One of the main dilemmas for team leaders and members is the thorny issue of responsibility. We often fixate on the problem of leaders and members not taking enough responsibility but according to Dr Scott Peck they can also do damage if they try to take too much!

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Howard Rheingold talks on www.TED.com about the coming world of collaboration, participatory media and collective action and how Wikipedia is really an outgrowth of our natural human instinct to work as a group.

Growing a successful virtual community is like tending a delicate rose in your garden. Both the rose and the community need to be carefully nurtured and both are under constant threats to their continued health and existence. Despite all our hopes and intentions for them, they are both living systems and will never thrive and develop on demand – no matter how hard we push!

Anyone serious about developing community, virtual or otherwise, should have a look at the excellent free resources at the Foundation for Community Encouragement. FCE (currently inactive) was originally established by Dr Scott Peck to help groups of all types work through four universal stages of community forming: 1:PseudoCommunity, 2:Chaos, 3:Emptiness and 4:True Community as described in his classic book The Different Drum. However Peck's process is not for the faint-hearted or those looking for a quick fix. For some guidance on the practicalities of "virtual" community building check here.