How do you keep a physical community alive?

Question

I'm a test lead in a medium large financial organization. As part of adopting SAFE (yes, i know...) and the Spotify model I am reviving a professional community under the COP or Guild hats respectively.We have the basics- an ongoing leaders community, organizational support is expected, shared interest and problems to solve but somehow when I examine our history (and to be honest of other places as well) it seems that communities tend to be short lived.I would appreciate any inputs or experience about keeping communities alive and bubbly over long periods.This discussion [1] about online communities has some good tips, i wonder if virtual communities are that different than the ones in the real world[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21812442

humbledstone · Accepted Answer

At a previous employer, my dev team was pretty anti-social and we were in the basement of the building with a floor that was under construction between us and the rest of the company. I noticed most of the company had no clue who were on the dev team or what we did. So I set up a weekly lunch where we would play board games while playing. This helped us get to know others within the company, and made us feel like part of a larger community. I am not sure if this is what you are looking for, but I was surprised by the results. They continue to do this even while I am no longer working there.