We were young professionals fresh out of college, having made that momentous decision to stay on in the United States after our graduate educations in the various universities of this great country. As Indian graduate students of those days tended to do, the focus of our get-togethers was primarily on two items: food and conversation.
We had all graduated from the early cooking days of “yellow rice” and kidney beans/garbanzos into more sophisticated fare. Our tastes were also slowly turning from cheap beer (from the old BYOB days) to tequila shots and mixed cocktails and dare I say, Scotch. But the primary topic of conversation was the inexorable but slow progress of our immigration process.
The conversation would have been mystifying for anyone not initiated in the context: Pradeep finished labor, Sarabjit is going into labor, Shashidhar is stuck in labor. Taken out of context these comments would seem extremely in-appropriate for a group of manly twenty-something males who despite all their many qualities as documented in their labor certification applications were incapable of bringing children into this world.
We did not realize it then, but we had formed a de facto “community of interest”. Recent trends in architecture have given up on huge standardization efforts across the board, and are focusing on smaller groups or enterprises – we call them community of interest. And just as our little gang had our own vernacular, COIs tend to develop their own vocabularies. These vocabularies require “deep” context because the members appear to speak in “code”.
Later in life I was involved in other communities of interest with other groups – one example was the Kannada Koota formed among members with a common language “Kannada”. But as an inclusive community, we also broadened the definition of membership to “anyone with an interest in the language Kannada or the Indian state of Karnataka”. We had members who were Hindi speaking but had lived in Bangalore, Bengalis from Mysore, white Americans married to Kannadigas and a variety of other diverse people that added richness and color to the community.
People have many sides and motivations. As a result, they are members of many “Communities of Interest”. Each of these communities may or may not have overlap. Each of these communities may have developed a specialized language and vocabulary that is distinctively theirs. Each of these communities may be broadly defined or narrowly defined – they may be inclusionary or exclusionary.
With the recent interest in the architecture community on social networks and their potential for forming, growing and exploiting communities of interest, the question is, “Does a community of interest form naturally? Or is it something that can be “planted”, watered and grown?”
My own hunch is that it is a little bit of both. The seeds of communities of interest must be planted by motivated individuals who see that common interest and make it obvious to the membership. But the growth and sustained development of that community is more organic and less controllable as events, people and passions rise and fall. Inclusive communities tend to be richer and more diverse and bring more tolerance and sensitivity. Exclusionary communities tend to foster elitism, arrogance and insularity.
In my earlier blog I had mentioned “tribes” as a fact of life. Sophisticated and evolved tribes become these “Communities of Interest” ultimately. Under the veneer of civilization, still lurk those tribal tendencies. Enterprise Architects need to understand the various communities of interest in their domain and factor their dynamics into any attempt at enterprise transformation.
We had all graduated from the early cooking days of “yellow rice” and kidney beans/garbanzos into more sophisticated fare. Our tastes were also slowly turning from cheap beer (from the old BYOB days) to tequila shots and mixed cocktails and dare I say, Scotch. But the primary topic of conversation was the inexorable but slow progress of our immigration process.
The conversation would have been mystifying for anyone not initiated in the context: Pradeep finished labor, Sarabjit is going into labor, Shashidhar is stuck in labor. Taken out of context these comments would seem extremely in-appropriate for a group of manly twenty-something males who despite all their many qualities as documented in their labor certification applications were incapable of bringing children into this world.
We did not realize it then, but we had formed a de facto “community of interest”. Recent trends in architecture have given up on huge standardization efforts across the board, and are focusing on smaller groups or enterprises – we call them community of interest. And just as our little gang had our own vernacular, COIs tend to develop their own vocabularies. These vocabularies require “deep” context because the members appear to speak in “code”.
Later in life I was involved in other communities of interest with other groups – one example was the Kannada Koota formed among members with a common language “Kannada”. But as an inclusive community, we also broadened the definition of membership to “anyone with an interest in the language Kannada or the Indian state of Karnataka”. We had members who were Hindi speaking but had lived in Bangalore, Bengalis from Mysore, white Americans married to Kannadigas and a variety of other diverse people that added richness and color to the community.
People have many sides and motivations. As a result, they are members of many “Communities of Interest”. Each of these communities may or may not have overlap. Each of these communities may have developed a specialized language and vocabulary that is distinctively theirs. Each of these communities may be broadly defined or narrowly defined – they may be inclusionary or exclusionary.
With the recent interest in the architecture community on social networks and their potential for forming, growing and exploiting communities of interest, the question is, “Does a community of interest form naturally? Or is it something that can be “planted”, watered and grown?”
My own hunch is that it is a little bit of both. The seeds of communities of interest must be planted by motivated individuals who see that common interest and make it obvious to the membership. But the growth and sustained development of that community is more organic and less controllable as events, people and passions rise and fall. Inclusive communities tend to be richer and more diverse and bring more tolerance and sensitivity. Exclusionary communities tend to foster elitism, arrogance and insularity.
In my earlier blog I had mentioned “tribes” as a fact of life. Sophisticated and evolved tribes become these “Communities of Interest” ultimately. Under the veneer of civilization, still lurk those tribal tendencies. Enterprise Architects need to understand the various communities of interest in their domain and factor their dynamics into any attempt at enterprise transformation.
No comments:
Post a Comment