Part of what makes studying great groups so difficult is the sheer dimensionality of the space. The best way to develop good intuitions about scenes is to create communities yourself, and to experiment with these sliders.

• Size
  • size of co-conspirator/productive "seed"
  • size of functional inner circle
  • size of audience (hypothesis: hardly matters)
• Exclusivity vs. Inclusivity
• Management technique
  • systems engineering
  • agile
  • other?
• Ambition of Vision
• Contribution + Commitment of core members
• Friction of entrance ritual
• Effectiveness of dispute resolution/judicial system
• Decisiveness/indecisiveness of governance structure
  • Democratic vs. Authoritarian vs. Ambiguous (status-based) governance
  • fast/slow decisions

On MIT & Hackers

• Intellectual curiosity seems to be true among all great groups, including artists. They all seem to desperately want to understand, to understand new art, new mediums, new techniques, new technologies, new philosophies... The hackers were curious about computers. They NEEDED to know how they worked.
• The hackers didn't seem to care much about "cool" or "hot". Peter Deutsch was an overweight 12 year old kid, but he was smart and curious, and the hackers were very inclusive. He had the intellectual curiosity.
• The hackers cared more about "neat hacks" than nearly anything. And something simply being a "neat hack" was enough to make it worthy of existence. "purpose" is a silly frame. The real question is: how did you do it? Was it fun? Was it hard? Intellectual curiosity drove everything.
• They would wait until 3 in the morning every night just to get a chance at using the computer.
• "Hackers should be judged by their hacking" -- can a parellel to this statement be drawn to all great groups, or only some?