I really feel I know both Ken and Jenny even though I have only ever listened to the PODcasts. It’s a very odd feeling to be honest. I know I could not call them my friends, nor anyone else on there.. Connie, Amber, John etc. However everyone is so open and friendly and community focused, plus the fact that I listen to the PODcasts on a daily basis, means that I feel as though they are all part of my surrogate Chinese family.
The way the community is at cPOD, everyone is there for the same main reason “learning/teaching mandarin” and then everything spirals out from that point. I have experienced this phenomenon only a few times in the past where there is always that common focus at the centre of everything.
An example of this is with a guitar lessons website that I assist in moderating the forums of. Everyone’s focus there is to learn/teach guitar, and then the more or less people join in on spin-off conversations defines the direction the community goes but in the end, the ultimate point of the site remains the same: to be a learning centre of guitar. At the guitar website I am talking about there are well over 800,000 members but only an extremely small percentage actually post.
That is what cPOD is: a learning centre of Chinese language. A hub with many doorways that can be opened.