A bit of a personal angle on a business-relevant post. This last week in Seattle marked the worst windstorm since the 1960's. The Pacific Northwest is filled with powerless homes and apartments, as well as downed trees, road closures, food & gas shortages and the other, usual accoutrements of a natural disaster. As the Seattle Times noted, there was a silver-lining to the frustrating hardship:

Throughout the last several days, neighbors have offered others their homes, their muscle, their consolation. Thursday, as rain poured, some people carried others across downtown Seattle intersections that had turned into rushing rivers 18 inches deep.

As evening gusts began toppling trees and power lines, people offered shelter to others they barely knew. And in the days that have followed, many found unexpected community at local businesses — some with power, some not — or in helping others clean up damage left behind by the storm.

The article mentions some evidence of grinchiness, too, but since Mystery Guest and I re-gained power in just 24 hours, we've been hosting friends for showers, football, brunch, cell-phone charging, email-checking and even sleepovers. Normally, we might get together with friends one or two nights a week, but since Thursday night's storm, we've had friends (and family) over almost non-stop, from morning to late night. I admit - it's been one of my favorite weekends, ever.

So what is it about adversity that breeds community? What are the elements that fall into place to enable people to break out of their routines and become bigger contributors - and, how does that translate into the online world of social communities?

Here's my take on the subject:

• Start with a Passionate Audience
  With the storm, we've got folks who are deperate for goods and service - good, shelter, warmth, gasoline, electricity, web access, etc. Discovering web communities with that level of desperation isn't likely, but look at how communities like MySpace (in its early days) & Last.fm capitalized on passionate musicians and music lovers. BuddyTV builds on folks who love television and Digg has channeled the passion of tech-geeks. If you're going to start a web community, you need to do likewise and find an area of interest that incites desperation and/or passion.
• Offer Information/Services that are Currently Underserved
  When people are without power, it's easy for those of us who have it to provide that assistance. In a web community, a service that can't be delivered (like Farecast's flight predictions or Flickr's photo-sharing) make for compelling solutions to underserved people. Remarkably, great ideas like these can occur, even in seemigly saturated fields like travel and photgraphy.
• Make it Easy to Share
  In our case, all we had to do was cook a little extra food and make sure to regulate the hot water, but online you need to make the experience as user-friendly as possible. Sometimes it's that extra piece of functionality or sizzle that makes an interface or feature irresistable. I always think of Writely's brilliant acceptance of the "Ctrl+S" as a way to save documents or StumbleUpon's 90-degree logo turn on click as good examples of the "sizzle" that re-inforce the experience. 
• Make it Easy to Receive
  In many communties, it can be tough to admit that you need help. Even if the help just means getting information or a simple technology solution, there is often an inherent reluctance to change patterns of behavior and accept the assistance. Giving your users a taste of your product without entirely overhauling their habits can, thus, be a great way to induct the reluctant.
• Reward Positive Behavior with Recognition
  Example after example of web community tracking has highlighted the danger of rewarding positive behavior with direct monetary payback. In almost every case, the community becomes less focused on the passion of contribution and more focused on the accumulation of wealth. However, when recognition is the reward, users strive to become leaders and give, heart and soul, to the cause. A few examples - Yahoo! Answers vs. Google Answers, Digg vs. Netscape, YouTube vs. MetaCafe.
• Create an Opportunity to Forge Relationships
  Over time, those communities that engender the most passion are ones where members can be-friend and cooperate with one another. Certainly, the search world is a great example of that, and many succesful forums on the web operate via that principle (as have Facebook, MySpace and the blogosphere). Kim Krause Berg complained about Time's naming of UGC as person of the year (which, I agree, was a total cop-out), but the Internet doesn't have to be an anonymous pit filled with despicable acts. When real interaction and identity become part of a community, accountability and quality tend to rise dramatically. Maybe the top Diggers should all be forced to eat Sunday brunch together...

What other suggestions do you have for improving (or launching) a web community?