Ben Brown on how running a community is like throwing a giant, never-ending party

Posted by benbrown 2 years ago

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An interview I did with OpenSource.com is now online!  Read it here.

In it, I discuss how running an online community is like throwing a giant, never-ending party, how open source techniques can help change journalism, and why people should use PeoplePods:

Unlike a lot of similar tools (like BuddyPress and Drupal), PeoplePods has no predefined shape or format - it is not a blog, it is not a social network in a box, it is not a content management system. TRUE, it can be used for these things, but instead of trying to build the best generic product I could, I decided to built the best generic COMPONENTS and SYSTEMS I could, and let developers weave them together whatever way is appropriate for their project. I hate to hear about software where a developer's job is reduced to removing and hiding functionality through a series of CSS hacks and config options. With PeoplePods, you build UP from a simple base, not DOWN from an overly complex generic solution. This way, you are not limited by some other developer's dream of how things should work, and you are not forced to squeeze your idea into the confines of a blog or some other pre-existing design metaphor. Thus, MediaBugs looks and acts totally different from NeighborGoods, which looks and acts totally different from Helsinki Design Lab - but they're all using the same basic, solid, tested infrastructure.