Once you've built the online community or social media application of your dreams, how do you actually get people to visit, use and contribute to it? The question of how to bring a community to life is at the center of our work, and recently we've been able to share more of our approach in a variety of forums: at NetSquared, in bed at Drupal Camp, and as of this week, in the services section of our own web site.

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You've spent tens of thousands of dollars creating an online community site. Your organization has a big vision for how this new community can engage your customers, members or the public. Your developers, communications team and fundraisers are all bleary-eyed from the effort and dollars it's taken to get you to launch day. Now what?

That's the question we tried to answer during last week's session at NetSquared. The conference itself was a great reminder of the number one law of community-building: you can set the stage, but the community will define itself. And when we helped CompuMentor launch the NetSquared online community three years ago, we could never have envisioned the depth and breadth of expertise and enthusiasm that the community now encompasses.

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Someone at City Hall is listening to at least one corner of the blogging world.

Over at ChangeEverything.ca, the online community we built with Vancity, user Scott Robarts recently asked why the city is cutting down the trees on Granville Street:

These trees have to be at least 30 - 50 years old and they have done a wonderful job greening the city, but now they are being chopped down and chopped up. Yes I know it is for the RAV line, blah blah. And I support the RAV line because I support improvements to public transport. But nonetheless I still think it is sad.

I've seen hundreds of blogs where you could ask this question and get nothing back but speculation from fellow members of the community. But not this time: someone from the City of Vancouver registered on the site and replied.

The trees on Granville Mall will be replaced with new trees when the road is restored after Canada Line Construction in conjunction with the Granville Mall Redesign project.
  The Park Board is responsible for street trees in Vancouver. There are over 130,000 street trees in Vancouver; about 1100 of these trees are replaced each year for various reasons, but an additional 3500 new trees are also planted each year.

It's great to see that someone at City Hall gets it. And at least one Parks Board commissioner, COPE's Spencer Herbert, is also engaged in online conversation. Here's hoping we'll see a lot more of this, including on some of the many other Vancouver-focused blogs: Urban Vancouver, Beyond Robson, Metroblogging Vancouver, Kitsilano.ca and more.