(This is a draft of an effort to distill my thinking about community networks and differentiate them from other networks. I hope to expand, alter, fine-tune and otherwise make this better in coming weeks based on my own continued thinking and thoughts from others. So comments and feedback are welcome and encouraged. Please send them to me at: shsnow@commcure.com . Thank you.)

There are many kinds of electronic networks. A community network is one specific type of network. It has unique characteristics, has a unique place among networks, and plays a unique role in the life of a community.

I am going to argue that a community network must be “of”, “for” and “by” the community to be considered a community network.

In this instance, a community is a geographical place that is self-described. That is, a community can be a neighborhood, a town or even a multi-county region. It is theoretically possible that it could be a state or even a nation (one might even make an argument that the Internet is the world’s community network). But the focus here, while scalable, is on smaller, more local geographic areas.

A community, while a self-described geographical place, also is described by its inhabitants: the people comprise the community that contains them. In that sense, the people are their self-definition: the community is the people and the people comprise the community.

With that as a baseline definition, it follows that the primary characteristic of a community network is people; the electronic network is a response to people’s expressed or unexpressed desires or needs.

A community is made up of many different kinds of people with many different needs. But for a network to be a community network, it must be inclusive. If it is not inclusive, then it is not truly “of” the community but of some subset of the community. (It might well be an excellent example of another kind of network – a government network, an economic development network, an educational network, an online network – but a non-inclusive network cannot be a community network, by definition.)

The electronic network is capable of doing many things: providing information, training, support, discussions, e-mail, marketplaces, and so forth. It is less important (not unimportant, just less important) exactly what opportunities a community network provides than it is that these opportunities be available to the whole community.

So, not only must the network be “of” the community, but the applications of a community network must be “for” the community-inclusive.

For a community network to be truly “of” and “for” the community, the community – its people -- must have the ability to shape it in some way. That is, people jointly, inclusively, must be able to determine through some means (and this does not mean it must be a formal process) the kinds of opportunities it makes available to itself. Because a community is made up of so many diverse people with diverse ideas, desires and needs, it follows that a community network “of” and “for” the community also would reflect this eclectic mix.

In this way, through what opportunities are available and how they are shared, a community network also must be “by” the people.

So a community network is not defined so much by its applications, or what it does, but rather by who determines what it does, and whether that is a process open to the whole community or only a subset.

Subset networks are not less important or less useful than community networks; in their own ways, they can be, for their special-interest groups, highly productive and can mirror some of the attributes of a community network.

So rather than try to define a community network by what it does – something that seems impossible because it can do so many things in so many different ways, and enables so many other kinds of opportunities – it is more useful to define a community network by where it is, who it serves and how it serves. How the community – and different communities within the community – choose to use the functions and opportunities of a community network is something the community determines.

Here is an example: If a community network exists in a neighborhood, then all of the parts of the neighborhood must be able to take part in the network’s opportunities for it to be considered a community network. A network that excluded businesses, for example, would not be a community network. Nor would one be that excluded religious institutions. By the same token, if a network is established to attract jobs to a community that uses high-speed wireless connectivity, electronic business parks and interactive streaming video interviewing for jobs would not constitute a community network, no matter how much connectivity it had or how many jobs it brought. It would be an X-network – city network, county network, economic development network, a technology network.

These distinctions might seem narrow because often some of the functions of one of these other networks might sound like community network functions – and, indeed, might be! But if a school district, for example, runs a server and gives everyone in the immediate area access to that server for e-mail but does NOT provide equal access to the other functions it offers (e.g., if the kind of information shared is determined by the school district), then it is not a community network.

This is because for it to be a community network, the functions – opportunities, whatever you choose to call them – that are available to some must be available to all.

A community of business people might consider itself a community, just as a community of believers from a particular faith might consider itself a community. But mere self-definition as a community does not necessarily meet the objective criteria of a community, that is, that the community is one of BOTH place AND people. It must serve a particular geography and also everyone within that geography.