Something I've always found interesting is the way in which online communities take on a life of their own. There are many resources out there that explore how to run and manage online communities, but there is something that I rarely see discussed, and that is the way in which the community as a whole operates.

From my experience, one key to a successful online community is the sort of magic that happens between community members that keeps it vibrant and growing. You can't force that kind of magic, and you can't clone it. It just happens. So when you take a community that has some magic going, and you mess with the formula, chances are you'll get a result similar to the "new" Coke (or the new Facebook layout - sorry guys, xox). In other words, your results may be less than ideal. Although there are other variables that can affect the magic, in this post, I'll talk about the community's chosen mode of communication.

We're all familiar with the various ways an online community can communicate and collaborate with each other:

• Forums
• Mailing lists
• Wikis
• IRC
• Blogs
• Facebook/Twitter/Identica/ad nauseum

What I find interesting is the way a community will latch on to a certain mode of communication, and not let go. People get used to interacting with other members of the group in a certain way, and will not change even if another mode is introduced into the group. They won't even change if they agree with and prefer the change. I've seen this happen time and time again, and each time it makes me more curious about the "why."

A few examples:

• PHPBuilder Forums. I became a member of the PHPBuilder forums in 2002 and quickly found myself a part of a tightly knit and comical group of fellow PHPers. Before too long, I was a moderator (and still am) and visited the forums once or twice per day. As the years have passed, the core group of folks I interacted with has changed somewhat, but the primary mode of communication is still the forums. We made several attempts at getting a group together on IRC, but failed each time we tried. The chat channel was inactive and unimpressive and eventually withered away into nothingness. Despite the lure of real time communication, it just didn't work with this community.
• PHP Community. This is a community that exists mainly through IRC (#phpc on freenode). Various PHPC leaders have tried extending the community through online sites (such as wikis, articles, Ning, etc.) but it consistently comes back to being an IRC-only entity. The real time and informal interaction between PHPers who just want to take a break or enlist their peers for advice or troubleshooting is what keeps the community alive. The community does not respond to forums. Or wikis. Or other social media websites (with the exception of maybe some complementary Twitter interaction). IRC will always be the glue that holds this community together.
• OINK-PUG. The Ohio, Indiana, Northern Kentucky PHP Users Group has primarily done all its interaction via a mailing list. We have tried several other ways of communication (again, through Ning, phpBB forums, IRC and recently via a Drupal instance on a donated host.) With the exception of providing monthly meeting information to new members, all communication still defaults back to the mailing list. The other modes fall short and become stagnant because nobody uses them.
• PHPWomen. The preferred mode of communication for this group has emerged as the collection of forums. An IRC channel does exist, but is not nearly as active as the forums, and hasn't been nearly as successful as we expected. We've also tried implementing a mailing list to no real avail. Once again, it all comes back to the forums, because that's what the members choose to use.

One other example I want to mention is in regard to a group of folks that were interested in New Media, primarily where it concerns journalism. As a writer and geek, this group was very interesting to me, as was the fact that a good friend of mine started it up. It began primarily as a mailing list for discussions on how Web 2.0 would affect newspapers and traditional means of reporting the news. The mailing list was very active, and people began to suggest we take it somewhere more permanent and better organized. We all voted to switch the site over to Ning because of all the cool other features it offered. So the admin did as we suggested and moved it over. And then all activity on the site promptly fell away. The group responded much quicker and was much more inclined to participate when we were using a mailing list, despite what we thought we wanted.

What makes a community tick? Why do some communities who are comprised of virtually the same people choose different modes of communication? Why are some communities so compelling that we give up our individually preferred mode of communication in favor of the one chosen by the group?

I'm no psychologist, but I can offer up a few words of advice for those struggling to grow their community or find that magic. Lay all your cards out on the table and see which ones gather momentum. Offer up multiple outlets and ways of communication within the group. Set up forums *and* a mailing list *and* an IRC channel *and* anything else you think would be of interest to the members. Yes, it will be overkill at the beginning, but until you know in which direction the community is going to gravitate, you have to keep your options open and not force your community into a box. If a mailing list is working, then keep it. If forums are better for your group, then keep them. Let the group grow naturally and remember the complexity of the group dynamics is what dictates how the group will gel, not the leader.

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, and to help bring awareness to women in tech, I signed this petition saying I'd blog about "a woman in technology whom I admire." If you don't know who Ada Lovelace is, or why it even matters, the purpose of this day is to bring women to the forefront to act as positive role models for other women and young girls. Still not convinced this matters? Check out this great blog post by Suw Charman-Anderson. She explains it much more eloquently than I can.

So anyway, I pledged that I would write about a woman that I admire. The woman I've chosen to write about goes by the nick "uberChick". She maintains a blog at http://uberchicgeekchick.com/ and in her own words, "I'm a female open source artist, programmer, & designer living with Generalized Dystonia. I'm emotional, over share, & truly caring." uberChick's name is Kaity and she's quite simply, one of the most amazing and inspirational people I've ever had the pleasure of knowing.

uberChick regularly posts informative and thought-provoking podcasts on programming and the art of and expressiveness in the industry (available on her site and through Hacker Public Radio). She's a huge advocate of FOSS, has created her own GTK/GNOME Twitter client called Greet-Tweet-Know, and is also programming her own first person game simulator, among other things. Like many of us, uberChick has many interests and is juggling many projects at once. In fact, she tweeted a while ago: "My projects: 4 web apps, 2 GTK apps, 1 3-D Terminal, 1 graphic novel, 2 novellas, 3 drawings, & #1: my game!" From her website, this is what she says about herself:

I'm really an uberChick & have my nerd woman brain wrinkles into a lot of everything. Coding/Hacking/Programming/Software Engineering/Etc. My favorite languages include C, PHP, Perl, XML, XLS Family of Languages, CSS, JavaScript, XHTML, RSS, Mono, LUA, &many others. My broad range of interests &talents include graphic, 3D, game, &web design; animation, video, & audio production; writing blogs, essays, & white papers; databases like MySQL, SQLite3, XML/XQuery, & many many many other forms of art.

She is very active on Twitter and often times I find myself Googling just to keep up with what the heck she's talking about :).

uberChick is also an active member of PHPWomen, DevChix, LinuxChix, and always, ALWAYS, has a positive message to share with those around her. Usually those messages are sent via Twitter, but she also uses IRC to spread her messages of hope, encouragement and inspiration.

She is a very intelligent, creative, beautiful person that never ceases to amaze me.

Now, if that weren't enough, as I mentioned earlier, uberChick lives with a very debilitating and excruciatingly painful disease called Generalized Dystonia. If you're not familiar with this devastating disease, Wikipedia states that "the dystonias are movement disorders in which sustained muscle contractions cause twisting and repetitive movements or abnormal postures." She has the unfortunate case of "Generalized" Dystonia which means that her entire body is affected by these severe muscle contractions, not just an arm or a leg. Dystonia is a chronic disease for which there is no cure.

So basically, Kaity spends every waking moment fighting and struggling to manage her pain. She lives on her own, is in a wheelchair and although she has a little help via a home caregiver from time to time, she is completely independent. Her muscles often betray her, twisting her and turning her body into extremely painful contortions, while her mind remains unscathed. She told me a story once about how even her eyelids spasm and force her eyelids shut for long periods of time. Imagine living day-to-day, not knowing each minute if your body will turn you into a ball of agony, and not being able to do much about it if (read: when) it does. Imagine having wonderful ideas for projects and code and blog posts and podcasts... and not being able to focus or implement them because you're in so much pain. And even when the pain subsides, Imagine trying to control unruly and uncooperative fingers to type out what is in your brain. Kaity lives many days in a prison of suffering and agony.

Kaity has also had to deal with prejudice and even harmful threats from those around her. She has struggled with the nightmare that is the American healthcare system, unreliable caregivers, legal proceedings, and faulty medical equipment, just to name a few of the external obstacles that face her.

It would be easy for her to simply give up. Or, she could be bitter, angry, and frustrated. She could try and elicit pity from people. All of these would be perfectly reasonable responses to her lot in life. But Kaity has chosen to do none of the above. She fights. Every day. She inspires, and motivates, and encourages. Every day.

Kaity has taken control of her own care by hiring her own caregivers as employees. She has also developed an amazing talent as a result of all the ideas floating around in her head, and nowhere for them to go. Kaity can write complete applications in her head. She can visualize the code and store it in her brain, ready for the moment when her body decides to cooperate. And when it does, she writes out as much as she possibly can. 9 times out of 10 her code works out of the box. I should be so lucky! :)

The Dystonia Medical Research Foundation says that "dystonia affects men, women, and children of all ages and backgrounds. Estimates suggest that no less than 300,000 people in North America are affected. Dystonia causes varying degrees of disability and pain, from mild to severe. There is presently no cure, but multiple treatment options exist and scientists around the world are actively pursuing research toward new therapies." If you would like to support the Dystonia cause, you can go to the Dystonia Medical Research website to learn how you can help.

Kaity, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you for your strength and inspiration. I salute *you* today and all those who follow in your footsteps.

So I was tagged (thank you Rob Allen) with this Seven Things chain letter thing that's been going around, and since I certainly don't want to bestow bad luck on any of my family or myself, I'll relent and participate.

Seven random, weird things about me:

- I have moshed in the mosh pit at a Beastie Boys concert.
- I played intramural Broomball in college.
- I graduated from college when I was 20, only because I have a competitive streak with my brother. When he graduated in 3 1/2 years, I had to do it in 3.
- I used to own a motorcycle, but I never had my operator's license. I was never coordinated enough to be able to competently drive the thing.
- I've had six poems published in various poetry magazines, but I've since moved on to writing short stories and novels.
- I earned my Pitfall iron-on patch by sending in a photo of the completed screen from our console TV.
- My first program was written in BASIC on an Atari 800 and it would predict the boy I was going to marry by randomly picking from a user-supplied list. What can I say, I was 12.

So now I'm tagging these fine specimens:
- Sara Golemon for being an awesome PHP Woman
- Ben Ramsey just because
- Johanna Cherry for being an American Byotch in London
- Paul Reinheimer because he looks fabulous in a Kiss outfit
- Terry Chay because I know his random shit will be more random than most.
- Chris Shiflett because now that he's done working on the PHP Advent Calendar he must be bored
- Maggie Nelson because her jokes are awesomely bad

These are the rules apparently:

- Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
- Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some wierd.
- Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
- Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

I stopped writing conference wrap-ups a while ago, mostly because conferences are pretty much all the same. You go, listen to some smart people talk about PHP, eat-drink-be-merry with friends and fellow PHP geeks, then you go home.

However, imagine sticking roughly 25 geeks together in a house in the mountains for 4 days and see what comes of it. Cooking together, hacking together, talking PHP together, playing some video games together and of course drinking together. I think everyone would agree that it's worth the $15 plus travel and the cost of the cabin.

We came from 9 different states and 2 different countries (yay Paul!) and we all had different backgrounds and working environments. We all had differing opinions on quite a lot of things from politics to IDE usage to just about everything else. There were some great discussions, some great meals, and some *awesome* impromptu presentations. The PHP Trivia was a hoot also, although I realized much to my chagrin the answers I knew revolved around spelling people's names or drunken escapades by PHPers at past conferences. Oh well. Despite crappy Internet connectivity, a toxic hot tub, a visit to the emergency room (poor Cal) and a visit from the Pigeon Forge Fire Department, the whole conference went off without a hitch.

What I found most interesting is the group bonding that occurred (note, I said bondING). Everybody pitched in to cook, and clean, and present, and discuss, and participate. I feel like we all met some new friends and had a lot of fun with the old ones. But it wasn't just about having fun, it was about the exchange of information which so readily happens when you're stuck with people for 4 days straight.

Don't get me wrong, large, more formal conferences obviously have their place, and I really look forward to those too, but for a different reason. The nature of a large conference definitely allows for broader networking, more presentations, and sometimes a bit of formality is a good thing. A small uncon like this basically takes all the great things about a conference and compiles it into one nice neat little package. Kind of like the top of the muffin. Tastes awesome, but might not entirely fill you up like a whole muffin would.

So, anyway after all is said and done, I think I can consider this a success and something I'll definitely be up for helping to plan again. A very special thanks to:

• Whitney Turland for cooking authentic Louisiana gumbo for the entire crew (and even a special veggie batch just for yours truly!)
• Sara Golemon and Maggie Nelson for cooking breakfast for the crew
• Keith Casey for completely planning the uncon schedule
• Paul Reinheimer for keeping us entertained the entire time
• Cal Evans for enduring 13 stitches despite being one of the few sober ones at the time
• all those that took the time to present (they were great, guys.. seriously)
• Joe LeBlanc for disarming the fire alarm multiple times
• and of course our sponsors, who really did help us make the event a success (php|architect, NuSphere, Cool Blue Interactive, and ServerGrove Networks. Many, many thanks to you.)

We've also begun talking about next year's PHP Appalachia, so if you think it sounds like fun, be sure to keep your eyes and ears open. :)

PHP Appalachia is now only 3 weeks away! We have 30 people currently signed up, but there is still room for more. There may be room in the Main Cabin (room sharing availability is on our wiki) or else there are plenty of campsites and hotels in the general area.

Remember this is an unconference, which is being scheduled by the fabulous Keith Casey (who did an outstanding job as ZendCon's recent unconference Chair) and you can see the tentative schedule also available at our wiki. As you can see there will be plenty of time to do other things, such as visit Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, and the surrounding areas.

We've also started a list of attendees at the wiki, and although not everyone is listed, I'm sure you'll see some familiar names on there.

So come drink, be merry, and maybe kick around some PHP with us in the mountains!