PENNED FROM THE DESK OF MAYOR WINFIELD - June 12, 2006

Hail my friends,

Establishing a community can be a very satisfying endeavor.  Or it can be very frustrating.  Communities can be guilds, establishments, towns, cities, groups of guilds, and more.

What I've found over the years are some key ingredients to success.  Each of these should be developed together since the effects of one ingredient affect the others.  Increase a little of one ingredient, then increase more of another.  Then return to a previous ingredient and add a little more and so on.

It is a bit like mixing a potion.  For a small potion, you still need all the ingredients.  For a large potion, you just need more of the same ingredients.

The primary ingredients to get things started are:

• Location - a place to call home, for people to gather, some buildings in the same area.
• Events - offer consistent and quality events.  Include regular meetings to meet and greet people.
• News, News, and more News - use all available news services to your advantage. Announce events, report results, explain details about your community.

The secondary ingredients are essential for a long-term established community:

• People - dedicated and committed people. Quality is better than quantity. People get interested because you have worked on the primary ingredients above.
• Organization - a government or leadership structure. It can be large or small, but someone needs to be in charge and avoid single-point failures for decisions and projects. Have redundancy with deputies in your structure.  Delegate projects to people and give them opportunities to also be creative.
• Skypage and Skyboard (web page, messageboard) - a place in the ether to make your community permanent, offer history and news, and the means for people to communicate.  Keep the skypage fresh with news and a list of people involved. Explain your community well for people to learn and becoming interested.

Dragonspeed,

Winfield, Mayor of PaxLair