This is a story about passion

Most orgs will tell you they’d love to have a passionate, engaged community using their products. And most will tell you a passionate, engaged workforce sounds way better than the alternative. So far, there’s not much to dispute.

But as two folks who spent decades building free, open source software, um, there’s a difference between saying you want that and actually wanting that.

Because…passionate and engaged people are a pain in the ass to deal with. The heat that they bring to your work cuts both ways. Your biggest advocates and your biggest detractors are often the same people. This is true for community management and for regular old management management.

These folks have high expectations. They will check you, loudly (and often publicly), if you veer off course. That’s not to say you can never screw up, but if you invite a group of people to follow along closely, you can’t be mad when they notice. And then want to talk about it. Courting near-obsessive engagement means courting a level of scrutiny that most corporations find uncomfortable.