Following on from last post about trying to work some of the benefits of internet CoPs into intranet CoPs, there's some interesting reading over at Shawn Callahan's Anecdote blog. Shawn did some work on this while at IBM (as far as I can gather) and had some interesting things to say about community formation.

the activity must be easy compared to the output created

the output must be appreciated

the appreciation should lead to an outcome that satisfies a need

These hurdles provide us three perspectives for developing simple rules for community formation.