What kind of community are you trying to build?

A lot of data sharing is about overcoming not just technological bottlenecks, but also sociological hurdles (how to get people to work together towards a common goal). A key aspects of a lot of data sharing projects/initiatives is the creation of a suitable community to tackle or adopt a given solution.

Here is an interesting post that points out that we not only need to know what kind of community we need and are trying to build, but helps create a framework for thinking about community structure.

Crowd, Hub & Spoke, or Network? What kind of community do you have?

Community Structure is of course an increasingly well-defined concept in the analysis of a wide range of networks - from things to people.