[benjaminjosephw]

I think we're still in the experimental phase of lots of novel types of social information exchange.

Building in public is very much an experimental form of communication. It's a new way to think and operate and it's not something with a strong set of conventions and norms. That means that you have to think much more about how you're communicating, not just what you want to say.

Building in community means sharing information with a specific set of people who have a shared perspective. Conventions and norms do exist and you have a good sense of how people will interpret and understand your words. This is the kind of context where it is easier to be more authentic and less performative.

I think that a good chunk of people who build in public whould say that they are actually building in community. They get the sense of a shared perspective and the community has established some its own conventions and norms. I don't think there's always a clear seperation between these two concepts.

As an interesting example of how these two concepts overlap is in the Zig community[0]. The community is decentralized - does that mean they are building in community AND in public?

[0] https://github.com/ziglang/zig/wiki/Community

[rosiesherry]

There are definitely nuances and unclear boundaries of where the boundaries between 'public' and 'community' are.

I think the more active building in public people feel it is a community, but it probably takes them a while to get there. Some people need extra support to get to that public stage, or need a more private space to talk about things they feel they can't do in public.

Part of building in community is to create a supportive environment to help them build in public better. For example, I often say tell people 'in community' that something they've just said would be a great tweet. They tweet it and then I share or jump in the conversation there too.