Tangible Communities – online meets offline

Over the weekend I ran my first 10K race. It was pouring rain, the course was very hilly but it was all worth it at the finish line. The event was terrifically well organized and it was for a good cause – to benefit the Cape Ann YMCA and the Wellspring House. I had my trusty miCoach with me – this time collecting data on my first real long distance race outing.

So what does this race have to do with communities? Well, as I thought about it during my commute into work this morning, it was a great example of the fusion of online and offline communities. More importantly it was a great example of what makes online communities successful.

My wife had heard about the event at the local YMCA and had signed me up after she had found the ability to register for the event online. She was able to submit my information through the North Shore YMCA website. I turned up to the race and was able to simply pick up my race bib number and warm-up for the event.

The event itself was a great example of a real-world community where the participants created a melting pot of regulars, newcomers and one-timers. The inclement weather and the occasion (Fathers Day) all made for a lot of discussion and information sharing – about the course, about warming up in cooler conditions, about race strategy and about motivation.

At the end of the race, I was very impressed to see the results being immediately entered into a computer by the race organizers. By the time I had changed and made my way to find out about results, the complete roster of participants and times were already posted on a wall. Little did I know that these same results were also being posted to the CoolRunning.com website. Offline goes online!

This morning I checked out the results of the race and was surprised to discover how robust the online community around running actually was. Within hours, the results from hundreds of events and thousands of participants across the country were posted to CoolRunnings.com. As I browsed the online community I was able to find a wealth of information on upcoming events, tips on running, nutrition, schedules and injury recovery. So I signed up for Active.com where I was able to complete a comprehensive online profile that also allowed me to register associate the results of my recent run.

Suffice to say that within 36 hours I have become part of a community that transcends the offline and online paradigms. It occurred to me that a key characteristic of communities is the this trait. Attempting to create online only communities is in fact foolhardy. The most successfully online communities are successful because they are inextricably part of our offline world. Think about Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn etc. Without direct correlation and information being generated from the offline world, these communities will become stagnant… or even worse – will die.

So as we think about how to take advantage of social media and online communities, we must attempt to thing of them in light of how users interact with their offline communities. The ability to port and enhance offline communities into the online rhelm is what creates vibrant interaction, discussion and value to those who use participate in these communities. It is critical for us to divorce ourselves from the technologies and techniques that focus primarily on the online because without our offline daily lives, there will be nothing to take online.

Cool Runnings!!