I don't usually read Seth Godin's Blog. I've read his books, and I agree with him generally, but a steady diet of Seth becomes a little Messianic for my liking. But I listen to him when he bubbles up through the other blogs I like.

Today, Bokardo quotes him, saying:

"What if you want to hire someone to build an online community? Somebody to create and maintain a virtual world in which all the players in an industry feel like they need to be part of it? Like being the head of a big trade association, but without the bureaucracy and tedium…

"It would help if that person understood technology, at least well enough to know what it could do. They would need to be able to write. But they also have to be able to seduce stragglers into joining the group in the first place, so they have to be able to understand a marketplace, do outbound selling and non-electronic communications. They have to be able to balance huge amounts of inbound correspondence without making people feel left out, and they have to be able to walk the fine line between rejecting trolls and alienating the good guys.

"Since there’s no rule book, it would help to be willing to try new things, to be self-starting and obsessed with measurement as well.

"If you were great at this, I’d imagine you’d never ever have trouble finding good work.

Nick says: I really like the head-on take on associations and how he mentions "beauocracy and tedium." People notice this stuff, and it will only grow in the future.