Is KMCDC a Great Community?

Knowledge Management is my passion!  How gratifying it is to facilitate a knowledge management community!  The Knowledge Management Community of DC has been meeting every month for more than five years (since June, 2013.  Through this effort, I have become acquainted with stellar knowledge management thought leaders, expanded my network to include international KM leaders,  participated in outstanding events like "Knowledge on a Mission" and the "DGI930 Knowledge Management conference", all while adding community management to my experience. 

Looking at Stan Garfield's article on "What Makes a Great Community?", let's take a measure of the KMCDC as a great community.  According to Stan, great communities have:

• A Compelling Topic
• A Critical Mass of Members
• A Committed Leader
• Regular Events
• Active Online Discussions

How does the KMCDC do?

A Compelling Topic - YES
The practice and proliferation of Knowledge Management compels many of us to meet regularly and host interesting speakers.  The group was started in 2013 with a call-out to KM-ers who wanted to "lead Knowledge Management" in the DC region.  Many of the original leaders are still active in the community and remain true to this challenge.

A Critical Mass of Members - YES
The KMCDC has 523 members on the Meetup.com site.  Our data stats show that there has been an weekly average of 39 active members in the group.  Active members are the number of group members who have visited your Meetup group’s page within the last 30 days. 

A Committed Leader - YES 
The KMCDC group has a team of very committed leaders who share the meeting planning, documentation, and social media publication responsibilities.  Our leaders are committed to funding the Meetup site, facilitating the in-person meetings, managing the group content kept in the KMCDC Drop Box, and purchasing and distributing group items like pens and business cards and banners. 

Regular events - YES
The KMCDC has held 63 events since the group's inception in 2013.  Most events have been monthly at the end of the month.  We have also partnered with external groups to enact variety and elevate levels of discussion:  Enterprise Knowledge, The Knowledge Management Institute, Digital Government Institute, and the World Bank/International Finance Corporation.  We have just expanded into hosting evening events with Enterprise Knowledge.  See the KMCDC 2018 Year in Review.

Active Online Discussions - NO 
This is the one factor where the KMCDC could use some improvement.  Although there is a KMCDC Meetup group and a KMCDC Twitter page, we do not have many online discussions of topics that are discussed at the in-person meetings.

Based on this, the KMCDC is a great community!

Do you agree?  How can we do better? Want to get involved?

Please comment on this!

Thanks for reading my blog!!