Communities live or die from the willingness of their members to actively take part. The more people actively take part, the more every single community member participates. This of course includes the passive as also the active members.

If a member becomes an active part of a community or stays passive in the background, silently listening to what’s going on, depends on his personal liking. There shouldn’t be any pressure to “promote oneself” if it is not wanted.

I for myself can say, that I gained a lot from communities (in a professional perspective). My first modem more than 20 years ago brought me into BBSs to meet people being able answering my questions and to my very surprise they were willing to do so. Over the time the (electronic) world evolved and I spent more time on CompuServe then in local BBSs. Suddenly I was able to meet people, talk to people, ask questions to people I had books in my bookshelf from. What an overwhelming experience"! And still these people, although living on the other side of the world and speaking a language other than my mother tongue where willing to communicate with me, answering my silly newbie questions.

I liked that. Not only because I was able to gain knowledge that wasn’t available to me anywhere else. The idea of openly sharing the own knowledge without asking for something in return immediately fell on fertile ground. Lots of UseNet newsgroups and Z-Netz groups became sort of a second home for me.

Over the time I started teaching as well and today I am happy to have a job still providing all these things to me. Of course the time between the idea of creating this community site (Swyx Forum) and the decision to actually do so was hardly measureable.

It is nice to see that there are a number of other people around here having obviously the same idea of communities as I have. I am not going to list names as I definitely do not want to miss someone! But I am sure everyone knows who I am talking about ;-)

Why am I writing about my “community” opinion ?

Well, maybe I am able to give someone that little push that’s still missing to write/answer/publish publicly. It’s not easy for everyone doing so. I still remember my first postings in the CompuServe’s BPASCAL board. I hardly knew about object orientated programming and Borland’s Turbo Vision and my English was practically not existing, but I was eager to learn it. The only chance was ignoring all the nagging voices in me, hoping my ignorance (in terms of language and topic) would be excused, using a towel to dry my sweating hands and just start writing. I am not sure if I would like to read my postings from back then today… ;-)

And after lot’s of help I received online I started helping and sharing myself. You currently have one of outcomes of 20 years of doing so opened in your web browser ;-)

I haven’t still reached the final point of this posting…

If you have something you would like to share with others (call routings, configuration tips, what ever …) don’t hesitate to do so ! Every little bite is worth of being shared, believe me.

No one will be laughed at because of “silly” questions, ideas, postings (including the used language!).

You don’t know where to put the thing you would like to share to ? No problem, you can always use any of the “General” forums. If it doesn’t match someone else will move it to the correct location.

You want to share something that doesn’t fit into any of the forums (like a small tool, an application, a call routing script, or what ever) take a look into the download section.

If you are still uncertain just get directly in touch with me !

After having spoken so much about communities and sharing there is one more thing I want to point your interest to. It is well beyond this community and definitely a strict professional topic, but nevertheless, it covers some of the above mentioned ideas.

Swyx is currently running “Swyx unlimited” campaign (in Germany only) where you are able to provide small videos telling about everyday’s life with SwyxWare. Swyx provides Amazon vouchers for the first 50 sent in videos. Just have a look on it ;-)