Derek Sivers is a thinker worth following. He founded CD Baby, then sold it and went off to live a, well, very engaged life. His books are short, condensed, and very good.
Years ago he proposed that leaders were not as important to creating a movement as were first followers. In only three minutes you can watch this video, then decide if you agree.
If you prefer, you can watch Sivers present this video during his three-minute (!) TED talk.
That first video was awesome 
Thank you for sharing!
Wasn’t that good? Since I first saw it I’ve thought a lot about movements, why they succeed and (way more often) why they fail. Sometimes I can find the first follower. And, as Sivers says, sometimes the movement ends up following the first follower instead of the leader. Also interesting to think that there are way more leaders out there than movements, even some with first followers that didn’t manage to attract a crowd.
All good things to think about when I am attracted to a potential leader who hasn’t yet grown a movement but I hope will. Do I see someone in his orbit that might become an effective first follower? What if anything can I do to help?
That’s a great video and a great way of showing this concept in action. Thanks for sharing, I really enjoyed it very much.
I’ve realised I am playing the first follower role in the stop motion community I joined​
I had lots of enthusiasm at the start of year but life has gotten very busy lately so I haven’t been able to post often. There’s only a handful of us and the original creator has been quiet - stop motion is very time consuming so it’s not unusual - so no-one else has contributed to the space.
Clearly I need to start dancing!
The video came to mind as I thought about how I’ve approached this forum during my first month here. I don’t see myself as a first follower — I enjoy Joan’s writing and thinking, enough to pay for a subscription, but I don’t yet detect a unifying theme beyond the fact that these are the things that interest her. There may be a potential movement lurking in there, probably more than one, but who knows which one(s) she will eventually choose to invest herself in, if any? I haven’t seen one I’d urge upon her — though I’m still watching.
I think of myself more as a pump-primer, at least aspiring. It’s a rare thing for me to find a curated collection of reader/writers who are interested in things that interest me, and I’d be excited to see a community emerge from that, excited enough that I’ll spend some extra effort helping that happen. I blogged regularly for many years, then tailed off as interest in the blogosphere faded. Still had the skills, though, plus a mental backlog of possible posts, so I thought it might be helpful to this community, as well as a good discipline for me, to write daily just to give folks something to read. And I’ve tried to employ a wide variety, style and structure and content, so as to offer as many different entry points for others, low-cost low-effort opportunities to join in, sharing their own thinking.
I was about to write at greater length about that, hooking into some of the points @joanwestenberg made in “Communities are Not Fungible”, but I’ll put that off at least a day because I don’t want to dominate the conversation. Which I am currently doing, in practical terms, but only because there isn’t yet a lot of conversation going on — but it isn’t my intent, it’s not what floats my boat, and I’m doing what little I can to communicate that … as I post repeatedly!
Just to say that, although i’ve only been here a short time, I thoroughly enjoy your posts. They are varied and always thought provoking.
I’m grateful that you post so frequently - I simply need to resist the urge to reply to every one(!)
I feel quite similarly! I try to remember to leave a 
so you know someone’s reading and appreciating, though; I value the perspectives you add a lot.