Last week someone asked me a great question.

What’s the difference between a network and community?

It came from a conversation about developing supports for cohorts of people in development programmes. The words were used interchangeably and there is a distinct difference between them.

A network will be distributed, have a range of channels where people connect and communicate and will have loose agreements in co-operation and co-ordination to bring results together.

A community is more likely to be centred around a theme, topic or event and less distributed – although mature communities will maintain global links. A community will tend to have fewer primary channels but these will be used more for shared objectives, e.g. collaboration. A community will tend to require elements of management to maintain cadence, pace and engagement.

If you’re building learning support, be absolutely clear whether you want – or need – a community or a network, and make sure your participants are clear about the differences and what they want too.