Martin You wrote "I am fed up with the sole talk of trainers of NLP." The thread you replied in was initiated by Troy, with a specific question about NLP Training, therefore the thread unfolded from with an NLP Training theme. You replied to a post I made and I am unsure if you are fed up with me posting (as an NLP Trainer) or your fed upnsess is directed at the strand of posts regarding NLP Training styles and trainers. Or are you  fed up the sole talk of the NLP Trainers talking  or people in the NLP community talking about Trainers? Can you please clarify? As an aside, amongst many things I am an NLP Trainer and like yes I do like to talk. I am also an NLP student who likes to listen to what other people in the field have to say whether they classify themselves as trainers or something else. To that end I attend NLP courses to learn new things, get a different slant on what I already know and learn more about myself. I also read books and participate in smaller communities like the one we are interacting here. At no point am I aware that I have given my personal power away,  as you state in your post, quite the opposite in fact. The same goes for people who attend my courses- they gain new resources.  You wrote "The problem is that we talk a lot about "community" and yet I see very little evidence of such a thing.” There are some 100 plus focus groups in the UK and about 20 online NLP forums. One of the biggest corporations in the UK has it's own NLP practice group, so has one part of the NHS. There are about 40 active companies offering NLP Practitioner Training and probably 100 other training companies teaching NLP application in the corporate sector. Most local authority training colleges have NLP courses available as night classes.   All these groups and companies have different functions for their members and learners, sorted by interests, location etc. This adds up to a lot of people involved in training, learning, practising and applying NLP at many different levels and walks of life. The above is evidence to me that the community we loosely term as the NLP Community is thriving and like any other community cohesiveness across the members does not exist. What I describe in the paragraph above are smaller communities within the larger frame of people who are interested in NLP. A lot depends on how you define the phrase NLP community. The term NLP community can mean many different things. Here are a few examples 1, The set of people interested in NLP. 2. The set of people trained in NLP at the Practitioner level. 3. The set of people trained in NLP who are active in employing their skills as their chosen career. 5. The various sets of people applying NLP sorted by the fields they chose to apply NLP in. 6. The various  sets people active in groups like the one you have set up sorted by the group interest. 7. and so on. The larger community I describe in 1 above is so large with many different applications and different approaches to NLP it can not agree on everything, nor should it otherwise it would not be functional in sorting for new information. So smaller communities (sets of people) form to study and practice NLP relative to specific fields of application. The smaller communities and thus the community as whole grow as NLP Training companies raise awareness by training people in NLP. People usually learn NLP at a course and if they chose to practise at a practice group. Without training courses the field would stop in its tracks and phase out. NLP Trainers have an important role in delivering quality courses, and promoting these courses to continue to raise awareness. Therefore training courses and practice groups surely compliment one another. Re. Communities; News of difference creates new learning. The smaller communities report news of difference back to the large community, for debate, discussion and new ideas are accepted or rejected.  People who have attended courses, led by an NLP trainer, where learners learn something new, also report news of difference to the larger community. This new information will again be accepted or rejected by the field over time.  News of difference is also reported via books, tapes, videos etc detailing new information. This is how NLP originally grew, it’s just there are so many more people involved today and the overall community is much larger. So where does this talk of NLP Community lead us? Before people can be active in a specific NLP Community of their choice e.g. practice group,  they need to learn NLP. To learn such skills people usually attend courses that they select on the basis that trainer has the competence to transfer the skills required, I am not sure how this leads to a person giving away their personal power as you said in your post. You said in your post  “we are creating too many trainers and training organisations.” I saw no mention on your site that your NLP group is involved in creating new trainers, so I am not sure whom you are referring to when you say “we.” NLP is about choice and people choose to become NLP trainers, no entity creates them, and its certainly not a closed field. The NLP Community as set of people is growing in its numbers. What is needed is strong leadership within the various smaller communities to direct the focus into specific application and modelling projects to report back to the field in general.  It seems like you have taken excellent step in defining and instigating a specific application of NLP (NLPt) through your NLPsychotherapy group. Good luck with attracting new members and why not report your discoveries (news of difference)  to this community to widen the interest. You never know the “NLP Trainers you are fed with the "sole talk of” may well talk about your group at their courses (not solely though) and recommend people to attend your group based on what you report. Now that’s how communities grow and work together. Regards Michael Carroll