Numbers.

I’ve been thinking a LOT about numbers lately. We live and die by some numbers, literally. Sometimes we’re judged by how much we’re worth, sometimes we judge ourselves by how much we’re worth. A lot of our work can be summed up in numbers. It’s really easy to feel demoralized when numbers don’t meet expectations. It’s even easier to lose perspective when the numbers get big.

Our communities have numbers as well, and we seem to make a lot of them. Our Twitter follower counts. The number of likes on that post the other day. The average viewer count on that stream. Our Snapchat streak. Sometimes we call these numbers “engagement” even, and absolutely feel proud when they exceed expectations. Hitting 1000 Twitter followers felt awesome. Streaming for 100 people feels amazing. I 100% get it.

Is this what success looks like?

That being said, I’ve been thinking about numbers because they only tell part of the story.

A good educator friend and I were once standing at the back of a packed conference keynote hall. He leaned over to me and said “look at all these people - this is a huge crowd, and it’s sad” After I shook myself out of wishing I was the one standing on the stage and not at the back of the room, I bit, asking why he thought it was sad. He said “you and I both know, without doubt, that many if not most of these people here today will not go back to their classrooms and apply what they’ve learned. Yeah they’ll be excited for a few weeks, and may even take a crack at something new, but for many nothing will stick” I’ve thought about that exchange often over the last few years, especially when I saw a tweet from the conference a few days later touting the attendance numbers and claiming massive victories in the world of education. I had to wonder if my friend was right. Did a high attendance number = victory? Did it equal “engagement”? Did it make an impact?

I’m not so sure.

Community is built, and learning is accomplished when participants value each other and the opportunity to learn. It’s also built when participants not only want to learn for themselves but care for each other’s learning as well. Learning in communities is a relationship and the moments you’ll remember twenty years from now of a conference you attended are not likely sitting in a session or keynote. The moment you will remember is that one-on-one conversation you had with someone going through the same struggle you are going through. It’s the night out getting to know people in person that you previously only knew from social media. You’re going to remember the relationship building, and it is that relationship building that will lead to mutual care and respect. That mutual care and respect will then lead to real opportunities for growth and development.

It is critical that we never lose sight of the fact that community = relationships. Not clout, not likes, not retweets. None of these are a measure of the strength of your community. It is the relationship that matters. In my world I would say, there is no “community of practice” without “community” and there’s no community without relationships.