Quotes about Community

Many companies operate from more of a command-and-control environment — they decide what's going to happen at headquarters and have the organization execute. That doesn't work here because it's the community of users who really have control.

So we enable, not direct. We think of our customers as people, not wallets. And that has implications for how we run the company. We partner with our customers and let them take the company where they think it's best utilized.

The fact that used cars is our largest category is a good example. We would not have sat in a conference room and said, "Hey, how about used cars?" So what can be learned that is extensible to other companies is [to ask] what are your customers doing with your products that maybe you didn't anticipate that they would do? How do you think of your customers as your research and development lab, as opposed to having an R&D lab at headquarters?

Here is the interesting thing that I wonder about. You look at the tremendous success of Facebook. To my mind there is not a lot of commerce going on in these social networking sites. eBay is a community anchored in commerce. It is a commerce site that built a community around it. What has not been proven is if the reverse can happen and people will go to community sites to do commerce.

"Globalization doesn't have to be based on making money for rich people. It can be based on building community, which is the real source of prosperity and security, and sharing knowledge and resources to enhance the well-being of all. To build a worldwide community, we need direct participation at a citizen level. Citizens everywhere have to mobilize to restrain the imperial impulses of their governments and begin to form direct relationships."

When I was trying to popularize the concept of the Internet -- ten or 15 years ago -- I came up with this concept of "the 5 Cs." Services needed to have content, context, community, commerce, and connectivity. After that, when I was trying to think of what the key management principles were to build into the culture, I started talking about the Ps. The P's were things like passion, perseverance, perspective and people. I think the people aspect is really the most important one.

God allowed man to enhance technologies in order that we can live easier together

“Success has nothing to do with what you gain in life or accomplish yourself. It's what you do for others.”

We started our company in 2002 when nothing was getting funded anywhere and everyone was still licking their wounds from the big bubble bang. Nobody cared about us except us. We were in Vancouver fer crissakes. But we were able to focus on finding and connecting with the people who mattered most: the customers, the users, the community. You get more done when no one's looking over your shoulder.

A lot of our success came from George, the lead designer, and Caterina. Both of them spent a lot of time in the early days greeting individual users as they came in, encouraging them and leaving comments on their photos. There was a lot of dialogue between the people who were developing Flickr and their users to get feedback on how they wanted Flickr to develop. That interaction made the initial community very strong and then that seed was there for new people who joined to make the community experience strong for them too.

parallel lines meet in eternity but
parallel lives meet for tea

Imagine being invited to a banquet where you bring your own meal-
and you brought a steak ,baked potatoes and asparagus with Boston cream pie for desert.  

Joining you at that table were a sampling of the human diversity from your community.  
Across from you  at this table was a mother with children who had nothing to bring-
how much would you enjoy your meal without sharing it? 
 
Marianne Goldweber
Spiritualist-Minister

The time has come to lower our voices, to cease imposing our mechanistic patterns on the biological processes of the earth, to resist the impulse to control, to command, to force, to oppress, and to begin quite humbly to follow the guidance of the larger community on which all life depends. 

"What we now want is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth... and the elimination of egoism and pride which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife."

We are all longing to go home to some place we have never been - a place half-remembered and half-envisioned we can only catch glimpses of from time to time. Community. Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Someplace where we can be free.

Be with those who help your being.
Don't sit with indifferent people, whose breath
comes cold out of their mouths.

The Key to Sustainability is Community.

Biologist Rupert Sheldrake’s Morphic Resonance theory strongly suggests that cellular bioluminescence (which in humans ranges from ultraviolet to infrared) is both personal and transpersonal. In other words, not only is the individual human “networked” with DNA light emitters and receptors; it appears our entire species is morphogenetically networked much like individual cells that form a larger biological entity: humanity. This assertion has been substantiated by the Gariaev group, whose findings liken DNA not just to a holographic biocomputer but to a “biological Internet” that links all human beings. Many native wisdom traditions are based on an equivalent understanding of the universe (human inhabitants included) as a single living being intelligently networked like a biological organism.

Some people would argue the other side: that the business of business is business, and companies should only be focused on profits. But in today's world, I don't think corporations can only be focused on profits, because they are inextricably linked with the communities that they serve. I do not believe you can be a leader in your industry without being a leader in your community. It's a fundamental shift in how you think about business.

Community. A friend started a real estate brokerage a few years ago. By the time she'd added her second employee, she was a pillar of her 35,000-person community. No rule says that only the local banker or car dealer can organize the program to raise supplemental funds for the public library or send the high school band on a well-earned special trip. Participating in community affairs, with time more than dollars, is good business from day one. It gets your name around, adds to your distinctiveness, and, best of all, makes you an attractive employer (which is the key to sustained success).

"What is the meaning of democracy, freedom, human dignity, standard of living, self-realisation, fulfillment? Is it a matter of goods, or of people? Of course it is a matter of people. But people can be themselves only in small comprehensible groups. Therefore we must learn to think in terms of an articulated structure that can cope with the multiplicity of small-scale units. If economic thinking cannot grasp this it is useless. If it cannot go beyond its vast abstractions, the national income, the rate of growth, capital/output ratio, input-output analysis, labour mobility, capital acuumulation; if it cannot get beyond all this and make contact with the human realities of poverty, frustration, alienation, despair, breakdown, crime, escapism, stress, congestion, ugliness, and spiritual death, then let us scrap economics and start afresh.
Are there not indeed enough "signs of the times" to indicate that a new start is needed?"

-E.F. Schumacher "Small is Beautiful"

You have to do it by yourself.  You can not do it alone.

Business, like art and science, has been revealed and conceived through the intellect and imagination of people, and it develops or declines because of the intellect and imagination of people.
In fact, there is no business; there are only people. Business exists only *among* people and *for* people.

Seems simple enough, and it applies to every aspect of business, but not enough businesspeople seem to get it.

Reading the economic forecasts and the indicators and the ratios and the rates for this or that, someone from another planet might actually believe that there really are invisible hands at work in the marketplace.

Be the best member of your site. Lead by example by participating as much as you can in your own community. This is a good way to attract other well-intentioned members of your site and also reminds everyone a real person is behind it all and building the best community they can for everyone. Speak honestly and be supportive of other members. When I think of all the communities I'm a part of, the ones I love are the ones I see the creators using everyday.

It takes community to maintain a human.

Perhaps the most important point is to ensure that science never becomes divorced from the basic human feeling of empathy with our fellow beings. Just as one's fingers can function only in relation to the palm, so scientists must remain aware of their connection to society at large. Science is vitally important, but it is only one finger of the hand of humanity, and its greatest potential can be actualized only so long as we are careful to remember this. Oherwise, we risk losing our sense of priorities. Humanity may end up serving the interests of scientific progress rather than the other way around. Science and technology are powerful tools, but we must decide how best to use them. What matters above all is the motivation that governs the use of science and technology, in which ideally heart and mind are united.

The universe is but one great city, full of beloved ones, divine and human by nature, endeared to each other.

We are living at a time of great transformation. The spiritual awakening that began in the 1960s needs to mature to its next level, which is a deepening into devotion to a mystical practice while remaining an effective force in the world. And by that I mean remaining in your skin, in your role as who you are. Mystics knew how to channel grace through prayer and they knew the power of that. They knew how to receive guidance through reflection and contemplation; they knew how to share the gift of illumination with each other. These are great gifts of life and profound grace that we are capable of providing for each other and the world. This is what it means to be a mystic without a monastery. You make a commitment to your own interior illumination and through that discover the “sacred” part of your “contract” and the true meaning of your highest potential.

The Folarians (such was their name) were a pacifistic people who believed in free will, free thought, free love, free land, free living, free rides, freeloading and freebies of all kinds. Bitter enemies of the Vegetarians, the Fruitarians (who lived exclusively on raw fruit), the Pietarians (or “New Fruitarians,” as they were sometimes called, who ate only raw fruit pies) and the Breatharians (who subsisted on air alone), the Folarians promoted a doctrine wherein eternal life was achieved by abstaining from all food sources save foliage—thus their name. Moreover, this foliage—whether leaves, stems or flowers—must already have fallen to the ground of its own accord. This way, eating only nature’s leftovers, the Folarians lived in perfect harmony with Mother Earth.

In every tribe a man shall prosper by deeds of love.

"You can be anybody you want to be
you can love whomever you will
you can travel any country where your heart leads
and know (we) will love you still.

You can live by yourself,
you can gather friends around
you can choose one special one.
And the only measure of your words and your deeds
will be the love you leave behind when you're done."

The way you get meaning in your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning. --Morrie Schwartz