” and he’s going to be looking for people he can identify with.
- Community is becoming increasingly distributed. We’re all distributed. We need to be distributed. The things we care most don’t exist on one site. These things are omnipresent.
- Community requires tools that can’t be built. Our spirit cannot scale. We can’t scale ourselves. We can throw tools online but if you believe a community is a tool, then you are a tool. We are the community.
- Community is a commodity, but people aren’t. The voice of people is not a commodity.
- Community cannot be controlled, only guided. You can’t shut up people. It’s good if people say bad things about you because it means they care enough to say bad things about you. Pirillo says “Control is BS”. Control exists in the hands of you.
- Community is no longer defined by physical boundaries. Pirillo says he has more in common with the attendees here than with his neighbors.
- Community grows its own leaders. Leaders will tell you when things are right and wrong. Community needs to respect its leaders. You can anoint a leader.
- Community is antithesis of ego. Twitter is not a community tool. Facebook is more like it.
- Community is everywhere, inside you. Tools will come and go but community will remain. “Twitter isn’t going to be around forever, Facebook won’t either, but the human spirit and the need for belonging transcends these tools.”
Seb Provencher's Blog 
Is it just me? I watched Chris on Ustream today and all I heard was drivel. Succinctly, what was his point? What is he sharing in his community besides affiliate linked tweets disguised as coupons!
The room was split half and half between people that didn’t like his presentation and people that loved it. I actually liked it as I felt it was more refreshing than a lot of the corpo-speak we heard this morning (especially from Facebook). And yes, I’ve seen his affiliate tweets as well and I always think they’re out of context.
It definitely wasn’t corpo-speak and I can see why some enjoyed it. Gary V, while similar in approach, made a lot more sense to me and he defines transparency. I just don’t get the Chris P. branding thing, I suppose.
Anyway, Sebastien, thanks for doing such a terrific job covering LeWeb on your blog for those of us stuck in the US. Happy Holidays!