Ok, so, we see it differently.

I do not see education as part of the larger circle of community. In advocacy or environmental associations, an association may be seeking to educate nonmembers, the public or even members' customers about specific issues that concern the membership community. So it could easily be outside of that community. Or it could be a different community. That’s why I don’t see community as a whole circle encompassing the others.

In my opinion, moving from awareness to action does not control the conversation, rather supports the conversation with facts and allows people to agree or disagree. It involves people in a discussion around facts and opinions; it gets them involved with the process. Education of awareness to action lets people make their own educated and informed decisions.

Jeff, let me respond to yours specifically. First, yes, the size of the three association focuses can vary. But are you saying community should be a circle like these? For me community overlaps the whole – in fact community is the whole diagram as per slide 3.

I agree with what you say about education involving awareness to action, as opposed to just information sharing. However I disagree that our model assumes people are conversing and collaborating on the "right issues" – I don't see where it shows that. People are just conversing and collaborating, and it's back to the myth of control to think the association can do anything more than try and push the "right stuff" to the forefront. Even if the association starts with facts, people will just add more/other facts to suit themselves.

You also say that the "social focus diagram assumes that collaboration automatically evolves into collective action" – actually totally the opposite, as I said in the post, and the reason it's a bullseye, is that it's really really hard to push conversation towards collective action. There's definitely nothing "automatic" about it

In the first slide, you have all three circles the same size as if the three main association areas are equal. I submit that those three circles vary in size based upon the association's goals and reasons for existence. That would make their intersections different. I argue that community should be a circle as should research/content.

I see many associations becoming more community and content focused. I don’t think these two areas lie in the traditional silos of membership and education. They often cross silos. In my opinion, information, knowledge sharing and content are very different from true education. Education involves awareness to action, which is the premise of many associations such as environmental, health and social organizations. Their main goal is to change individual attitudes and ultimately behavior, thus awareness to action.

Associations often disseminate information of facts or opinions in print or electronic material and call it education. It’s actually information sharing. Information does not enhance critical-thinking, problem solving or decision-making skills.

Education teaches people to analyze information and make their own informed decisions. It empowers one with greater values and encompasses teaching and learning specific skills. Oh, I digress into the importance of education. That’s the educator in me.

Your model assumes that in the social space, people are having conversations about facts and collaborating on the right issues. That simply cannot happen without accurate content, information, education and research. If an association is trying to change behavior, they start with facts and move people from awareness to action.

Your social focus diagram assumes that collaboration automatically evolves into collective action. I suggest that it doesn’t happen without a plan of action, measurement and positive reinforcement. That’s where the association can use community to help focus the outcomes of awareness to action.

Two messages that I think we really need to hear (and Pat your comment certainly hones in on these) is that community is different from collaboration but the association needs doses of each. The reality it that the collaboration happens less of the time (hence the sweet spot in the middle) but it can't happen if there's no community. So I agree we need to ditch the traditional committees but we have to still have community so member can move from sweet spot to sweet spot so to say.

But we’re also talking about a community development strategy. Recently at my association, we moved away from a traditional committee structure to organize our most important meetings and conferences. We moved instead toward an ad hoc structure of planning groups that work specifically on a conference and then dissolve once the conference is over. Some of the committee folk now feel a sense of disenfranchisement over the loss of their former meeting planning roles. But it’s more than that. They are feeling the loss of the sense of community that came from being crowned the chair or vice chair of the committee and having a built in set of friends with whom to kvetch and network.

And all of this works together. The meetings feed the values of community and knowledge management. The committees also feed both of those larger values. We have learned over time that the ad hoc planning groups tend to be more effective at delivering the powerful meeting. But the ad hoc groups might not be the most effective vehicle to deliver on the value of community. So, we’re on our raft here in the middle of the sea – looking for oars and sails and compasses and all the other things we need to keep moving forward. Some people are getting more wet than others. And some people are getting stepped on more than others. We hope to get the raft (or rafts) to their various destinations and hope the people aboard enjoy the ride and the conditions (wet/not wet, stepped on/not stepped on) that accompany the ride.

– Pat Jones