Money, time and caring.<p>Money for bringing people together, giving them swag and making them feel part of a community.<p>Time for people to gel and start to care about each other.<p>Caring because if you, the community organizer (presumably) don't care, people won't care, and the community won't form.<p>Other things that help include an overarching mission and a way for community members to get to know each other.<p>Suggest you listen to <a href="https://www.communitypulse.io/" rel="nofollow">https://www.communitypulse.io/</a> podcasts and read <a href="https://rosie.land/" rel="nofollow">https://rosie.land/</a> articles for more.
I’ve participated in many communities this year. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the best community builders, it’s that you can’t do it fast.<p>You need to design, nurture and grow communities patiently.<p>Check out Rosie Sherry’s work.
Community around software, or community as in a discussion platform?<p>For software: find users who benefit by its use and champion them. Forums, mailing lists, and recognition help in that.<p>Find an existing community, either with a communications challenge or which might want to benefit by use of a commnications platform.<p>Usenet leveraged off universities.<p>BBS leveraged off hobbyists.<p>Early online services (notably AOL) leveraged off military families on oversees deployments.<p>Slashdot leveraged off of the open source / Linux movement which was underserved by existing publishing platforms.<p>Facebook leveraged off of universities again, starting with the most selective (Harvard, Ivys, selective-admission, ...).<p>HN leverages off the YC community.<p>Story I recently ran across of a dating app was that it was used in conjunction with a few Hollywood events as a cohort-seeding formation.