Sense of community: What would bring people closer together at Mediamatic Travel?

One of the key features a successful online community is the sense of community: The users in the community need to feel like they belong to something all together. In most cases the sense of community is created by itself, by the shared interest of a number of users, who then, take up the conversation elsewhere to share more of their interest. Of course they can disagree, the point is that they all have a shared passion for something, which could be anything. To create a sense of community, one needs to ask the question: What could bring people together?

Take a look at tripadvisor. It's commercial website that gathers information about hotels and restaurant from all over the world and provides a platform for users to back that information up with their own experience. Tripadvisor has also developed a Facebook application that allows you to mark a map with all the places you've been. This map will also mark all the places your friends have been. So if you're planning on going somewhere, Tripadvisor will show you who of all your Facebook friends has already been there, and at the same time notiy those friends that you'll be going there. This is how a shared interest/link between you and your friend is created, for you'll be happy to inform your friend about that place. Automatically this information goes to Tripadvisor to use it for their own administration, analysis and marketing. In the end you'll be happy to participate in the network of Tripadvisor, not because Tripadvisor wants you to, but because it offers a sense of community with your friends. 

Another interesting travel website that is successfully bringing travelers together is travbuddy.com. This  website works somewhat like a dating website; you set up an account, enter your travel plans and preferences, and then just wait until someone wants to join you on your trip. Travelers who participate the most within the network can win awards. There's a award for writing, for photographing, for the best community leader and so on. Basically they bring people together who enjoy sharing their travel stories and pictures with each other. Basically the conversation is continuing; even if you're done traveling in real life, you can still travel online.

Both examples are stacked with advertising, which doesn't make them seem trustworthy. It's hard establishing a sense of community within a highly advertised environment, because it distracts from theshared experience/interest/link. Thank god, Mediamatic travel is about the actual experience of traveling, meeting people and their culture and more specifically; about bringing visitors in contact with guides. This will probably be happening privately ( by e-mail).

How are the visiotr and the guide linked to each other in Mediamatic? Should they be linked based upon the city? Or a particular event/ organisation/ place? Should the focus be a particular art scene or possible collaboration? Looking at the options we've got, I see future in 'events'. An event is something that is going to happen, so people can gather around it, discuss it in advance and afterwards. An event could also become more personal ( like the starting date of someone's journey). There can be multiple entry-points for a visitor, but the focus of our website should be one feature that is communicated very clearly: What do we want people to do? What do people want to do? I'll talk about this more profoundly in my net post.