In this episode of Masters of Community, our host, David Spinks, VP of Community at Bevy and Co-Founder of CMX, hosts a solo episode where he discusses why he is stepping down from CMX and Bevy, his future plans, and what he thinks will happen with the CMX community. Who is this episode for? CMX community, Bevy community, community builders, community managers, community leaders, and community members. Timestamps: (00:48) - I'm stepping down... (03:35) - I'll still be present in the CMX community (05:01) - Pausing the Masters of Community podcast (07:06) - My feelings and thoughts about CMX (11:21) - What's next? (14:35) - Leave me feedback about the podcast (18:03) - Why should you take pauses in your life? (22:44) - Thank you all for your love and support, and see you soon Notable Quotes: “I'm really excited for the first time in my career to take a real step back, to take a breath, to see what the universe has to offer, and just learn more about myself” “I think that's the hope for a lot of community builders that it becomes sustainable, you build a great community, and it will live on without you needing to pour your energy into it” “I believe that CMX is set up to continue to grow and be really successful without me. And I can still play a role, just in a different way.” “I just think it's important to be able to take pauses in your life”

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with SJ Morris, Senior Manager, Developer Community at HubSpot. Our host, David Spinks, VP of Community at Bevy and Co-Founder of CMX, moderated the conversation. For the past fifteen years, SJ has been growing and nurturing developer communities at various stages of growth, like Context IO, Keen IO, Shopify, Intel, and Mailchimp. Now, she leads Hubspot's broader developer community strategies. Today, SJ shares what she's learned from working with these brands and the differences between the different kinds of developer communities that she's built. She also talks about how to get started in a community role, DEIB in building developer communities, and the balance of community capitalism. Who is this episode for? Community builders, community managers, community leaders, developers, and developers advocates. Timestamps: (00:49) - Intro to SJ and her experience with developer communities (12:31) - Building a community from the ground up versus managing an existing one (16:55) - The difference between a developer community program and a developer advocacy program (19:06) - Setting up a healthy developer community based on context and the company (24:28) - How the developer community program at HubSpot stands out (28:18) - Why the community team should be the guiding light (35:00) - Auditing and improving a developer community program (48:33) - Working in a community in the world of capitalism (52:46) - Investing in DEIB in developer ecosystems (59:03) - Rapid-fire questions Notable Quotes: “The first question you need to ask is: does the developer community even make sense for this company?" “I feel like the community strategy is more about enabling developers to connect with each other, creating the spaces and clear pathways for that to happen. But, also understand what are the actions that you want to see developers taking in your community to get them more value and to bring more value back to the company.” “When the customer is the driver of the narrative, it's very hard to plug developers into that. But I think once you find that sweet spot and start to tell stories about how developers are impacting our customer's businesses, they love that too.” “I think community plays a big role in making things more equitable across the company because you're representing a good experience and a good journey for anyone in the community” Answers to rapid-fire questions: What's your favorite book to gift or recommend to others? The Business Value of Developer Relations by Mary Thengvall What's a community product you wish existed? Slack for communities. Who in the world of the community would you most like to take to lunch? Evan Hamilton, Director, Community and Customer Experience at Reddit What habit has had the most positive impact on your life? I think the habit of knowing when I'm done for maybe not the day, but at least for the hour. And just like slapping that laptop closed, stepping away, getting a break, drinking a glass of water. What's the weirdest community you've ever been a part of? So, I don't know if this is weird, but the way I kind of went about it was weird. So this is like 2002. I had been in love with pugs my whole life and I never had one. So I established the Montreal pug meetup group. What's one community engagement, tactic, or conversation starter that you like to use in your communities? “Where are you from?” If you could condense all of your life lessons into one Twitter-sized piece of advice to the rest of the world on how to live, what would that advice be? Care less about the things that you don't need to care about as much. Care about what matters because you only live once.

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Jason Hitchcock, Founder, and GP at 4 Moons. Our host, David Spinks, VP of Community at Bevy and Co-Founder of CMX, moderated the conversation. Jason is known as a "crypto sensei" and was among the few to be early to Ethereum, Helium, CryptoPunks, and Alchemix. Today, we talk about crypto, Web 3, and DeFi, so that you can understand them, how they work, and how you might be able to get more involved. Also, Jason shares how he built Yieldopolis, a DeFi and NFT community, and how you might be able to find a community like that for yourself. Who is this episode for? Community builders, community managers, community leaders, DeFi, crypto, and Web 3 enthusiasts. Timestamps: (00:48) - Intro to Jason and his experience with crypto and DeFi (08:22) - How the Yieldopolis community can teach you about DeFi and NFT (17:08) - Why you should be an active stakeholder to understand a community (21:26) - What is DeFi (26:14) - Top 3 blockchain tools and applications (41:54) - What are the DeFi community dynamics (44:06) - Rapid-fire questions Notable Quotes: “I also think one reason why Yieldopolis is successful, it has always been self-serving for me. Like, I need this to be useful for me a hundred percent. And making it useful to me, it became useful to everybody.” “When I'm referring to DeFi and like NFT investing, I think there's just a more nuanced, practical, realistic conversation. It doesn't feel like hype.” “I don't think you can understand communities without being a stakeholder yourself” Answers to rapid-fire questions: What's your favorite book to gift or recommend to others? All Star Superman by Grant Morrison What's a community product you wish existed? We need a directory of some sort that populates easily and is rich with information so that people in a chat that's growing big or a discord that's growing big can have more context on who's there. What habit has had the most positive impact on your life? I think just showing up for things like bringing my passion along with me on things I'm passionate about. What's the weirdest community you've ever been a part of? There is a Facebook group I'm in where everyone pretends to be ants. What's one community engagement, tactic, or conversation starter that you like to use in your communities? Sometimes I will have a really interesting thought, and it's completely isolated on its own. And I don't know how to talk about this or even have a conversation about it. And so I will sort of say, I've noticed that people like this on Twitter or Discord, I will put my complete thought that is standalone. And then I'll tell people the thought that led to me thinking that, and then I'll ask them, like, what would you think about this? If you could condense all of your life lessons into one Twitter sized piece of advice to the rest of the world on how to live, what would that advice be? Being a snob will not benefit you. And if a lot of people are excited about something, you should check it out.

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Austin Robey, the co-founder of MetaLabel and Ampled. Our host, David Spinks, VP of Community at Bevy and Co-Founder of CMX, moderated the conversation. Austin shares what co-ops and DAOs can learn from each other and the pros and cons of co-ops and DAOs. He details the background of co-ops and their roots in civil rights and agriculture. Austin also talks about his work in going from co-ops and experiencing the challenge of fundraising for a co-op and making it financially sustainable. Who is this episode for? Community builders, community managers, community leaders, and co-ops and DAOs enthusiasts. Timestamps: (00:49) - Intro to Austin and his experience with FWB (08:55) - What is a cooperative and how you can start one (19:30) - 5 examples of successful co-ops (22:26) - When co-ops meet DAOs (31:49) - Solving co-ops problems from a DAO perspective (38:28) - What are some effective DAO models? (41:09) - Understanding the role of community managers in DAOs (43:49) - Setting up a practical co-op or DAO strategy (47:56) - Rapid-fire questions Notable Quotes: “I think a cooperative model is flexible, but it's also very simple. One of the key defining characteristics of a cooperative is one member, one vote.” “At a core level, the reason for starting a cooperative is different from a traditional company.” “Ownership drives the interest, and interest of an investor who owns a startup is very different from a community using a product or service. And ownership is what drives incentives, which drives behaviors.” Answers to rapid-fire questions: What's your favorite book to gift or recommend to others? Ours to Hack and to Own by Trebor Scholz What's a community product you wish existed? Tools like the Mirror and XSplit What habit has had the most positive impact on your personal life? I adopted a dog, which I like and there are many habits associated with it. What's one community engagement, tactic, or conversation starter that you like to use in your communities? What I did with Ampled was to give everyone my phone number and tell them to call whenever they want. If you could condense all of your life lessons into one Twitter sized piece of advice to the rest of the world on how to live, what would that advice be? Having the guts to do cool stuff results in cool stuff happening.

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Hope Wollensack, Executive Director of Georgia Resilience and Opportunity Fund. Our host, David Spinks, VP of Community at Bevy and Co-Founder of CMX, moderated the conversation. In addition to her role at Georgia Resilience and Opportunity fund, Hope leads a program called In Her Hands, which aims to help black women rise out of poverty and empower them in personal and professional decision-making. She describes how her team developed the program, its purpose, and its impact on the community it serves. We also dive into building more diverse, inclusive, and equitable communities. Who is this episode for? Community builders, community managers, community leaders, community facilitators, and black women communities Timestamps: (00:48) - About Hope and her community building experience (07:18) - In Her Hands: helping black women thrive and grow supportive communities (13:49) - How to identify the right solution for your community (19:37) - How to determine the success of a community program (24:13) - Start defining and developing your program (31:31) - Making a community more inclusive (38:16) - How to set up and manage the task force (47:10) - Next steps, plans, and goals (48:56) - Rapid-fire questions Notable Quotes: “What are the root causes of economic insecurities, and what can we do about them?” “So many times, decision-makers are the ones farthest from the problem. What if the ones closest to the problem would become the decision-makers?” “When people have additional cash, they can explore saving and investing tools, homeownership, and job opportunities much better. So we view cash as the ultimate choice mechanism.” Answers to rapid-fire questions: What's your favorite book to gift or recommend to others? All About Love: New Visions by Bell Hooks What's the weirdest community you've ever been a part of? Flashmob dancing crew What did education teach you about community? The process is just as important as the outcome. There is no problem that we collectively can’t solve. What's a community product you wish existed? A tool that would enable people to talk about what’s happening in their community. What habit has had the most positive impact on your personal life? Adaptability What's one community engagement, tactic, or conversation starter that you like to use in your groups? “What is the meaning behind your name?” If you could condense all of your life lessons into one Twitter sized piece of advice to the rest of the world on how to live, what would that advice be? What we can do is done if we’re committed to doing the work it requires.

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Douglas Ferguson, President at Voltage Control, a change agency that helps enterprises sustain innovation and teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our host, David Spinks, VP of Community at Bevy and Co-Founder of CMX, moderated the conversation. They discuss the structure and various kinds of meetings, how to facilitate effective meetings, and what people are doing wrong when they run them. This will be useful for those who manage people or run meetings within a company or community. Who is this episode for? Community builders, community managers, community leaders, community facilitators Timestamps: (03:04) - Douglas' intro (07:02) - What is a meeting? (10:39) - How to build a practical meeting artifact (19:40) - Start reviewing your calendar and prioritizing meetings (25:49) - How to drive collaboration across different teams (33:37) - How to effectively run various facilitated meetings (43:20) - Why should every meeting begin with a clear purpose? (54:50) - Rapid-fire questions Notable Quotes: “A meeting can be when we're gathering to accomplish something or solve a problem” “Do not be a slave to your calendar. You are a sentient human being, and you should be the boss of your calendar.” “You need to have a solid vision and purpose of why there should be a community and how people are going to benefit from it. And so meetings are no different.” Answers to rapid-fire questions: 1. What's your favorite book to gift or recommend to others? A More Beautiful Question 2. What's the most obscure group you've ever facilitated a workshop for? Noise rock 3. Should people be on or off mute in their meetings on Zoom? We need a culture for people to feel vulnerable and have psychological safety to unmute and speak at any time. And a facilitator should have the freedom to mute everyone and not have anyone get upset or feel uncomfortable. 4. What habit has had the most positive impact on your personal life? Consistency 5. What's one community engagement, tactic, or conversation starter that you like to use in your groups? Asking people to tell stories about stuff that resonate with them from a place of appreciation. If you could condense all of your life lessons into one Twitter sized piece of advice to the rest of the world on how to live, what would that advice be? Stay curious

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with David Siegel, CEO of Meetup, Author of Decide & Conquer, and Host of the Keep Connected podcast. Our host, David Spinks, VP of Community at Bevy and Co-Founder of CMX, moderated the conversation. They discuss the best practices and values for CEO and community leaders in decision-making. Who is this episode for? Community builders, community managers, community leaders, and CEOs. Timestamps: (05:43) - David's intro and his current role at Meetup (09:27) - The Meetup experience (17:57) - Changing the game (26:00) - Decide and Conquer book (36:00) - What is a decision framework (45:12) - Going with an imperfect plan over a perfect plan (49:31) - Building trust when entering a new company (54:15) - Empowering versus micromanaging people (58:01) - The future of Meetup (01:00:05) - Rapid-fire question round Notable Quotes: “I happen to have grown up with an extremely strong sense of community” “Building a community is about building a quality experience” “And I consider one of my most important jobs as a community leader is to be as transparent as possible so that other people around me are not surprised” “Trying to fit a narrative into principles is much less interesting than creating the principles after you already know what's meaningful and less meaningful” Answers to rapid-fire questions: 1. What's your favorite book to gift or recommend to others? How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie 2. If you were to find yourself on your deathbed today, and you had to condense all of your life lessons into one piece of advice to the rest of the world on how to live, what would that advice be? Find joy in your day-to-day life as that joy can help set you off for longer-term success. 3. If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would that food be? Sardines 4. Who in the world of community would you like to take out for lunch? Angela Duckworth, author of GRIT 5. What is the most important metric that you look at when looking at the health of a meetup? The number of connections that we create between people. 6. What's the weirdest Meetup group? Hugging groups 7. What's the weirdest community you've ever been a part of? Fantasy baseball

In this episode of Masters of Community, our host, David Spinks, VP of Community at Bevy and Co-Founder of CMX, hosts a solo episode where he talks about how he got fired from his first community job. David admits that it was one of the lowest points of his career and life. He was discouraged, and it took him some time to get back on his feet. Having dealt with these moments, he now shares what he learned from them and how it might help others deal with the hardships of getting fired. Who is this episode for? Community builders, community managers, community leaders, community members, employees, and employers. Key takeaways: (00:49) - Overview about today's episode (02:59) - The context of how David got fired (06:52) - Shifting towards community and Zaarly (12:45) - Facing challenges and problems (21:00) - Getting fired (23:34) - The lowest point of the career (28:00) - Help and hope: meeting Thomas Knoll (29:56) - Starting a new job (31:45) - Getting over being fired (38:56) - David's lessons and bits of advice Notable Quotes: 1. “I think there's a lot of stigma around getting fired” 2. “If you are drowning, if you are overwhelmed, if you're not in a healthy place, it becomes hard, if not impossible, to support other people, to take care of them, and to see what they need” 3. “I started burning out, feeling depressed, I had no idea what to do, I couldn't perform, and I couldn't get results” 4. “If you are in a position of leadership, when you think someone did a great job, tell them cause you never know how it could impact their life” 5. “If you're depressed at work, take a step back, gain perspective, pause, take a breath, take space, take time off, take care of yourself so that you can take care of others, turn to communities”

In this episode, we're joined by Kevin Huynh, cofounder and partner at People & Company and coauthor of "Get Together." Kevin shares insights on three core questions you need to ask before starting a community, the responsibility of community builders to take a stand against racial injustice, and how to be successful as a community consultant working with incredible brands like Nike and Porsche.

Today's guest is Marjorie Anderson. She's the manager of digital communities at Project Management Institute and is also the founder of Community by Association. In this conversation, we talk about how PMI approaches its programming to serve its million-plus community of project management professionals. Marjorie also dives into their virtual events, which they've been running since 2014, and shares insights into how community teams can make sure their work is driving measurable impact.

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Cadran Cowansage, CEO and Founder of Elpha. Our host, David Spinks, VP of Community at Bevy and Co-Founder of CMX, moderated the conversation. Cadran was an engineering lead at Y Combinator, where she started a community for female employees. Eventually, they opened it up to other entrepreneurs and created Elpha, a community of over 60,000 women who work in tech. Cadran shares the entire story of how she built the Elpha community and why she thinks it's important to create your own platform as a community builder. Who is this episode for? Community builders, community managers, women in tech, women entrepreneurs. Three key takeaways: 1. From engineering to a community builder: Cadran worked as a software engineer in various organizations. She started learning about community building at Y Combination, which eventually led to building the Elpha community. Elpha is a professional network focused on helping women succeed at work. To manage it, Cadran built its software from scratch. 2. Built by women for women: Building a community for women requires creating a safe, welcoming, and well-moderated space where women can speak openly. Thus, a great focus of the Elpha community is anonymity, effective moderation, and facilitating engagement. The community offers various office hours with featured guests, long-form editorial articles, monthly lives on Zoom where members can meet, and other types of events. 3. Elpha's monetization strategy: Cardan started working on revenue-generating early after they spun out. They monetized their creation of a high-quality and valuable service for their community members. Through this service, members get a talent profile on the Elpha platform, where companies can find and contact candidates about jobs. When building a community, think about monetizing it early. Notable Quotes: 1. “I'm introverted, so I never thought of myself as a community builder” 2. “You evolve with the community and learn how to manage it as you go” 3. “I believe that software built by women for women will inherently be different. You have all sorts of biases and opinions, like going into software subtly without even realizing it.” 4. “Make sure that you're happy and fulfilled building your community” Answers to rapid-fire questions: 1. What's the book that had the biggest impact on your life? What's your favorite book to gift to others? And what book are you reading right now? The Parable Books by Octavia Butler Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood 2. Who in the world of community would you most like to take out for lunch or interview on your podcast? Lenny Rachitsky 3. What makes Elpha weird? It’s our members that are unique and they say so many different and interesting things. 4. If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would that food be? Japanese sweet potatoes

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Jeremiah Owyang, Industry Analyst and Founding Partner of Kaleido Insights. Our host, David Spinks, VP of Community at Bevy and Co-Founder of CMX, moderated the conversation. Jeremiah is an advisor to many different companies and web-sharing communities. He has been analyzing the community space and understands how businesses invest in communities. Jeremiah previously worked at Forester as an analyst of the community industry. He then got involved in the collaborative consumption movement and now works closely with Web 3.0 communities and platforms. The purpose of this interview was to give a clear understanding of what it means for a community to invest in web three blockchain and crypto. Who is this episode for? Community builders, community managers, entrepreneurs, digital leaders, blockchain, and crypto enthusiasts. Three key takeaways: 1. What is Web 3.0: Web 3.0 companies are decentralized autonomous organizations that have communities at their core and work on blockchain and token-based economies. Web 3.0 comes with the premise that users will own their identities, data, and equity. It creates opportunities to gain ownership through contribution and content. 2. Web 3.0 ups and downs for communities: Web 3.0 turns communities into economies. Tokenization requires complex legal, administrative, technological, and process changes. Not all organizations or platforms are ready for this to be mainstream. It also puts the social motivations within a community at risk. In terms of advantages, the community members get digital asset rewards like tokens and NFTs. They also have access to premium community experiences and activities. 3. Launching a community token: Bringing a personalized token into a community starts by defining the goals you have with your community members. Once set up, you can create and distribute it into the community. The mass majority of the tokens should be for community members. But they have to hold them and support the community. Notable Quotes: 1. “When there's a new technology, I love to run towards it, especially if it helps organizations connect to their customers and community leaders connect to their community members” 2. “Web 3.0 comes to the promise that the Internet should be owned by the participants, by the community members“ “I'm very sure that once you tokenize, the relationship between the community members changes, and the relationship with you as the community leader changes” 3. “Reward your amazing folks who have been here with you, let people engage by earning, and three, you could sell on the open market” Answers to rapid-fire questions: 1. How do you define community? A group of people with a common cause. 2. What’s a food that makes you think of home? Mom’s spaghetti. 3. What book had an impact on your life? The Cluetrain Manifesto by Rick Levine: https://amzn.to/3twTWV0 4. What's one piece of advice you have for new community builders? It’s not about you, it’s about serving them. 5. What's the weirdest community you've ever been a part of? Second Life Community. 6. If you were to find yourself on your deathbed today, and you had to condense all of your life lessons into one piece of advice for the rest of the world, what would that advice be? Find a purpose. 7. Who in the world of community would you most like to take out for lunch or interview on your podcast and your context? Mark Zuckerberg.

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Andrew Warner, the founder, and CEO of Mixergy. Our host, David Spinks, VP of Community at Bevy and Co-Founder of CMX, moderated the conversation. Mixergy is a platform where the ambitious learn from a mix of experienced mentors through interviews and courses. Andrew invites well-known startup founders to teach others how they built their companies. He has interviewed over 2,000 of the world’s best entrepreneurs, including the founders of Wikipedia, Sun, Groupon, LivingSocial, and LinkedIn. Andrew is also the author of the book “Stop Asking Questions: How to Lead High-Impact Interviews and Learn Anything from Anyone,” where he shares bits of advice on how to lead meaningful conversations with people you admire. Who is this episode for? Podcasters, interviewers, community builders, community managers, entrepreneurs, and mentors. Three key takeaways: 1. Driving meaningful conversations: Andrew started Mixergy to help ambitious people who love business learn from a mix of experienced mentors. He interviews entrepreneurs to tell their stories and share their lessons. Andrew focuses on meaningful conversations for his audience from which people can learn how to be better and more successful 2. Sharing knowledge more openly: Talking with people and opening up the conversation requires a set of techniques. Firstly, be open, honest, and vulnerable with people. Secondly, join the resistance by aligning with them. Thirdly, give people a higher purpose or share your goal upfront. Fourthly, look for shove facts, bring them up, and talk about them 3. Stop asking questions: Andrew wrote the book "Stop Asking Questions: How to Lead High-Impact Interviews and Learn Anything from Anyone," with the intent to help people effectively lead a conversation with another person. We think that discussions and interviews are great when we ask many questions. But it can become tiring and disrespectful towards the other person. Start by addressing guiding statements instead of questions. Notable Quotes: 1. “I never saw myself as a podcaster for life. It was more like I enjoyed these conversations.” 2. “I started the podcast because I'd failed with this one software company, and I didn't want to fail again. And I want to learn from the best.” 3. “I think the podcasting and conversations, in general, are more interesting when the person in the conversation has a deep need and curiosity for something that's when it goes to somewhere meaningful.” 4. “If we see people as emotional creatures with egos, needs, bruises, and successes, and they want to talk, even though logically it makes no sense to talk to clear things out, but if we understand that's still true, we have better conversations.” Answers to rapid-fire questions: 1. If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would that food be? Pizza 2. What books had an impact on your life? How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie - https://amzn.to/3F6r5sN The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie - https://amzn.to/3f50zFV 3. What’s the most memorable founder you ever interviewed? Emmett Shear, the CEO of Twitch - https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmettshear 4. What's your favorite conversation starter or interview question that you'd like to use? I really look for the personal questions. So when did you lose your virginity? When I do my interviews, I ask people what their revenue is at the beginning. When I had a kid, I would ask the fathers, are you still sleeping with your wife? 5. What's the weirdest community you've ever been a part of? The Ananda community 6. If you were to find yourself on your deathbed today, and you had to condense all of your life lessons into one piece of advice for the rest of the world, what would that advice be? Suffer for what matters. 7. Who in the world of community would you most like to take out for lunch or interview on your podcast and your context? Nick ONeal, Freelance Cryptocurrency Consultant, and Marketer/CM - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-oneal

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Wes Kao, Co-founder of Maven and Mentor at Backstage Capital. Our host, David Spinks, VP of Community at Bevy and Co-Founder of CMX, moderated the conversation. Before Maven, Wes co-founded altMBA alongside bestselling author Seth Godin. By founding Maven, she wanted to democratize education by improving the online experience for instructors and students. Wes is a thought leader in building cohort-based courses and frequently writes on her blog about marketing, online courses, and rigorous thinking. She unfolds the concept of cohort-based courses and ways of building and managing them effectively. Who is this episode for? Community builders, community managers, and course instructors Three key takeaways: 1. Understanding cohort based courses: Maven is the first platform for cohort-based courses, which are courses that take place during a period with a group of other people. As community organizers, make sure you find the right balance in teaching your students. Create an environment of making sure that your students contribute to the community, support each other, and learn from one another. 2. Building cohort based courses: Firstly, market the course upfront. Secondly, design your curriculum and establish the frameworks, exercises, breakouts, and discussions. Thirdly, find the right instructors. Finally, think about your sales and marketing funnel. 3. Forming communities within cohort based courses: Lean into debatable topics where your students have a chance to share their thoughts and learn from each other. Empower community members to connect without you jumping in all the time to answer. Create a culture where the students feel comfortable giving direct and genuine feedback. Notable Quotes: 1. “Cohort based courses are more engaging and active in learning versus passive content consumption” 2. “With the cohort based course, once you realize that you don't have to do it all yourself, that's where the sky parts and new opportunities open up” 3. “Course based courses allow students to connect without you as an instructor needing to be the center of that. Acknowledging that letting go of the reins results in better outcomes, more connections, deeper bonds, and relationships amongst yours.” 4. “So I think one of the most exciting things about cohort-based courses is that there's the flexibility for you to make it what you want it to be” Answers to rapid-fire questions: 1. If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would that food be? Zucchini 2. What's your favorite book to give as a gift or recommend to others? It's Not Personal by Alice Katz 3. What is your favorite course that you've ever been a part of? Alive OS by Suzy Batiz 4. Who in the world of community would you most like to take out? Mister Rogers 5. What's the weirdest community you've ever been a part of? A plant shaming group on Facebook 6. If you were to find yourself on your deathbed today, and you had to condense all of your life lessons into one piece of advice for the rest of the world, what would that advice be? Worry less

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Shelly Omílàdé Bell, Founder and CEO of Black Girl Ventures, a social enterprise dedicated to creating access to capital for black and brown women entrepreneurs. Shelly is a serial entrepreneur and computer scientist with a background in performance poetry, K-12 Education, and IP strategy. She was named one of the Top 100 Powerful Women in Business by Entrepreneur Mag, Entrepreneur of the Year by Technically DC, and acknowledged as A Rising Brand Star by Adweek. Shelly is a system disruptor and business strategist who moves ideas to profit while empowering people to live more authentically. As a cultural translator, she connects entrepreneurs, investors, and corporations to diversify their talent pipeline, increase equity and grow their brands. Shelly shares tips on creating access and social capital for people, creating a real sense of community, and scaling the community. Who is this episode for? Community leaders, business women, investors, business strategists Three key takeaways: 1. Sustainably growing and engaging a community: Building the community comes from identifying a need and offering a solution. Engaging the community is about communing with people. Sustaining the community focuses on adopting a business model. 2. Driving value for your community: There are direct and indirect revenue drivers because revenue comes from relationships. The indirect way of driving revenue is building trust, affinity, and belonging, and they will bring valuable revenue to your community. 3. Building social capital: Social capital is the strength of your network, which can be people with helpful resources, knowledge, and access to capital. Building positive social capital relationships requires a community leader to take on the role of a gatekeeper to share and protect the people's interests. Notable Quotes: 1. “Safe space means safe people. And the more safe people that are surrounding in a community, the safer it can be that comes from core values.” 2. “A community can be a great gathering of people unless you have all agreed that there's a problem that needs to be solved, or you are showcasing it as a problem that needs to be solved that this community coming together can solve.” 3. “The money is the water for the seed. It's just a tool. So you have to wrap your head around the difference between humility that takes you out of driving the necessary sustainability measures.” 4. “You may be building a community of people that you serve. But you also need to understand how to build a community of people who can serve you.” Answers to rapid-fire questions: 1. If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be? Mexican corn 2. What is your favorite book to give as a gift to others? The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz 3. What's a company in your community that you're really excited about right now? Agua Bonita 4. What is a go-to community engagement tactic, or conversation starter, that you like to use in your communities? What do you care about? 5. Who in the world of the community would you most like to take for lunch? Seth Godin 6. What is a community product you wish existed? I wish there were a product that was an easy way to create a video, like a Wiki video library of learning 7. What is the weirdest community you've ever been a part of? The poetry community 8. What's one thing you learned from the leading community and the world of poetry that you still apply to your community-building today? How to move and motivate people, and put the systems in place simply. 9. If you were to find yourself on your deathbed, and you had to condense all of your life lessons into one tweet-sized piece of advice for the rest of the world for how to live, what would that advice be? Be all that you are as soon as possible.

In this episode, David Spinks, the VP of Community at Bevy and the Co-Founder of CMX, joins the Seed Club DAO Podcast. They discuss consumer empowerment and how the role of a community has evolved as consumers have grown in power. Later, they dive into the specifics of community building, the infrastructure required to deliver a sense of belonging over the long-term, and how to effectively onboard new members into a community. Who is this episode for? Community managers and business executives Three key takeaways: 1. Interconnecting business and community: The community becomes the core of a company. David points to this idea by revealing the historical context of how business has been evolving. Recently, with the advent of the internet and our ability to review products and talk about them, companies have started to care about customer service more and more. Besides, it's efficient and practical to let the community own and build a business. 2. Building better and more resilient communities: Building a community requires constant work and engagement. First, you need to think about how you'll attract people in a thoughtful and meaningful way. Secondly, continue working to build that engagement and facilitate and bring that energy into the community. 3. The core roles and responsibilities for building a community: If you want to put a community team together, you need a higher specialization of roles. There are community moderators that engage and respond to people. But it's also crucial to have a strategic leader who has a seat at the table at the highest level of the company. The team itself will usually be a combination of community engagement managers. They will focus on facilitating engagement, driving growth, and experimenting with different formats. There also must be community operations, which measure the data and analytics. Eventually, more roles will appear, and people within the community will specialize in them. Notable Quotes: 1. “And now in web three, what I see now is the ultimate culmination of this trend towards community-driven business, which is like the community is owning, creating, and building the business” 2. “Web three can bring to the concept of community-driven business, create a more equitable ecosystem, and give the people creating value and the opportunity to capture that value as well” 3. “I think that community-building work is one of the most important jobs in the world”

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Joy Dettorre, Global Leader for Diversity and Inclusion, and Stephanie Galera, Global Diversity and Inclusion Leader, at IBM. Our host, David Spinks, the VP of Community at Bevy and the Co-Founder of CMX, moderates the conversation. The business resource group program plays a central part in successfully managing IBM's 250+ employee groups across fifty countries that touch approximately 50,000 employees. Joy and Stephanie will reveal how BRGs create a space for diverse, inclusive, equitable purpose-driven workplaces, like IBM’s eight communities, and why businesses need to invest in ERGs and BRGs. Who is this episode for? HR specialists, company leaders, and executive managers. Three key takeaways: 1. Unfolding the business resource group program at IBM: IBM focuses on delivering employee-centric programs and initiatives by creating communities of like-minded people and offering a space for diverse, inclusive, equitable purpose-driven workplaces. HR at IBM manages the BRG program, which focuses on intersectionality and allyship. BRG serves as a platform for employees who want to launch a program or campaign for these different communities. From a strategy standpoint, HR provides the structure or template that BRGs can be successful. IBM has three global communities: the LGBT+ community, The Women's community, and the People With Diverse Abilities community. In the United States, there are five other communities: the Black community, the Hispanic community, the Indigenous community, the Pan-Asian Community, and the Veterans community. 2. Why does IBM invest in ERGs and BRGs?: The business resource groups enable values like compassion, kindness, justice, dignity, and unity. They also create a sense of belonging and inclusion for the employees. The second part of that equation is about organization trust, companionship, and offering employees the opportunity to do something good. 3. Measuring the success of the employee resource groups: There are two ways IBM measures the success of an employee resource group. One is the annual employee engagement survey. IBM also experiments with something called "mini-pulse surveys," which are topical and spontaneous. They are anonymous and include a small number of questions. When measuring the employee engagement data, HR looks at two metrics: engagement and inclusion. They also break down these metrics by community. HR identifies challenges, sentiments, and the needs of the community. Furthermore, they look at the societal impact. All of the measurements influence bigger goals, like attention, retention, engagement, and representation. Notable Quotes: 1. “By nature and by blood, you're probably part of a community. But if I want to do something more, a BRG becomes the vehicle that I would use to create more impact, recognized and funded by the corporation.” - Stephanie Galera 2. “We all have one client that we serve. That's the IBM employee. That's why we exist. We need to create environments where these employees can feel safe, included, valued, appreciated, and an environment where they can thrive.” - Joy Dettorre 3. “These business resource groups create a sense of belonging and community, organizing employees around a common cause of driving passion.” - Joy Dettorre Answers to rapid-fire questions: 1. If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would that food be? Joy: Pasta and meatballs. Stephanie: Mushroom omelet. 2. What's your go-to community engagement tactic or conversation starter? Joy: If someone comes to me for help, I ask, "how can I help you?" But if I need help from somebody else, I tend to say, "will you help me?" Stephanie: The trip that my spouse and I had in the US, which talks about the benefits of actually joining a BRG meeting 3. If you could distill all of your experience as community builders and as community professionals into one bite-sized piece of advice for other community professionals, what would that advice be? Joy: Can we all commit to leaving every conversation and every interaction a little bit better than we found it, just based on how we behave. Stephanie: When you're in doubt about anything that you'd like to do, ask yourself, what's the worst that can happen. And most of the time, you'll find that things can be manageable. 4. What does the organizational structure of the groups look like? Are there any leads, and are they compensated for their work? There is absolutely a governance around our business resource groups. They constantly evolve and get better. But one thing in that governance model is an executive sponsor. There are also co-chairs, which are volunteer positions. They receive blue points, with which they can go into IBM's internal shopping store and purchase something. There are also some financial gifts and digital thank you cards. The company writes blogs to recognize their effort, and leaders make personal calls to them and offer specialty digital badges they can post on LinkedIn. 5. Do people need to fill out some form to specify how they contributed, or do you have it automated somehow? In terms of recognition, we do have a 360 feedback that's called a checkpoint where people can put in their goal, and it’s visible to their managers so that if they achieve that goal, that becomes part of their appraisal for the year. Volunteers at IBM can also convert spent hours into grants. 6. Do BRG leaders have weekly or monthly hours carved out for the work honored within management rather than a volunteer expectation on top of their job? We know that some managers carve out a portion of some person's time to do this, especially if it's for a business unit or geographic location. Sometimes we ask managers to carve out time for this person as a leadership development activity. And other times, they balance it as a work of passion. 7. Is there a step-by-step playbook to help us launch an ERG? We have a playbook that we're writing, but I don't know if it will be available outside IBM. 8. When an organization is committed to DEI, there will be several instances where you have to engage in uncomfortable conversations around discrimination and unconscious biases. How do you start and manage those conversations successfully? It's about creating a culture across the entire ecosystem where allyship, diversity, equity, and inclusion are a part of all of those processes.

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Wesley Faulkner, Head of Community at SingleStore, and PJ Hagerty, Head of Developer Relations at Mattermost, and Founder/Chief Community Officer of DevRelate.io. Wesley and PJ are also Co-hosts of Community Pulse. Our host, David Spinks, VP of Community at Bevy and the Co-Founder of CMX, moderated the conversation. David talks with Wesley and PJ about developer relations, developer evangelism, developer engagement, developer community, and the developer relations role of connecting, serving, and supporting developer ecosystems. They also uncover the differences between those terms and how the role of developer relations has evolved. Who is this episode for? Developers, heads of developer relations, software community managers, and developer evangelists. Three key takeaways: 1. Defining developer relations: Developer relations is a term that describes the specialists or teams whose responsibilities include building and developing both online and offline communities. There are many names for developer relations, like developer advocacy, developer community, developer marketing, or developer evangelist. 2. Building developer communities: Companies need to have developer relation teams to provide support and growth to their members. There should be a few dev advocates who can go out and speak to different communities. It's crucial to balance everything and have efficient communication within the community to meet people's needs. The team members need to focus on various aspects of the community. But, the end goal is to incorporate all of those people together as one team. The mission of a Dev Rel is building, understanding, and engaging, and bringing that back into the business to guide the roadmap to get more buy-in and trust. 3. Engaging developers within communities: There is much demand for developers' attention. Many companies offer attention-seeking content for developers, trying to bring them into their communities. Meanwhile, developers are looking for ways to engage with like-minded people and become a part of a supportive community. Dev rels working in the industry know how to communicate, engage, and understand what developers want. Thus, they can satisfy their needs and adapt their form of communication, either by writing blog posts, creating podcasts, workshops, or whatever developers like. Notable Quotes: 1. “Every company now should have a dev rel team. They should have advocates or evangelists helping to talk to people who work in technology.” 𑁋 PJ 2. “Keep everything in balance, meaning that there's adequate communication to the community of developers. And the developers, once they feel heard, they produce a response back to the company. And then, if it's healthy, the company responds healthily back to the community.” 𑁋 Wesley 3. “A Dev Rel's job is not just to be a catalyst or the community's voice. But also a member of the external communities you wish to interact with. And the more you do that, the more you participate, the more you go out to the community, the more you're going to create value that you can then bring back internally.” 𑁋 PJ Answers to rapid-fire questions: 1. What's your favorite book to give as a gift to others or to recommend to others? PJ: "The Business Value of Developer Relations: How and Why Technical Communities Are Key To Your Success" by Mary Thengvall Wesley: "Just Work: How to Root Out Bias, Prejudice, and Bullying to Build a Kick-Ass Culture of Inclusivity" by Kim Scott 2. What's one guest you had on your podcast that made you change your mind about something, and what did they make you change your mind about? PJ: Elizabeth Kinsey, Community Manager at Slack. She came in and showed me the value of developer marketing. She showed me that caring about developers and marketing to developers, developing that messaging, and understanding how to talk to developers is important. So, in reality, it's not that we should be working with different means towards the same end. It's that we should be working hand in hand to understand how better to communicate with communities. Wesley: Bear Douglas, Director of Developer Relations at Slack. Her perspective on metrics was very enlightening to me. 3. Wesley, you’ve said that “Community shapes us.” To what extent do you feel that we are shaped by our communities versus being ones that shaped the communities around us? So, it's a weird feedback loop where sometimes, we bring the cells that we think will be accepted, and so that shows what the community should be and how we are trying to present it to them. And then vice versa, the community reacts to what we present, and then we get a feedback cycle based on what they think they should be doing, and then we acceptably react to that. 4. PJ, you’ve said that “Community doesn't come to you. You have to go to the community”. What tips do you have for applying this advice and taking action? I think that it's kind of right there in the answer, go to where they are. If your community primarily communicates on IRC, join the IRC channel. If you have a heavy influence in the Midwest, go to all the Midwest conferences, meetups, and events, find out where they are. Go and talk to these people. And I'm not just talking about going to where the community is, but also bringing yourself to the level of the community. 5. What's a go-to community engagement or conversation starter that you like to use in your communities? PJ: Hey, what brought you here? Wesley: What do you think about this? What do you think about this conversation? What do you think of the people here? 6. What is the weirdest community you've ever been a part of? PJ: Jelle's Marble League Wesley: Engineering fraternity in college 7. If you were to find yourself on your deathbed today, and you had to condense all of the life lessons that you've collected into one Twitter-sized piece of advice for the rest of the world on how to live, what would that advice be? PJ: Everybody's a human. So try to be kind to each other, and do your best. Wesley: You are the best version of yourself. Stick with that. And if you look at yourself and you feel that you could be better, do better.

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Jacques Martiquet, International Party Scientist and Social Bonding Specialist, who designs custom well-being and belonging experiences for workplaces. He aims to create a high-performance culture founded on authentic human connection, psychological safety, and conscious celebration. Jacques focuses on creating social experiences that connect people, are highly memorable, and create “peak moments”. In this interview, Jacques and I geek out over social science and social design for over an hour. He walks us through his process of what it takes to create really compelling events and experiences. This interview is full of practical, actionable tips that you'll be able to apply to your community, whether you're hosting events or just trying to improve the onboarding process for your forums. Who is this episode for? Community managers who want to take inspiration from social bonding science and try new exercises to add joy to their community events. Three key takeaways: 1. Why should your community dance, sing, and laugh?: Communities often lack playful connection because they are focused on professional behavior. Dancing, singing, and laughter are hardwired into us to promote social ties. When we truly get creative, we ignite social bonding behaviors that help us build ties in our community. Intrinsic motivation within the community comes from how enjoyable the task is. 2. How to promote deep connections in your community?: Start by helping your members transition from the state of their previous event into the state of your event. To compensate for the loss of natural signals of human connection, shut off the camera or have a regular group phone call so that members can focus on the tonality of the speaker’s voice. This will lead to members being more present and building deeper connections. Humans are also wired to build connections through touch, but it may be difficult to engage in touching behaviors that are appropriate in professional settings. 3. Framework for Creating Events That Foster Deep Connection: The experience begins before the experience. The invitation, the context, the intention, and the shared purpose are incredibly important when designing a gathering. Jacques shares a checklist with participants and facilitators before the event begins, so they don’t enter the actual event with uncertainty. He also uses a few other simple-yet-powerful trust-building and mood-boosting exercises to help participants relax. Notable Quotes: 1. “The distance between two humans is a laugh or a dance move or a sing-along what I've found in leading hundreds of experiences” 2. “Formality and professionalism are oftentimes the opposite of authenticity. When we're taking ourselves less seriously, that's when we truly get creative and that's when we build social ties.” 3. “We need to see joy as a productivity hack and something that is so important for our performance within organizations” 4. “Everyone is an infinite source of positive joy and energy. We see ourselves as limitless sources of joy and positive energy.” 5. “Liminal spaces prepare people. They enable people to let go of their responsibilities, their thoughts, their stresses so that they can be fully present in the experience.” Answers to rapid-fire questions: 1. If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would that food be? Mackerel Fish. 2. What's the best party you've ever been to? The roaming citywide decentralized dance party, which also introduced Jacques to Bitcoin back in 2016. 3. What's the most impactful book you've ever read or a book that you love to give as a gift to others? “Conflict = Energy” by Jason Digges, an introductory book on authentic relating to overhaul how you view human connection and how you connect with others. 4. What's your morning routine? Jacques wakes up and imagines that he has been revived from the grave. Then he goes outside and looks at the sun, does some stretches, and some inversion. His last step is a loving-kindness meditation where he will bless someone or wish someone well in his life. 5. What's a go-to engagement tactic or conversation starter you like to use in your communities? Get people moving and categorizing it as movement and not dancing 6. What's the best way to end the party? Jacques encourages his participants to come forth with recognitions for others, something they're grateful for, or something that is inspiring them. 7. What's the community or event, product, or piece of technology that you wish existed? A device, basically a plugin to Spotify that enables you to choose songs that are just like universally applicable for different moods and different contexts. 8. What is the weirdest community you've ever been to? The silent meditation retreat community called Vipassana. It's interesting because the community forms in silence with no eye contact, it's purely shared suffering. 9. Tweet-sized deathbed advice? Your quality of life is predicted by the quality of your human connections. So train your human connection skills.

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with two people at the forefront of Web 3.0 communities. Tiffany Zhong, Founder of Islands and the upcoming GM Academy community that will introduce you to all things Web 3.0. Cooper Turley, Advisor at Audius and Founder of the “Friends With Benefits” community. This episode is full of beginner information that will help you conceptually transition from Web 2.0 communities to Web 3.0 communities. Guests Tiffany and Cooper talk about the unique characteristics of Web 3.0 communities, examples of well-managed Web 3.0 communities, and how to navigate some of the biggest challenges while building Web 3.0 communities. Who is this episode for? Community managers interested in building Web 3.0 communities of their own. Three key takeaways: 1. Web 2.0 Communities vs Web 3.0 Communities: In Web 3.0, you're trying to share value with those who create it in the form of tokens and ownership. In Web 2.0, shared purpose and ownership were never thought of because the decision-making structure was fully centralized. Communities around each of NFT, DAOs, and DeFi have different expectations. Their requirements may also change depending on their growth stage. In Web 3.0, the creator community is incomplete without a community economy. Web 3.0 is taking that promise of web 2.0 building something together, and actually putting an infrastructure behind it. 2. Exemplary Web 3.0 Communities: Cooper’s “Friends with Benefits” community is a token-gated community where you need to hold tokens to join a social club that talks about the intersection of culture and technology. For example, Bored Ape Yacht club is focused on real-life activations of digital NFTs, airdrops, etc. The goal of Web 3.0 communities like these is to find ways to give their income back to the community through different projects serving the collective purpose of the community. 3. Preventing Web 3.0 communities from becoming “early-adopter cliques”: Rather than only offering all-in access to everything in that community, you can start to fragment different sections of it and lower the barriers. NFTs will start to become membership tokens, and people will be able to buy in for small time intervals to see if it's a good fit for them and upgrade to a higher tier if required. Access can also be given by granting tokens in exchange for volunteer work instead of direct investment. Notable Quotes: 1. “What Web two brands would say, cool, this is now our revenue or creators would say, cool, this is now my profit. I'm going to go buy a Lambo. Is that right? It's not, how do I share the Lambo with the entire company? That's the shift” “Start using discord. Discord is where most of these communities live. And I think it's a very foreign platform to most people. But if you're looking to get involved with Web 3.0, you need to learn how to navigate.” 2. “Start spending even just ten minutes a day in this space. You don't need to start dedicating your whole workday or week to going forward if you don't have the time, but just doing incremental” 3. “Just go in with an open mindset, but also with no ego and just ask questions. There are no dumb questions. The interesting thing. And the cool thing is that everyone's learning” Answers to rapid-fire questions: 1. How do you see consulting work to help create and build community at the start of a DeFi or similar project? If you are a consultant, I think the best that you can do is provide context on what's already happened. 2. What are the absolute critical priorities to think about when setting up a new community management function? Take charge of project management and keep track of what does what and how they are contributing to the community. 3. What role do you think offline will have in Web 3.0? Offline is where you celebrate community and where you strengthen relationships but online is where it really lives and where the function of it happens on a day. 4. Can't you build a community that is open, transparent, governed, and owned by the community with a stewardship and ownership model like the co-op model in Web 2.0? The notion of holding an asset that's able to increase or decrease in value relative to the growth of that community is really magical. It also gives people the option to either play long-term games or have instant liquidity based on where they are in life. 5. A lot of web three projects have a few different owner groups. How do you keep all these different groups engaged? Everyone is aligned to make the value of community treasury grow. And outside of that, each of the stakeholder groups is doing different things to grow the value of that treasury in very unique ways. 6. Tweet-sized vision for if everything goes perfectly, where do you want to see the world of web 3.0 five years from now? Tiffany: A world where creators are able to get paid what they're worth. A world where all the current web two creators and fans will now become web three community builders and collectors. Cooper: We are in the MySpace era of crypto right now. In five years, the Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter of this world will be created.

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Nicole Crentsil, CEO at Black Girl Fest. She wanted to solve her problem of not seeing enough people like her in the world of tech, culture, and art by creating her own event called Black Girl Fest. They expected 300 people but 3000 people showed up! Today, Nicole is an Angel investor and was named in the Forbes 30 under 30 list. She was also named as a LinkedIn Changemaker in 2021. In this episode, Nicole talks about how diverse communities can be kept buzzing through intersectional programming, how to launch your community through a highly successful first event, and how to grow your community beyond its core identity and location. She also sheds light on why organizations indulge in tokenism, how they can avoid it, and how they can truly embrace inclusion and diversity. Who is this episode for? Community managers who are interested in building and engaging highly diverse and truly inclusive communities. Three key takeaways: 1. Intersectional programming in diverse communities: Communities often exist in spaces where there are so many different stories and channels in which people's stories interconnect and expand. There’s no single path human stories will take. Accessible, inclusive, and authentic programming that taps into stories emanating from intersectional commonalities is the key to connecting to different subgroups in diverse communities. 2. Keys to a successful community launch event: Expect your launch event to be successful if it’s a one-of-a-kind event in your sufficiently-large community. People in under-tapped communities will invest their time and money to find opportunities and form connections among people of their own kind. Start small and engage people in your immediate networks who believe in your cause and who are smart and competent in their jobs. Operate with an ethos of passing the torch back to your community. 3. Growing your community beyond its core identity and location: If the issues dominating your community are also reflected in similar communities in various parts of the world, expanding the community should not be a big challenge. Talk to regional champions and seek their help in expanding the values of your community; you can borrow from the CMX Connect architecture. Tap into common events such as International Women’s Day (the full month of March) for Black Girl Fest. Notable Quotes: 1. “It's so obvious when a brand or an organization who's trying to be more diverse or trying to speak to a specific community hasn't put that community to the table to make the decisions, to decide, to plan, to produce...it's sometimes offensive, it's disingenuous and it's fake” 2. “I think organizations start with diversity and that's why we end up seeing more tick box scenarios where it's just like, fill the room with people that have different religions and backgrounds and skin tones. Then great. We've solved the problem... And it's like, no, you haven't solved anything. You've just got a bunch of people in the room.” 3. “If you don't embed it as not the thought and you just embed it like every day, you wouldn't have to worry about this DEI thing that you think is a problem” Answers to rapid-fire questions: 1. What's the most impactful book you've ever read or a book that you love to give as a gift to others? “Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race” by Reni Eddo-Lodge. 2. If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would that food be? Pesto pasta and cheese. 3. What's a community moment you'll never forget? A group of older Black women held Nicole’s hand and told her how amazing her work is and told her to not stop. It was a very emotional moment for her. 4. Have you ever worn socks with sandals? Yes. 5. If you could sit down for coffee for an hour with one community builder, dead or alive, who would it be? Michelle Obama. 6. Which is your most exciting angel investment? Nicole’s first investment in a company that essentially created hair extensions that match black women's hair texture because their product-market fit was genius. 7. What advice do you have for someone who wants to become an investor, but doesn't feel they have the identity of an investor? Find your community first and learn to utilize that because the network effect is quite powerful. 8. What's the weirdest community that you have been a part of? A Tumblr community where they loved playing the Sims game. 9. Tweet-sized deathbed advice? Believe in yourself first, before you need anyone else to believe in you.

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Dani Weinstein, Senior Director of Customer Community and Growth at Kaltura. Dani is a Community Builder, Strategist, and Advisor that enables customer success. In one of his previous roles before the pandemic layoff, he was the Head of Global Community at Domo, a business cloud that empowers organizations of all sizes with BI leverage at cloud scale in record time. At Domo, he deployed and scaled their community in English and Japanese and cultivated community advocates through gamification to become Domo brand ambassadors. Localized communities are tough to get started but keeping them buzzing with level interactions is an even bigger challenge. In this episode, Dani and David take us through when to start and how to best manage large localized communities. Gamification has been a major contributor of engagement for Dani’s previous communities so his tips and tactics to keep your community members engaged are tried and tested. Who is this episode for? Managers of large global/multilingual communities Three key takeaways: 1. Managing Contribution in Communities: Let superfans talk to your product teams and celebrate their contribution, gamify their contribution so they don’t lose motivation, and then create a private space for them. Start with one space and then as the conversation starts siphoning, create more spaces based on what conversational directions members regularly take. Starting with too many spaces may lead to spreading your community team too thin. 2. Internationalization of Communities: Calibrate the business needs and understand the landscape of potential community users in a new language. An existing and active audience of customers and leads in a new language is necessary before expanding your community to the new language. The more members you have in your community that speak that language, the more dedicated resources and money you will need to manage its complexity. However, the localized community may not need all the bells and whistles of your largest English-speaking community. 3. Managing Multilingual Content in Localized Communities: Great content in English (as judged by managers and superusers in the localized community) needs to be translated into localized languages for language-specific boards. You can use the Google Translate Widget if your company doesn't have enough resources to scale the translation effort. Notable Quotes: 1. “These are your people. And so you want to be able to develop that more intimate relationship with them. They could also provide tremendous insight on what they're seeing because, at the end of the day, they become part of the extended team.” 2. “You really have to start small. And so we really forced at the very beginning, very few boards around conversations. And then over time, you can actually see the customers dictating, not necessarily your support, product, and sales teams.” Answers to rapid-fire questions: 1. If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would that food be? Pasta Marinara. 2. What's the most impactful book you've ever read or a book that you love to give as a gift to others? “Winning Ugly” by Tennis coach Brad Gilbert. 3, What language do you wish you could speak and why? Russian because his family’s roots go back to Russia. He’s fluent in Hebrew and conversational in Spanish and German and even knows a word or two in French, Dutch, Arabic, and Italian. 4. What's your wildest community story? He gave an award to a brand-new Domo Admin who wore a superman costume that matched his display picture in the community. A brand new customer later, during happy hour, asked Dani about taking a “selfie with superman”. 5. Have you ever worn socks with sandals? Never. 6. Who in the world of the community would you most like to take out for lunch? Holly Firestone of Venafi. 7. What community product do you wish existed in the world? A tailored localized experience so that you can consume your content and engage in the experience you want. 8. What's the weirdest community you've ever been a part of? A community where they traded recorded cassette tapes of concerts by the Grateful Dead rock band. 9. One Tweet-sized life advice you would give to the world on your deathbed? Seize the day, travel, see the world, learn another language, experience another culture, and connect with different types of people.

Matthew Kobach is the Director of Content Marketing at Fast, a PhD dropout, and former social media manager at NYSE. Matthew joins us in this episode to share how he used community building lessons to create gripping content, grow social media channels, and communicate more effectively. Matthew shares his three steps to building a social media brand, which consist of being unbelievably niche, being consistent, and compounding tweets. He teaches how to become a lighthouse on social media and his routine for planning and ideating social posts. We wrap up talking about the necessity for passion in what you do and letting what you're good at become a passion. Check out this episode to improve your social media presence and become an effective communicator. Who is this episode for?: B2B & B2C, Online, Revitalizing 3 key takeaways: - Three ways to build your social media brand: Be Unbelievably Niche, Be Consistent, Compound Tweets. - Be the lighthouse for topics you’re interested in. 90% of people don’t post, they just read. Get this 90% to look at your content. - Need to be passionate about and enjoy what you’re doing. Being good at something makes you passionate about it. No matter what you do, there will be aspects you don’t love - but make sure it’s something you’re curious about. Notable Quotes: “You need to be passionate about it. You need to actually enjoy it. So being good at something makes you passionate about it. You know, so if you're, if you're able to, uh, tap into something, you've got this really active community and, and you're, you know, you're the one kind of heading it, you're going to be passionate about it. So it's probably going to work out, but for you to go through that kind of the muck and mire of it when it's not really going that well, that's when it should be something that you're actually interested in.” “90% of people don't really post on social media, 9% post, a medium amount, and 1% of post most of it. So those 90% of people, they have interests, they want to participate. Maybe they'll reply once in a while, but for the most part, they just want to read interesting thoughts. So that's the lighthouse - you’re trying to get those 90% of the people, and they're looking for topics that interest them. The only way for them to find you is if you turn your light on and you start talking about the things that interest you, and you've just got to hope that they're actually attracted to what you have to say.” Rapid fire question answers: 1. What’s your favorite book to recommend to others? How to win friends and influence people 2. What’s your most memorable story? When at the stock exchange, Snapchat had just started and he needed to enlist Snapchat in the stock exchange. His goal was to make his snapchat really good. Recognized in NYC as the “New York Stock Exchange Snapchat Guy”. 3. What’s a Community tool or platform that you love to use? None, doesn’t like using them. 4. If you could only follow 3 people on Twitter, who would they be? Danye Taylor, David Parrell, OrangeBook 5. What’s your ultimate tip for someone who wants to improve their reputation online? Get better at communicating exactly what it is you mean. 6. Weirdest community you’ve been a part of? Traded and burned CD’s with others from the band ‘Fish’. 7. If you’re on your death bed and you could only leave one piece of life advice behind for all the future generations, what would that advice be? Say what you mean to say, say what you want to say. So much in life is about not communicating what we feel because we can’t or are scared to articulate it.

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Max Rothery, VP of Community at Finimize, a platform that provides investment education for casual investors in small, digestible bites. Max has a truly wide range of work experiences, from working in a bank to working in the film industry. He even ran a record label. Learning anything new is more effective if, alongside self-learning, you learn from others. This is where having a community of learners plays a big role. The Finimize Community helps casual investors capitalize on tech tools to connect and learn from other people like them. This episode is packed full of insights about community from a person who had no experience in the field when they first started. Listen to the full episode for specific insights on how to use your community for research. Who is this episode for? For community managers who have started in the community field from other fields and casual investors. Three key takeaways: 1. When a community makes sense for service-oriented businesses: Learning content includes several questionable sources online. Creating high-quality content that people love to consume and then creating a paid community around it helps to profitably solve this problem. Talking to your community (free or paid) helps you understand the different types and subtypes of people your content will help and their favorite topics. 2. Researching Community Members: As a first step to your community strategy, start by talking to the most engaged fans and understand their intrinsic motivations in life. Expand this circle in steps until you get credible data on a solid ideal customer profile (ICP). After this, create, grow, and optimize your community to improve the experience of this ICP so that any new members will find something they have in common with existing members. Have a clear business goal (what your company gets out of the community) and a clear community goal (what members get out of being in the community). Be ready to leave out a particular segment that is not well-represented in your data set to focus on your most profitable ICP. 3. Making the best use of community spaces: Create a community space that allows connections and public discussions to flourish. Let your content team find new ideas from these discussions. Your sales team can also use these spaces for competitive research. Make sure you collect data to prove the efficacy of any insights you use from the community. Notable Quotes: 1. “The best thing to do when you lose money is to speak to someone else. That's [how you realize] that's kind of the point of investing. It's like, sometimes you do well, sometimes you don't. I think that that's a really natural way for a natural reason that a community should exist. ” 2. “We're just creating spaces and watching and observing, and then trying to feed that back and give context to the rest of the business” 3. “Our core audience is probably like twenty-seven to forty-year-olds that have got surplus income [and are] working in well-paid jobs and investing on the side… We're saving them time that they can't get anywhere else. If we try to focus on students or even beginner investors, it distracts us from delivering to that core audience.” Answers to rapid-fire questions: 1. If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would that be? Burgers. 2. What's your favorite book to give as a gift to others or to recommend to others? “Rules for Revolutionaries” by Becky Bond and Zack Exley. 3. A go-to community engagement, tactic, or conversation starter? Reserve time with people to talk more with them about a particular topic. 4. Have you ever worn socks with sandals? Yes, wearing them while recording this interview 5. What's the weirdest community you've ever been a part of? A natural wine community that was associated with a startup but members ended up creating a parallel, more helpful wine community of their own. 6. Tweet-size deathbed advice? Life is always the most rewarding in the deep end.

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Gabrielle Dolan, Founder of Jargon Free Fridays and Speaker and Author at Gabrielle Dolan Consulting. Gabrielle realized the power of storytelling toward the end of her corporate career. This motivated her to learn about storytelling and led her to grow her skills into a full-fledged coaching business. After leaving her job at the National Australia Bank, she went into communication coaching for corporations, where she helped them use storytelling to communicate effectively with employees and customers. Seventeen years later, she’s a highly sought-after storytelling coach and keynote speaker. This podcast is full of stories and anecdotes about how powerful stories can be. Gabrielle draws from her wealth of experience to share tips and strategies that businesses can use to tell their own stories. These stories are generally a branding activity, but they do need to be told well. So, Gabrielle also shares some simple tips to structure your stories for maximum impact. Who is this episode for? Community managers for brand-new communities or business owners who want to build a community with a soul. Three key takeaways: 1. Storytelling for Community Building: Corporates can use stories to increase membership numbers and generate excitement among members so they engage naturally and frequently in their community (onboarding). Ongoing stories can be rooted in the values and behavior of your company and are also the social glue that keeps propagating outside your community. They keep your brand relevant among the larger cohort of your business partners, employees, customers, and well-wishers. 2. Storytelling to Communicate Values of Your Community: Instead of listing DOs and DON’Ts as rules of your community, try communicating them through stories. Stories are a fun way to learn, they add more context, and they also enable easier retention of those messages. Get major stakeholders on video telling stories to share the values of your organization and your community. This is a great way to realize the superpowers of storytelling for your community. 3. Roadblocks to Unlocking the Power of Storytelling: Most people who say they don’t have a story to tell are underselling themselves because they think of “the hero’s journey” as the only type of story that would interest somebody. A good way to break this mindset is to realize that you are not writing a Hollywood blockbuster and that you can let go of this weird “performance anxiety”. Start by defining the message/value/behavior that you want to communicate with the story you want to tell, and then spend enough time finding high-quality stories from your core group. Keep your stories specific and succinct, so you grab your audience’s attention and maintain it throughout the length of the story. Notable Quotes: 1. “You probably don't need storytelling if every time you communicate people understand what you're saying and can remember it. So if you're doing that really well, then you probably don't need it. And they go, oh, well, you know, that's not always the case. And then I go, if you can influence people all the time, where you get people on board whether it's buying your stuff or buying into an idea and they're fully engaged in it, then you probably don't need storytelling either.” 2. “The real power of the story is they will be able to retell the story, which means really good stories can have this ripple effect. So it's not only you just recruiting - for want of a better word - people into your community. It's actually your members that can share the stories and recruit people into your communities.” 3. “The story explains the “why” and if you're not explaining the “why,” then it's not really making an impact” 4. “Whether it's a company or a community, everyone has a story, and it comes back to why did they start? Like if you just fundamentally ask someone to say, why does this community exist? Why does this company exist? You'll find a story. You'll find someone passionate about something. You'll find someone solving a problem around.” Answers to rapid-fire questions: 1. If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be? Vegemite toast. 2. What's your favorite book to give as a gift to others or to recommend to others? “The Cheetah That Cannot Run” - a book Gabrielle’s daughter wrote and illustrated at the age of fourteen as a school project. 3. What's a great conversation starter that you like to use in groups or in communities? Asking people “What's your superpower?” 4. Have you ever worn socks with Sandals? No. 5. What's the weirdest community you've ever been a part of? Thought Leaders’ Business School - what’s weird in a good way about this community is that everyone openly talks about money and what they’re working on in a supportive, non-competitive way. 6. One Tweet-sized piece of advice for the rest of the world on how to live? “Be yourself. Everybody else is taken”. It’s a quote from Oscar Wilde.

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Marius Ciortea, Chief Community Officer at IBM. Marius leads the community strategy of forming an engaging brand presence to interact with their community of existing customers. He will be discussing how to share best practices and use common terminology to expand the experience beyond the company brand and fuel the fireside chat. Who is this episode for? B2B, Successful Brands, Mature Organizations, Scaling, Revitalizing Three key takeaways: 1. IBM’s Community Strategy: Companies should value customers above everything else. IBM's community shift aims to keep the customers satisfied, engaged, and loyal to the brand 2. Developing a Cohesive Community Experience: 1. Companies need to focus more on the end-users that influence the buying decision. 2. Create various points of communication to bring the community closer and to interact directly with individuals. 3. Focus on clearly defining the purpose and the strategy of the organization 3. Showing the Scale and Investing in a Community Brand: Community managers should feel good about the tools available to drive scale and take a more nurturing stance in their role. Companies from the same community influence each other. If different organizations create positive experiences for the users, they will become engaged and active within the community. Notable Quotes: 1. “I never fully understood why communities were relegated to a community manager role in the world of social media. I don't want to knock social media, but you are talking to everyone, and you don't know the impact that you're having. When you're talking in a community, especially a community of customers, you're talking to your customers. I believe smart companies should value the customers above everything else. Therefore, you should not let that conversation live with a junior intern.” 2. “I feel like the real influencers are the guys that actually use your software in and day out. If you get those internal users to be your advocates, signing the check will be a no-brainer for the decision-makers. The true influencers are inside the company that is already using the product. So that is why I think companies need to focus on the users more because they are ultimately making the buying decision.” 3. “The purpose that I have is to create a place where customers can share their thoughts and learn from each other. Ultimately, if they share their experiences and learn from each other, they will do more with the products. And that is right, regardless of technology, language, product, or whatever it is that unifies all together.” Answers to rapid-fire questions: 1. If you could only have one kind of food for the rest of your life, what would that food be? Spaghetti Carbonara. 2. What's your favorite book to give or to recommend to people? Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. 3. What's a go-to community engagement, tactic, or conversation starter that you like to use in your communities? T-shirts and beer. Anytime people get together, get them a t-shirt, and if you can give them a beer, they will love you forever. 4. What's the weirdest community you've ever been a part of? My kid, who is 15, told me that he is sort of a community manager on a Minecraft community on this court. 5. What advice do you have for community professionals who want to become chief community officers one day? Be clear in what you're trying to achieve for your company. 6. How to break the silos? Interview your customers, ask them questions on how they feel being siloed. 7. How do you evaluate a platform to choose for your community? Be clear on your purpose and then match your or your community's capabilities to that purpose.

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Sahil Lavingia, Venture Capitalist at shl.vc and Cofounder and CEO at Gumroad. Gumroad exists to help every creative earn a living selling the products they make directly to their audience. Previously, he was the second employee at Pinterest and worked on Turntable's mobile apps. Crowdfunding has become a great, viable option for entrepreneurs in the US ever since the SEC raised the crowdfunding limit to five million dollars. In this episode, Sahil talks about why crowdfunding is a great direction to take for businesses looking for investment. He also explains the origins of Gumroad, how his personal boundaries helped him make Gumroad a lean and efficient business, and how he raised a five million dollar crowdfunding round for the company. This episode explains how a VC’s approach to doing business is different from entrepreneurs who build those businesses. Sahil also gives an overview of why minimalist entrepreneurship is important and how entrepreneurs can explore this path. Who is this episode for? Entrepreneurs, VCs, and those looking for guidance on crowdfunding and a minimalist approach to entrepreneurship. Three key takeaways: 1. Why is Minimalist Entrepreneurship Important?: Entrepreneurs have to be introspective and find more fulfilling goals for themselves - a middle ground of where they can be happy with their progress - because not all businesses can turn into one-billion-dollar companies. In this episode (and his book), Sahil explores how entrepreneurship is a way of doing any kind of business and not just a singular career path. 2. A More Thoughtful Approach to Entrepreneurship: Start with a singular focus on profitability and make your company sustainable. Make the community a pillar of your business. First, define what kind of business you don’t want to build and use that to define the type of business you want to run. Sahil explores this idea further in this episode and his book. 3. The Difference Between the Approach By VCs and Entrepreneurs: Entrepreneurs do a single business for multiple years/decades. VCs don’t care for entrepreneurs being able to run a business for ten to twenty years. Their major concerns are metrics that show how efficiently a company they invested in is being run. VCs have a different risk profile because they manage multiple businesses in a single year, and if one fails, they have other businesses to concentrate their efforts. Notable Quotes: 1. “What I love about crowdfunding is that it basically takes two of those cohorts and sort of those two constituencies and merges them together. Creators can be customers. They can also be investors in the company and they can of course work for the company too.” 2. “Profitability means sustainability, which is kind of like having your own book versus venture capital, which often feels like you're treading water, you're looking at your burn rate and you're like, something needs to change here. I'm going to eventually run out of oxygen. And so that's like the first thing is like, I think a lot of people need to think about building businesses where there's revenue coming in, basically from day zero.” Answers to rapid-fire questions: 1. What's the weirdest community you've ever been a part of? His oil painting class with retirees. 2. One tweet-sized piece of deathbed advice for the rest of the world? Build stuff and do it in public because building stuff is for other people and doing it in public is the best way to make friends. Answers to audience questions: 1. What is the strongest piece of advice you have for community builders when facing perceived failures? Be open and transparent with everybody. When Sahil laid off fifteen out of twenty people at Gumroad, his team was receptive because they knew of his difficulties in raising funds for over three months. Sahil also maintains the same level of transparency about company culture with anyone who joins Gumroad as an employee. 2. What are some key differences you see between being an entrepreneur and a freelancer? Entrepreneurs are really associated with the thing that they're building. The beauty of freelancing is that you have a low-ego kind of approach to building stuff. 3. What was your first experience in a virtual community? In Singapore, Sahil learned iOS development at iTunes University.

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Seth Godin, Founder of the altMBA, prolific blogger, bestselling author, and pioneer of the concept of community. Long before community was considered the new moat, Seth was at the forefront of what it means to turn a scattering of followers into a mission-oriented community. In this fireside chat, David and Seth discuss the importance of community and why it must be at the center of all company operations. They also discuss what it means to make a community authentic and knowing when to “trim the fat” - i.e. let go of members whose vision doesn’t align with that of the community. This episode also includes key insights on how marketing specialists don’t understand their community and basic principles of diversity and inclusion in communities. Who is this episode for? Beginners, professionals, and leaders in the community and diversity and inclusion spaces. Three key takeaways: 1. Why care for the community?: The collective decision-making power of people in a community is more persuasive than any advertisement and is even more pronounced in virtual communities. If you create irreplaceable value, the community naturally becomes a part of members’ network, and - by extension - your brand becomes a part of their life. Building a highly engaged community is about finding what connects people in your tribe together. Don’t forget to use empathy to implement the guardrails around principles and the purpose in which the community first came into existence. 2. Making a community authentic: Consistent authentic experiences that become the character of the community is often more important than the authenticity of its members. All communities change as they grow in size. Community leaders have to be intentional about this change because their choices in these growing times reflect their leadership abilities. 3. Community vs marketing: Marketing is about telling true stories that spread and change people’s opinions or actions. The more you empower your community in different ways, the more likely your marketing efforts will show results. Many marketing specialists do not understand their community. Their tribe is either non-existent or is completely different from what they imagine it to be. Spend time understanding your tribe so that you can effectively engage them and grow the group into a community - profitable or otherwise. Notable Quotes: 1. “The only time people complain about hierarchy and power dynamics is when the boat isn't going, where they told the boat was going to...Where we get into trouble is when people commit to a journey and then all of a sudden a power-hungry leader takes it somewhere else” 2. “Leadership involves saying, this is where I'm going. Who wants to [come]?” 3. “Everyone in the company works for the head of the community. The way you answer the phone, your pricing, or… who you're hiring, your DEI strategy, all of these things that prove to the head of the community because if there is no community, there is no company.” 4. “Generosity doesn't mean free, generosity doesn't mean lowering the price of what you do or giving it away. Generosity means showing up with emotional labor to do difficult work.” 5. “Most of the time most organizations need to find the humility to say, oh yeah, there's a community out there. How can we feed it? Because if we feed it, we will learn permission. Permission will get us attention. Attention will get us [the] trust and trust will get us the benefit of the doubt, which will give us a chance to do it again.” 6. “If you make a thing, service, or product that lends itself to a community that already exists, they will probably welcome you, but don't get hung up on owning and operating the platform. Because if you do that, you only have a tiny fraction of those people.” 7. “If you build a community where people talk to other people in ways that are hurting. In ways that undermine their ability to contribute because of their background, you are not actually succeeding at why you set up the community.” Answers to rapid-fire questions: 1. Where do you buy your glasses? Franny's Fabulous, Mascot. 2. What's the most impactful book you've ever read or a book that you love to give as a gift to others? The Art of Possibility and The War of Art. 3. Your go-to community engagement, tactic, or conversation starter that you like to use in your communities? “What led to you being who you are or how did you get this job?” 4. Who in the world of community would you most like to take out for lunch? The disciples who figured out how to go from being a tiny sect to a worldwide religion. 5. What's a community product that you wish existed? A way to let people who are being patient know that they might be onto something. 6. What's something that you wish more people asked you? “How can I put myself on the hook?” 7. What's the worst mess you've ever had to clean up? Sent wrong emails to a client’s email list twice and the client threatened to have them arrested. 8. The weirdest community you've ever been a part of? The balloon animal community and the mascots. Answers to audience questions: 1. Which title is better - Community Leader vs Community Manager? Internally in the company, the title “Community Leader” provides more visibility and credibility with regard to the community. Within the community, it doesn’t matter much. 2. What are your three favorite podcasts right now? 99% Invisible, The Moment, The Ministry for the Future (Audiobook). 3. With regards to diversity and inclusion, how do you know who’s “on the wrong boat”? When someone constantly speaks against the cause of the community in a way that their personal thought starts to undercut the purpose of the community, they are on the wrong boat. 4. What are your best directions when cleaning up the community space or revamping it and rolling those kinds of changes out to new members? Read books like Crossing the Chasm: and Diffusion of Innovations.

This week we have a different type of episode. This episode is a crosspost of my (David Spinks’) talk in an episode of the Community Experience (CX) podcast with hosts Jillian Benbow and Tony Bacigalupo. You’ll learn about the number one mistake to avoid when measuring your community impact, identifying and engaging super members in an authentic way, and how a kid with a passion for a Tony Hawk video game became one of the leading voices in the digital community movement. Who is this episode for? First-time community managers and managers of brand new business communities. Three key takeaways: 1. Evolution of the identity of community professionals: In the early days, a community professional was someone who ran a Facebook page, and the community management function was not well understood by organizations. Larger companies found - and often still find - it operationally challenging to build and manage their communities because of their sheer size. Now, professionals in the community space have used their experience in creating communities and conferences like CMX Summit to carve out a unique identity for their profession. 2. How community became a tool for business growth: The lack of directly monetizable assets in the community means they are more likely to divert their profit away from the community towards other initiatives with higher ROI. Community professionals have to navigate the intersection of social norms of connection and business norms of profit to bring out the value of communities for the businesses that commission them. The most powerful way to convey the value of a brand is to convey the value and social benefits of the brand’s community. 3. Easy wins for starter communities: Start with the business objective and use that as a constraint to define what kind of community programs and platforms you invest in. Every objective will have its own set of experts, platforms/tools, protocols, and a customized budget with expected outcomes. Starter communities would find it more efficient to measure business impact if they only focus on one or two parts of the “SPACES model” that David talks about in his book “The Business of Belonging”. Focus on building one-on-one relationships by focusing on conversations centered around the participants’ goals. Notable Quotes: 1. “You find a group of people who are isolated, who don't have a place to express an identity that they have, and you give them that space where their identity is accepted, it's made into the default, it's made into the norm, it's even celebrated. It can be life-changing for people.” 2. “There's no greater way to motivate someone to trust you as a brand than to give them a true sense of belonging, and to say, don't just trust us, we're creating a network, a community, a space where now you can form relationships, you can get support, you can grow your career here. That's, to me, the ultimate form of trust, and that's where the massive opportunity lies for businesses to invest in the community.” 3. “The beauty of community is that there are countless ways that you can build community... At the end of the day, all [that] the community is connecting people to each other so they can help each other and form relationships. There are countless ways you can do that” 4. “Orienting around a business outcome just makes it inherently easier to know exactly what success looks like because it's baked in right from the start” 5. “You don't want to open up a new forum and expect people to just show up and start creating value for each other if you don't have a starting point. In fact, you could end up doing a lot of damage because those people are going to start talking to each other about you and you won't be able to control it, and you might not like what they have to say.” 6. “Relationships are the atomic unit of community. If you break down a community into its atomic units, it's just a bunch of relationships of people with each other.” 7. “You can never force people to engage or to do something they're not intrinsically motivated to do. But what you can do is find the people who are intrinsically motivated, put them in a position where they have influence... now you're showing other people an example of what being a leader in this community can be.” Answers to rapid-fire questions: 1. As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? A doctor or a lawyer. He picked up a passion for entrepreneurship after he saw a girl in his high school create a wallet for blind people. 2. How do you define community? It is a group of people who are willing to make your problems into their problems. 3. What is something that is on your bucket list that you have done? He climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. 4. What is something on your bucket list that you would like to do? He wants to live in a van for an extended period of time with his family. 5. What is a book that you are loving right now? Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters 6. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would that be? Tel Aviv city, Israel. 7. How do you want to be remembered? As someone who just showed up when people needed it.

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Pablo Gonzalez, Co-founder, and CMO of Be The Stage and Co-Host of the B2B Community Builder Show podcast. Pablo comes from a rich background in community through the nonprofit world. Now he works with many B2B companies and small to midsize businesses. This podcast episode dives deep into relationships and will introduce the concept of the “Relationship Flywheel”. Pablo and I discuss how to create a community around events and use them to create content, nurture leads, and turn those leads into paid customers. Who is this episode for? Community managers and beginners who want to join the field of community as a career. Three key takeaways: 1. The purpose of Community in human life and business: Community is a group of people that are willing to make your problems their own problems. It is the greatest value one can create for people because it opens up opportunities for professional connections and personal discoveries. Influence can come as a byproduct when you are looking to serve other people. Community events can provide content to serve and help people across the customer journey. Adapt the mindset of giving and use it to fuel your content marketing efforts. 2. Community events for content marketing: Recording Q&A’s, webinars, AMA, and other events produce great content to repurpose for social media, blogs, and more. It also helps break down geographical barriers to your influence and helps professional relationships across the globe. It helps drive community at scale, increases pipeline velocity, generates revenue, and makes mass feedback for your product possible. Optimize such events to be about conversations around key topics in your niche and not just around your brand or the product/service you provide. 3. Value, connections, and content - The Relationship Flywheel: Figure out what your audience cares about beyond what you are trying to sell - they are your content pillars. Find connections in your industry who create this content for themselves and/or will create it for your events. Create a periodic event to bring people together and ensure that you enable interactions among the audience, hosts, and guests during that event. The content created this way will be shared among the audiences of your guests. It will grow your connections and your brand. Use stats around this content to figure out points to indicate when the leads are marketing-qualified and/or sales-qualified. Notable Quotes: 1. “If you're driving those four connections while you're creating the content, making it a relationship out of content, then when you repurpose it, it plays better. People own it. ” 2. “The simplicity of having a weekly event and making that drive whatever you're doing, you can save money on however many salespeople you're going to need. And invest a little bit of that money, as the small business owner, into providing these events.” Answers to rapid-fire questions: 1. If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life? Venezuelan Arepas. 2. Favorite books to read or to give to others? Play Bigger by Ramadan, Pratt, et al and The Road Less Travelled by M Scott Peck. 3. Favorite rapper? Outkast. 4. Wildest community story? Speaking at CMX Summit where he became associated with Seth Godin. 5. Number one conversation starter? “What brings you here?” 6. Have you ever worn socks with sandals? No, but he wants to. 7. Who in the world of community would you most like to take out for lunch? Gary Vaynerchuk. 8. What's one community product you wish existed? An all-in-one tool that helps turn conversation recordings into multiple types of content. 9. What's the weirdest community you've ever been a part of? The community around a specific surfboard shape called Mini Simmons. 10. Tweet-sized life advice? It is more valuable for you to try to be a kingmaker instead of trying to be a king.

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Brian Oblinger, Chief Community Officer at Brian Oblinger Strategic Consulting. Brian has worked with top brands such as Acer, Alteryx, Autodesk, Comcast, eBay, The Home Depot, HP, PlayStation, and more. He also co-Hosts the podcast “In Before The Lock” with Erica Kuhl where they discuss community, customer experience, and leadership at scale. In this episode, we discuss how to plan community programs out for the long run and what community professionals need to do to help establish the community industry today. There’s also a lot of good, high-level debate, which I hope gives you interesting insights. Who is this episode for? Senior professionals in the Community Industry and Chief Community Officers or equivalent designations. Three key takeaways: 1. Communities in early-stage companies: Communities that are built before companies find that product-market fit can help validate and refine ideas to build a product/service. Let this community development plan evolve (often it may evolve multiple times) alongside your community and product/service. What works now may not work six months down the line so you shouldn’t let imposter syndrome creep into your mindset. Use advice as inspiration but don’t use it as a diagnosis because “experts” will tell you what works for them but it may not necessarily work for you. 2. Trends in the industry of Community: The incorporation of Community into the core business plan is signaling a boom in the industry. This has also started generating interest from older companies that are looking to grow via the Community route. The tools, expertise, and thought leadership in the area of Community have exploded. This comes with a mix of very intelligent people but also some advice that will never be useful to anyone. 3. Has the Community Industry already reached its peak?: In the long run, Community may become a part of the broader customer experience and customer success initiatives, but it will take a long time for Community to gain its own identity as an independent pillar of business. This progress will look different in different parts of the world. Community professionals will need to accept that business will have a large hand in this progress and will need to learn to communicate in the “language of business” to build and maintain that synergy. Notable Quotes: 1. “There needs to be an understanding that, largely, the community is going to be driven by businesses going forward. Whether we like it or not, corporations and a lot of people [who] have the money, they're the ones that are doing this and sort of helping our industry grow right now.” 2. “We're in a position where if we want to truly seize this moment, we need to do that and we need to do it well” “It's one thing to say the community has this hub-and-spoke, that's a center of excellence and it plugs into the marquee and plugs into customers, but then you put it into practice and you [realize that].. these are not easy problems to solve… all these big questions that come up when you get into the weeds of what does community look like as a department, as a career path in a company.” 3. “Regardless of where it lives and what your title is … you have to become this cross-functional, collaborative animal to succeed in a lot of these companies, especially the bigger ones you have to get comfortable and be good at walking into rooms with people you've probably never worked with before. Meet them halfway and be able to tell a story [about the purpose of the Community].” 4. “When you get really good at that collaboration model, great things can happen” Answers to rapid-fire questions: 1. If you could only eat one kind of food for the rest of your life, what would that food be? Queso (Mexican cheese dip). 2. What's the most impactful or insightful book that you've ever read in the world of the community? Biographies of Bob Chapek (CEO of Disney), Bob Taylor (of Taylor Guitars). 3. Wildest community story? When Brian was moderating a PlayStation community, Sony had postponed a scheduled update and the Community got upset over it. 4. What's something that Brian and Erica (co-host of the “In Before The Lock” podcast) disagree about? Brian couldn’t recall any because their experience is different, but they play off of each other and are good friends. 5. Favorite community engagement tactic or conversation starter? He asks more open-ended, multifaceted questions that spark insightful conversations. 6. Have you ever worn socks with sandals? Yes, when he was young. 7. Who in the world of the community would you most like to take for lunch to be dead or alive? Erica (co-host of “In Before The Lock” podcast) because she lives nearby or Holly Firestone of Venafi. 8. What's a community product or technology that you wish existed? Not a community technology but a time machine because it gives immense power of impact. 9. Weirdest community you've ever been a part of? A community about Squirrel enthusiasts that his ex-colleague Julie Hamill was a part of. 10. All of your life's lessons into one Twitter-sized piece of life advice? Treat people the way you want to be treated.

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Howard Rheingold, a veteran of the art of community, a writer, and a teacher known for his insights on the cultural, social, and political implications of technology. Howard pioneered the term “virtual community” by first speaking and educating students at Harvard University about the issues of using social media at scale. This episode is all about lessons from the origins of community, back when the internet barely existed. Howard takes us back to the good-ol’ days of in-person-only communities. We examine why communities form in real life and how businesses can help sustain communities around their products and customers. Lastly, we talk about what the future of community looks like. Who is this episode for? Community professionals (beginners and experienced) and community historians. Three key takeaways: 1. The common thread of community: Long before the internet arrived, people gathered in groups to support each other during difficult times and to party. All the feelings of mutual aid, love, hate, and companionship have always been a part of our society in different ways. When online communities - such as Facebook, Twitter, or Clubhouse - evolved, it initially made people uncomfortable because “talking to strangers online” was considered weird. Online groups have now become synonymous with the idea of community and our social identity. 2. Why communities form: People coalesce into communities to gain knowledge capital, social capital, and communion. Every piece of knowledge shared could give you ten times more knowledge in return. If you are there for people in need, they will be there for you when you need them. This persists outside of formal frameworks like laws, families, and professional teams. Finding people with whom you share an innate emotional bond is also a major driver and indeed a true indicator of community. 3. Turning transactional conversations into business communities: Start by answering basic insight questions about members, the reasons behind forming the community, and a plan behind managing it. Pay experienced moderators/hosts to ensure that they are not the only ones maintaining decorum and that the first-time participants come back to engage repeatedly. Notable Quotes: 1. “My really simple definition of a community is a group of people who share something in common who communicate regularly. So that could be face-to-face or it could be [online].” 2. “Long before dating apps, how did people find dates? They went to bars and talked to strangers. How different it is to say ‘I'm interested in butterfly collecting. Who else is interested in butterfly collecting?” 3. “Social capital does not automatically happen. It's something that you have to build. You have to give out to others before others will give to you and you have to knit something together.” 4. “Facebook groups [are good in that there are] groups for parents of children with rare diseases and other kinds of mutual aid. But I think you are also exposed to a lot of misinformation, disinformation, and hate through the same platform.” 5. “In good communities, it's not just the professionals who are paid to do so. They cultivate an atmosphere where people want to have a more diverse community and the larger community enlarges their prospects as well. So everybody should be a welcomer and a helper.” 6. “You're not going to have a community unless you can convince the people who first come to not only continue, but to invite their friends.” Answers to rapid-fire questions: 1. If you could only eat one kind of food for the rest of your life, what would it be? Apricots and avocados. 2. What's your favorite book to give as a gift to others? One of Ursula K. Le Guin’s books. 3. The wildest community story? Bringing back a sick member of the Wells community from Nepal back to the US by jumping through bureaucratic hoops and using social capital to find assistance. 4. Have you ever worn socks with sandals? Must have worn it at some point in the past. 5. What's your go-to community engagement, tactic, or conversation starter? Finding what people are interested in and how many people are interested in the same thing. 6. Who in the world of the community would you most like to take out to lunch? Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg out to lunch to tell them what a horrible, horrible thing they’re doing to the world. 7. What's a community product or technology that you wish existed? Identify people who would be a good community if they only knew of each other. 8. What's the weirdest community you've ever been a part of? On the Well, there was a conference called Weird where people could come up with fun stuff and be irresponsible. 9. What's a question I didn't ask you that I should have? The question is “Would we be better off if social media had never happened?”

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Venessa Paech, Australia's leading online communities specialist and Founder and Chief Consultant at PeerSense. Venessa is a seasoned online community strategist, manager, researcher, and educator with over twenty years of experience building community online. She’s also the Co-founder and Director of Australian Community Managers (ACM), a network organization for community building professionals in Australia. In this episode, Venessa and I dive deep into what community governance looks like and what your MVP governance program should look like. We also talk about AI and how these tools are helping us build, understand, and moderate our communities more efficiently. You're going to really enjoy some of the more advanced-level community focused topics that we have in this discussion. We ask a really interesting question of “Is there going to be a day soon where a community can be entirely built by robots with no human facilitation?” You'll find out what her answer is in this episode. Who is this episode for? Community managers and moderators who are also curious about the role of AI in community building and management. Three key takeaways: 1. Are tools enough to build a high-engagement community?: Without a solid social infrastructure, tools cannot engage the people in a community. Why are you better together as a community than apart? Asking such strategic questions will help discover the true value that your community brings. 2. Community governance isn’t as boring as it sounds: Laws to prevent online harassment help hold community managers and creators accountable to protecting basic public decency online - just the way they would in person. Proactive governance includes rules, rewards, and recognition around behavior that demonstrates the character of your community. It also includes any reprimands against behavior that goes against your community’s goals and values. Risk planning for community values will find its way into Community Operations over time. Planning for governance starts conversations that help examine the creator’s vision for the community’s culture and character. 3. AI-driven moderation: Governance automation should be more nuanced and include specific actions and behaviors, rather than being binary. Personalization can create “hand-rails” to help guide a member's journey, but looks very different from one community to another. Community strategists can use AI to find new patterns and discover new ways members discover relationships, but these tools need large data sets for accurate predictions. There’s always a risk of bias coming from existing data sets into AI-driven moderation. AI-moderated communities can be used to advance both good and bad causes. Notable Quotes: 1. “Governance...It's really about how we make decisions that define who we are and where we assign value: Is that a valuable activity? Is that not a valuable activity? Where do we draw our lines? What is crossing the line?” 2. “..potentially using that data as a predictive tool to say, look, these are the trends, this is what's been happening in the last few years around content, around behavior, around topics that are discussed.. and therefore extrapolating, this is what might be happening in the future. It's not a hundred percent reliable of course, but when you've got big data sets, which machine learning loves, then you can do some really interesting things in terms of uncovering hidden gems.” 3. “If you label something as toxic, well, it's toxic perhaps to wider society. You know, our norms, our ethics might say, that's not cool. We don't like that. That's not acting. But within that community, it's not at all toxic, it's who we are, what we value, what we believe.” Answers to rapid-fire questions: 1. If you could only eat one kind of food for the rest of your life, what would it be? Noodles in any form, particularly Laksa - a Malaysian coconut curry noodle soup. 2. What's your favorite book to give as a gift to others? “Sand Talk” by Tyson Yunkaporta. 3. Wildest Community Story? X-Files Anonymous, her first true online community where she met and dated her now-husband. 4. A go-to community engagement tactic, or conversation starter? Sharing pictures of pets. 5. Have you ever worn socks with sandals? No, but she won’t stop others from wearing them. 6. Who in the world of the community would you most like to take for lunch? Jane Jacobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and John Cote. 7. The weirdest community you've ever been a part of? All the FITA communities. 8. What's a community product or technology that you wish existed? To be able to have a conversation with your community as an avatar would be incredibly interesting. 9. What's a question I didn't ask you that I should have? Similarities between working in theater and working in community. 10. Twitter-sized piece of advice from her deathbed? Truly accepting yourself for who you are and having a relationship with an animal.

Greg Isenberg is an online community builder that is dedicated to finding what people are passionate about and building communities for them. He is the Co-Founder of Late Checkout, a company that designs, creates, and acquires online communities that are off of the big social media platforms. Greg shares how he identifies business opportunities with communities that he knows can be monetized and scaled, and what he does to turn this potential into a reality. Greg is a community builder that finds what people are passionate about and creates spaces for them to share their enthusiasm while also making a profit. Greg and David discuss the future of social media and what this means for community builders that want to build a “true community” in 2020 and beyond. Greg knows what it takes to build and scale a community and he shares what he knows to be the key to leading a successful community as an individual. Who is this episode for?: Online communities in all stages (starting, scaling and revitalizing) 3 key takeaways: - The benefits of a community existing on a platform that was created specifically for their community and tailored to its mission - The truth about venture capital funding in the community industry - The impact of showing up for your community consistently and with deep commitment to its purpose

In this episode of Masters of Community, we have an exciting and intense debate between David Spinks and Richard Millington. Rich is the Founder and MD at FeverBee, a community consultancy that has helped over 290 organizations develop thriving communities. He believes that the core purpose of a community is to give people the right information, while David argues that the purpose of a community is to receive and offer help to others they share problems with. Other points in between these extremes are also discussed. The debate will help clarify what community means to your business, how to create a community outside of the “information sharing” purpose, and the correct stats to optimize your community operations. The best part? Our moderator Jen balances the otherwise intense debate with her funny audio effects. Who is this episode for?: Business and nonprofit community managers and analysts. 3 key takeaways: 1. Why do people join a community?: Having a sense of belonging is a great consequence of finding high-quality information in a community. While both are important, they don’t have equal importance. Therefore, you must focus on great information first through customer journeys in their business community, as initiatives to build a sense of community only last while there are budgets for them. A sense of belonging comes from having your problems heard, finding people who have the same challenges as you, and feeling like you are a part of the product-building process. While people don’t actively look to belong in business communities, businesses that provide that feeling will have an upper hand. 2. How to measure a sense of belonging?: Ask simple questions about value, safety, and relationships in the community to help understand the ethos of the community. Understand that the role of creating a sense of belonging is only one of the roles that the community will play in members’ lives. 3. How do you build a community outside the information exchange paradigm?: Relentlessly providing high-quality information quickly helps make your business community a welcoming place where members feel included. Beyond that, to sustain engagement, a sense of purpose in the community is important and will help them see it as a place to receive and create value for others. Understand the different types of communities that can exist and use that to clarify the purpose of your community. What other things should your users be able to take away besides information? Notable Quotes: 1. “A community is never going to be homogenous..as we know, a lot of the time people come for information at first, and then they start coming back more because this starts to become a place where some percentage are going to become more and more invested. Very engaged in the community” 2. “You might use [customer] journeys to make sense, especially at the newcomer phase, but as a full model, I don't think the data supports [the commitment curve model] in a predictive way. I think people jump around all over the place. And it's far messier than what we think”. 3. “I don't think you can build community without investing at the core of really making sure that the people who are creating value feel connected, feel connected to the purpose, feel connected to each other. That's what's going to motivate them to show up every day and create that value for all the other members who are just there to consume information”.

Today we’re joined by an experienced community leader, Holly Firestone, whose work at Birthright, Atlassian, Salesforce, and now Venafi has transformed the way these communities are built and structured. We dive into where Community fits within an organization and the importance of having a separate community team with goals focused on the company goal and the role it can play across the organization. Holly has years of experience designing community teams and discusses the power of having a senior community manager overseeing specialized community managers, as well as the benefits of a community operations manager. Holly dives into the ins and outs of these roles and the importance of having a specific career path and goal for each member of the community team. We finish up by talking about key aspects of managing and hiring a community team, ensuring you make time for one-on-ones and everyone on the team is making decisions within their work scope. If you’re trying to build, structure, lead, or hire a community team - this episode’s for you. Rapid Fire Questions: - Up and Coming Community Builder/Creator: Brittni Cocchiara & Beth Vanderkolk Go-To Community -Engagement Tactic/Convo Starter: What was your first job? (p.s. Holly’s was Chuck E. Cheese) - One Community Metric to Use for the Rest of Her Career: Engagement & valuable conversation. (Although communities are dynamic and this often depends on the business goals). - Weirdest Community Holly’s been a part of: BBYU - jewish sororities and fraternities - Final Life Lesson: Slow down, be kind to others, appreciate yourself, stand up for what you believe in, do what you love, drink water, wear sunscreen, the best support you’ll ever get is the support you give yourself. Notable Quotes: 1. “David: What are the things that you look for when interviewing in order to be able to identify who, who would be a great community manager, community operator for your team? Holly: Number one is empathy. And I think that you can find that in your conversations with anybody and understand, are they thinking about the experience for the people in your community first and foremost, can they put themselves in their shoes? Are they thinking about, you know, building for that, for that group of people? So I think that that's the most important because I don't think anybody can do the work that you do in a community team without that.” 2. David: “What do you think is really important for someone who's managing a community team? What were the systems or things that you did to make sure that team was successful and supported and had what they needed to do their work?” Holly: “ I think a regular one-on-one is so important and it's not just, you ticking off a list of everything that you want to talk to them about. They really have to be in the driver's seat for your one-on-one. So there's always, you spend, you know, half talking about the things that they need to get answered from you or, you know, Whatever questions or topics you need to discuss. And then half you're talking about them, what do they need? How are they feeling, what's going on? But they're equally important in my opinion, you know, and I think that creating a space for them to be able to share is also really important to share on a regular basis.“

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Joshua Zerkel, Head of Global Engagement Marketing (Community + Lifecycle) at Asana. He is an industry veteran in the world of community. He led the community team at Evernote and has now been at Asana for three and a half years building the community team from the ground up. While Josh began his career as a designer, the bulk of his expertise comes from voluntarily and involuntarily building communities as a consequence of helping others. In this episode, David and Josh talk about various aspects of Asana’s community from an enterprise community perspective. Josh shares his two-pronged metrics focus for measuring and communicating the impact of their community team. One of the key takeaways for any new community manager from this episode is how you can grow from a one-member community team to a full-fledged enterprise-scale community behemoth. Finally, Josh helps shed light on a community operations role and how it differs from community management. Who is this episode for? Currently aspiring and first-time community managers. Three key takeaways: 1. Community metrics at Asana: They use program health metrics to get a gauge on what’s happening with their community programs. They also look at business impact metrics from a marketing point of view. Community teams should communicate their value and impact across different facets of their operation such as brand, marketing, media appearances, engagement, and sales pipeline. However, if the community team has fewer resources, start small and pick the most powerful stats that you can directly impact. 2. Fundamentals of Building a Community: Your community must meet customers where they are. Some are comfortable in a small group, while others like large forums, and not everyone will come to a new website to engage in support forms. Therefore, community teams have to study their communities to gradually build a framework for each platform so that people have a variety of ways to connect. 3. Community operations: It’s less about personally talking to people and more about creating systems and getting internal tools talking to each other so that you can scale your community efforts. Repeatable templates and processes created form the backbone that really helps your community efforts scale. Community registration processes can be made hassle-free through automation. Streamline your reporting tools and create dashboards to help internal stakeholders get a quick sense of how valuable your community is at any given point in time. Notable Quotes: 1. “Some people are forum people, others will never go to a forum and just want to meet in person. Others want to feel like they're part of something special and exclusive like a membership program… It's really important to think about the community expansively and think about all the different ways that your customers might want to connect with your company and with each other. So that you can build these frameworks so that they have a place to do those things.” 2. “The community program is designed to drive brand awareness, excitement, and engagement with our brand. And so while there are byproducts of our work, including creating leads, impact on the pipeline, engagement with the product retention, all of those things are not the core focus of our work, but again, we report on all of those because we know that there's impact.” Rapid-fire question answers: 1. What's your go-to pump-up? K-pop music. 2. What was the coolest news story you ever covered in your time? Helped raise awareness about mobile number portability through the story of a woman, and that story caught the attention of lawmakers. 3. What's the most impactful book you've ever read or a book that you love to give as a gift to others? A Harriet Tubman biography. 4. What's a go-to community engagement tactic or conversation starter that you love to use in your communities? Anything food-related. 5. What's your biggest pet peeve in the world of community building? A lot of people still think of community as fun or fluff or extra or something that isn't. 6. What's one community product you wish existed? A miracle API connector that connects several complicated tools to let their data flow seamlessly among each other. 7. What tools do you use? Bevy, Partner Stack, Asana, Snowflake, Common Room, Discourse, Slack - but they’re trying to reduce it. 8. What’s the weirdest community you’ve been a part of? Sci-fi and comic book conventions. 9. What's one question I didn't ask you that I should have? “Why do I do this work?” Josh is an extroverted type of introvert. By creating a community for others, he’s providing that space that he personally is continually looking for. 10. If you were to find yourself on your deathbed today, what advice would you give to the rest of the world on how to live? Be more open and say yes to exploring new paths more often. You never know what that path might lead you to.

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Tiffany Oda, Director of Community Operations at Venafi. Her passion for organization and project management began in school, which she later chose to pursue as a career. With roles in customer support with community engagement, she realized her strengths and weaknesses. As the Senior Programs Manager at Salesforce for the Trailblazer program, she used her organization and process management skills to work internally with community operations. This way, she wasn’t dealing with actual community members. In this podcast episode, she defines this relatively new community operations manager role, such as what the role entails and the line of communication. She also discusses how building a business case to hire an additional Salesforce developer helped her. With this extra pair of hands, she created and implemented a complex reimbursement process and community leader application program at Salesforce. Now that the pandemic is beginning to ease, Tiffany touches upon the need and thought-process behind creating a mixed community that brings people who actively participate in the online community into the real world. Apart from this, there are great tips and discussions in the episode about setting goals as a community ops manager and creating cohesive community experiences across multiple platforms. Tiffany also shares her advice on planning a community roadmap from a community operations perspective. Who is this episode for?: Community Managers who want to strengthen their operations management and project management skills. 3 key takeaways: 1. Community Operation Management: The community ops manager finds gaps in community management processes and develops plans to improve or fix these identified issues. They use comprehensively planned workflows, templates, and tools to empower enterprise-scale community processes. 2. Setting Goals as a Community Ops Manager: Time and money savings goals are the most important for making a business case stronger. On-time delivery, delays, and subjective/objective feedback from community managers and members are also taken into account to set community ops goals. Your processes should enable your community team to spend their extra time performing community management tasks rather than managing these tools. These goals will change depending on what stage your community is at. 3. Creating a more cohesive community experience: Having platform-specific metrics for a multi-platform community helps the community ops manager understand the most popular platforms. If and when the need arises they are then able to direct members to those platforms. Creating and communicating solid, well-documented community setup processes helps integrate unofficial communities into the fold. Create a business case to request additional resources in a function that you are not great or efficient in. Document process metrics, community feedback, and other data as you execute the current “stripped down” version of your plan. Use it to draw future projections that will help make your business case for process optimization stronger. Notable Quotes: 1. “They think at the end of the day with leadership, … they don't necessarily either understand the potential benefit from it or because the community is still nascent, a lot of people still don't quite understand, creating that business case to justify the value and presenting that was actually how I got my resource and it wound up being so good because we build so many tools together” 2. “Also from my standpoint, it was. looking at things that are not necessarily community management driven. So - for example - with reimbursements, spotting trends of maybe some suspicious activity going or, oh, this group is actually just submitting a reimbursement for the top dollar amount, that's possible every single time, why are they spending so much money every month or something like that, where it might not be super apparent” 3. “If, for example, there's an unofficial group, not only do you not necessarily have control [of] what happens in there, but you don't know if they're not officially onboarded to them. They could go years of being in the community without even realizing,..that's not what you want to hear. So yeah, that's a challenge“ Rapid-fire question answers: 1. What’s your favorite book to recommend to others? “Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier” by Robert A Emmons. 2. What's the go-to community engagement, tactic, or conversation starter that you like to use in your communities? Simply talking and being curious about their work. 3. Have you ever worn socks with sandals? Only as a means to an end but not an intentional fashion. 4. Who in the world of the community would you most like to take out for lunch? David Spinks, Rich Millington, and Elizabeth Kinsey (from Slack). 5. If you could give one piece of advice to all new community managers, what would it be? Think about community members and their experience first, since they will be directly impacted by your work as Community Operations Manager. 6. What's the proudest moment of your career? Getting a job at Salesforce and living in San Francisco. 7. Weirdest community you’ve been a part of? A World of Warcraft Community in college. 8. What's the question I didn't ask you that I should have? My pet peeve. I hate the word automagically because it doesn’t convey the amount of effort it takes behind planning automation. 9. If you were to find yourself on your deathbed today, and you had to condense all of your life lessons into one Twitter size piece of advice on how to live, what would that advice be? A combination of “Hakuna Matata” and “embrace the chaos.”

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Jessica Moreno - Former Community and Social Lead at Terraformation. Since 2009, Jessica has been obsessed with bridging the gap between product and community. She strives to bring people together in a way that is meaningful for both members and business. She worked at Reddit for six years, where she was Head of Community Products and the Co-Founder of Reddit Gifts. Jessica talks about how the word “safe community” is a misnomer and discusses the steps to creating actual trust and safety in large internet communities. The main challenge community organizations face when raising funds for their initiatives is the expectation of VCs for fast “hockey-stick” growth. Jessica discusses how human moderators are essential for large communities, as automated moderation has limited capability and often misses clear signs of harassment. David and Jessica also talk about the culture behind monetizing communities and discuss the future of community monetization. Who is this episode for?: Community Managers who are interested in building and monetizing safe and inclusive communities. 3 key takeaways: 1. Building Safe & Inclusive Communities - The complex social structures and the sheer size of internet communities make participants more vulnerable to loss of privacy and harassment. It’s impossible to build a 100% safe community, so it’s better to help people take active measures to feel safe and protected than attempt to simply stop the harassment. Resources, vulnerabilities, moderator training, and input from community moderators help immensely in this regard. When VCs invest in communities and community platforms, they often expect a “unicorn outcome.” Such “hockey-stick-like” fast-paced growth may not be possible with communities 2. Role of Human Moderation in Community Management - Automated technology that perfectly recognizes harassment at a contextual level may not always be possible. Therefore, innovate while you can, but ultimately invest in community management staff responsible for creating trust and safety in your communities 3. Community Monetization Monetization of communities is possible through tips and monthly memberships with paid content. The challenge is to find new and innovative ways to create value worth paying for as a community platform that is different from creator-led communities. A cultural shift to a state where community enabling platforms are considered full-time jobs, beyond tips, is required Notable Quotes: 1. “If you can make a solid code of conduct that is aligned with your values and your mission for the community, you can create what you really want and you can avoid creating an accidental catastrophe of acuity” 2. “You want to let people build the communities they want. So I'm all the way on board with that, but providing resources for them to learn more about best practices. To have more support in what they're doing so that they can feel more confident and just understand it more. I think that would be helpful when I started there.” 3. “Look up the issues. There are articles out there. So there's information out there that you can find, and you can learn about the things that happen if they don't happen to you. So I think that it's a matter of self-education.” 4. “People do expect free things on the internet. It's sort of built that way in the beginning. Nobody really knew how to monetize it, or if they even should. I think in a lot of terms, a lot of situations. So now we're at a place where we realize these are businesses and we do need to be paid for them... And people are kind of off-put by that a lot of times, just like that I've had this for free forever.” 5. “You can even go deeper with advertising and I should do like partnerships between brands and communities because now more and more brands are trying to reach communities and partner with them and reach their audience. And it's hard for community builders, especially if they're just like an indie community entrepreneur to find a big brand to work with. So we want to facilitate those connections.” Rapid-fire question answers: 1. What book has had the biggest impact on your life? The Snowy Day, a children's book by Ezra Jack Keats 2. What's a go-to engagement tactic or conversation starter that you like to use in your commute? Talk about something that you love personally and then asking other people their stories 3. What was the funniest or most interesting secret Santa from the Reddit Secret Santa? It was a big shark and there were instructions to perform surgery on the shark 4. What is the proudest moment of your career? Gifts for teachers at Reddit gifts What's the question I didn't ask you that I should ask? Weaponizing benign tools that we just discussed Words with Friends 5. If you were to find yourself on your deathbed today, and you had to condense all of your life lessons into one Twitter-sized piece of advice to the rest of the world [what would it be]? When going through something really hard, stop beating yourself up over your mistakes. Step back and think “if my friend came to me with this problem, what would I say to her?” And then try to apply that to yourself

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Richard Millington - Founder of FeverBee. Richard knows a LOT about community, in fact, he has published three books on the topic… in this episode we dive deep into how to create a community, a data driven approach to improving your community and how to design your community strategy. Richard also covers how you can grow engagement, how to create content and how to uncover gaps and opportunities for growth. Richard shares an intriguing approach to creating unique experiences for members by introducing members to experiences specific to where they are in their community member journey as opposed to engaging all members at the same time with the same experience. On top of all this, Richard shares a ton of practical advice, data and insights on community technology, causation versus correlation and how to tie community metrics back to business results. Who is this episode for?: Community Managers! 3 key takeaways: 1. The Community Manager Magic - Richard shares that the true magic of the community manager is their ability to get people to make useful contributions to a community. Richard consults with businesses that want to give out swag or offer some kind of reward… but actually Richard shares that this motivation is often intrinsic for a community member - they want to know they are making a contribution 2. Working for free - Richard believes that a community is a wrapper that motivates people to do things that they would never typically do. Richard states that none of us would go home and plug into a support line for business, but we would all head home and answer dozens of questions for others if we feel like we’re making a difference to people or a cause we care about. 3. Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) - Richard shares that not all community members will be able to make the same contribution. For example, a brand new community member may not be able to write an expert blog post for the community. Instead, Richard urges us to make requests to community members for assets that they will be able to produce based on the stage of their community journey Notable Quotes: 1. “None of us would go home today and then plug into a customer support line to work for free for an organization. But we will go to an online community and answer dozens of questions to help someone else.” 2. “So I think the whole magic of what we do. The real skill in building online communities is being able to persuade every single person to make unique, useful contributions to the group, or at least feel like they can make a unique useful contribution to a group.” 3. “And so often I go to organizations and we talk about how to motivate people to engage in communities. And they start talking about rewards. What can we pay them? What swag can we give them? Or how can we feature them on a billboard or something just like this. But the reality is this is far more subtle, nuanced. Like people don't want their name on a billboard. It's weird. Like if someone offered me to have my face on a billboard in London today, I think probably not that I'm insecure about my face, but it's kind of weird basically, if I can just feel like I'm helping some people in a unique way... that is the most rewarding thing.” Rapid-fire question answers: 1. What book has had the biggest impact on your life? Permission Marketing by Seth Godin and also Endurance by Alfred Lancing 2. If you had a magic wand and could get any data about communities that you can't get today, what data, or what insight would you most want to get? Really clean data that matches buying behavior with member behavioral data 3. What's a go-to engagement tactic or conversation starter that you like to use in your commute? Instead of asking “One interesting thing about yourself?” ask “What is the one thing you did for X?” 4.What's your favorite video game? Counter Strike and chess! 5. Who in the world of the community would you most like to take out to lunch? David, Rachel and Jim from Roundtable and Brian, Erica John and Carrie… you know who you are! 6. What's the community product you wish existed? The “ice breaker” tool that was used at CMX a couple of years back, icebreaker.video which is now: gatheround.com 7. If you were forced to go in house and work on community for one company, what company would you choose? CMX, so I could bring it down from the inside :) 8. What's the weirdest community you've ever been part of? A community for psychopaths... 9. If you were to find yourself on your deathbed today, and you had to condense all of your life lessons into one Twitter-sized piece of advice for the rest of the world on how to live, what would that advice be? Just go and do interesting things. Nothing is ever as good or bad as you think it will be...

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Monica Lluis, Global Community Lead at Cisco. The Cisco community has evolved from a single support forum to a million-member-strong enterprise community in several international languages in two decades. Monica shares that goal-oriented processes and protocols for community management are more important than the tool you use. Monica also shares that communities can evolve over really long periods of time in all aspects, so don’t worry about getting things right quickly at the start because there’ll always be room for growth. A community in a tech company can help identify specific issues (through customer questions) that can be sent to the product team to fix. Cisco used active feedback sessions with their community to introduce and integrate a background noise cancellation feature in Webex, which has been in high demand since the start of the pandemic. Monica suggests to make events such as “Ask Me Anything” and webinars a part of your community engagement strategy because these events generate a lot of useful support content and can be used to encourage community participation. Who is this episode for?: Community Managers, Enterprise Tech Community, CCP Community, Event Managers 3 key takeaways: 1. How to internationalize your communities: Identify the need for a local community based on the number of questions you have for that language, regional sales, internal feedback, and if there are enough people speaking that language in a community. Provide a space for participants to not only ask questions but also allow them to create their own content. Keep translating the most popular content into the new language for the first few months to keep the community active until they start doing it on their own. Appoint a local community moderator for each language. 2. Cisco Community Reward program: Monthly recognition with member’s choice award, rookie award, the best publication award, the Developer of the Month award, an award for a champion of small businesses, another award for the CCP community, and a WebEx community champion award. Local communities have smaller awards. Cisco VIP is an elite annual program for people who have won many awards across categories who get perks such as t-shirts, conference passes, and Cisco certification vouchers. Event contributors also have their top contributor awards. There’s also a lifetime “Hall of Fame” program. 3. Community metrics used at Cisco: Their community team tracks traffic, contributions to the product, and case deflection. Their marketing team tracks the conversion of community participants into customers. They have reported that active community participants are twice as likely to buy from Cisco when compared to non-participants. Notable Quotes: 1. “You have to be open to that change because if you don't evolve, you die” 2. “The community is a gold mine of data that can be used to [do] many other things” 3. “It is only when you come and see valuable content that you will stay. And you may be able to ask your question in that language, and then we better get those answers quickly because otherwise, people may not wait [for] enough [time]”. 4. “Events are a key aspect of the engagement. There are two reasons for that and it's part of the strategy. It helped us to keep building the intellectual capital in the community because the people that deliver those events.. all the content .. becomes a very valuable resource. The other part of the strategy with the events is we .. promote .. the community implicitly. [If] people want to attend this event, they have to come to the community to register. So it is a way to make awareness campaigns without promoting the community directly” Rapid-fire question answers: 1. What's your favorite book to give as a gift to others? “Drive” by Daniel Pink 2. What advice do you have to new community managers about any key mistake or something that they should aim to avoid? Prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Don't get into the trap of trying to grow very fast. 3. What's a go-to engagement tactic or conversation starter that you like to use in your commute? Always start with praise and acknowledgment and be very grateful for their time because we don't pay them to participate in the conversation. 4. Have you ever worn socks with sandals? Yes, during this pandemic and around the house in the winter. 5. Who in the world of the community would you most like to take out to lunch? Her globally distributed team of community managers. 6. What's the proudest moment of your day? Her Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert certification because it was tougher than her two Master's degrees combined. 7. What is a community product that you wish existed? Seamlessly integrate community content and databases with other digital properties at the click of a button. 8. If you were to find yourself on your deathbed today, and you had to condense all of your life lessons into one Twitter-sized piece of advice for the rest of the world on how to live, what would that advice be? instead of just thinking about your worst-case scenario, think about what is your best, worst-case scenario.

Beth McIntyre, Head of Community at Bevy, and David Spinks, Co-Founder of CMX and VP of Community at Bevy, give the run-down on CMX Summit Rise: 2021. In this episode, you’ll learn about the origins of CMX, how Summit got started, and the challenges experienced along the way. They share their first CMX Summit experiences and the unique, genuine connections consistently created at this community conference. David and Beth discuss the meaning behind this year’s theme, RISE, and the sub-themes of the Rise of Community-Driven Business, the Community Career Path, and Community Culture and Innovation. Community has taken the business world by storm and this year’s summit will ingrain the community in business for the long run. CMX Summit Rise will be completely FREE with a 1-day workshop on August 31st and a 2-day conference on September 1st and 2nd. Join community professionals from around the world and register for your free tickets here: https://bit.ly/3vEW76k

This week, we have the pleasure of hearing from Evan Hamilton, the Director of Community at Reddit. Evan joined the Reddit team at a time when trust was broken between the moderators and the Reddit team. Evan rebuilt trust in the community by ensuring transparent communication with the moderators, addressing concrete issues, humanizing both the employees and the moderators, and creating small programs and teams to work directly with moderators. The community council became crucial to building trust and was created as a safe space for moderators to share feedback, challenges, questions, and insights with the executive team of Reddit. We talk about the beauty of Reddit’s pseudonymity and how users bring their true selves to the table and talk openly about their low points and experiences, finding a sense of belonging by connecting with ‘their people’. Reddit will continue growing its community programs at scale to enable and support its moderators through any challenges and questions they have. Who is this episode for?: B2C, Online, Scaling 3 key takeaways: - The steps to building community trust include communicating transparently, addressing concrete issues, humanizing everyone, and creating programs to enhance community communication and processes. - The benefit of pseudonymity in the Reddit community is that it gives people a place to be 100% themselves and share vulnerable, real experiences that they have been through. This outlet helps users find ‘their people’ and feel a sense of belonging. - Reddit scaled its large moderator community by creating a Community Council to provide information, receive feedback, and communicate effectively with moderators representing ‘subreddits’. These members would distill information from the council to their moderator teams and ensure everyone was on the same page. Notable Quotes: 1. What did you practically do to make it feel like a safe space? I think some of it is just the access. It's easy to be frustrated when you're talking to a representative, right? It's the, “I want to talk to your manager syndrome.” You feel like the person you're talking to doesn't have power and so you just try and push past them to get to their manager. By actually involving the product managers who are building these products and eventually involving our execs, it was clear that you're not going to get any higher up the chain. This is the person who's building this thing and I think that helps. Having a buffer in between can be good but can also be detrimental because people feel like this representative isn't going to go fight for me. I think the other part was just framing and priming and setting up the conversation as, ‘Hey, we're all here because we're on the same page. We want Reddit to be great. We want moderators to be a big part of that.’ 2. “What we've seen on Reddit is the benefits that pseudonymity brings and that people can really bring. They're their true selves to the table, right? I've seen amazing conversations where, you know, mothers are sharing their experiences with postpartum depression, something that they really may not feel comfortable sharing, attached to their name in a public setting. We have amazing communities for marginalized groups. We have support communities like stop drinking, where people are talking very, very honestly about their low points and because of the pseudonymity combined with a very robust safety team, making sure that regardless of what pseudonym you're using, you're behaving, people are able to be themselves and let this raw part of them loose.” Rapid fire question answers: 1. What’s your favorite book to recommend to others? “Predictably Irrational” OR “Big” 2. Who’s an up and coming community builder you think is going to do big things? Shana Sumers & Carter Gibson 3. What’s your go-to community engagement starter? Food or a bracket system 4. What is your favorite subreddit? ATBGE - Awful Taste But Great Execution 5. One metric to use for the rest of your career to measure communities? Trust Barometer. 6. Weirdest community you've been a part of? Theater (extraverted actors and introverted tech people) 7. If you’re on your death bed and you could only leave one piece of life advice behind for all the future generations, what would that advice be? Listen to People. We spend way too much time thinking about ourselves and not listening to others.

Rarely do we see a community leader make a difference in so many diverse departments and programs, but Erik Martin is one of a kind. He’s currently the Chief Community Officer at Teal, but over the past 20 years he has worked in the film industry, Reddit, DePop, WeWork, Airtime, and Nike! In this episode, we discuss why the community industry is blowing up and how community stands out from traditional marketing. Erik discusses his role as a Chief Community Officer and shares the vision for Community becoming its own department in businesses. We talk about the benchmark metrics needed to truly understand community health and the complexities of community conversions and analytics. Erik shares valuable nuggets of wisdom about adapting to the needs of the community you’re growing and teaches that the community is always smarter than you and will lead you in the right direction. Who is this episode for?: B2C, In person & Online, Revitalizing 3 key takeaways: 1. Community is always smarter than you are and will lead you in the right direction. They are the ones invested in the product or community and will give you a look into what people actually want and need. 2. The Chief Community Officer Role signals that community is a central pillar to the organization and not just an aspect of another department, such as marketing, sales, or operations. 3. Benchmark metrics is the goal for understanding community health. Having a relative baseline to compare the community metrics to will provide a much more comprehensive, holistic view of the impact on community. Notable Quotes: “I've been reminded over and over again, that the community is always smarter than you are. Meaning myself, the individual, but also the company in a sense, and that if you're really building products, not just for users, not just for community, but with the community, they'll really lead you in the right direction, especially in early stage startups or when you're launching something new. Collectively the group of people is going to be smarter than any one individual or even small group of people.” “I'm the chief community officer but we have a relatively small team, but what it means and the reason why I think it's important... is because what it signals is that community is a central element, it's a central pillar, it's a part of our DNA. It reports to the CEO and I think that's important. The titles themselves are more for external usage, but internally it's like, okay, community is not just a part of marketing or just a part of support or just a part of operations or just a part of a product. It's its own thing that has its own scope, its own metrics, its own contribution to the business.” Rapid fire question answers: 1. What’s your favorite book to recommend to others? Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman 2. Who’s an up and coming community builder you think is going to do big things? Jocelyn Hsu at Picsart and Sanmaya Mohanty (creator of the Community Manager Guide) 3. What’s your wildest community story? ACL Subreddit for people with ligament problems. It’s become a place for people to talk about ACL surgery and post-op recovery, etc. Asked the community on Reddit what was going on with his ACL and found out he had a screw loose in his knee. 4. What’s your go-to community engagement tactic? Challenge -30,90,10 day challenges. Very social and gives accountability. Ex: new vocab word of the day challenge, career challenge, 5. What’s a community building technology App people should be using: Spatial communities or asynchronous real life (ex: Pokemon Go, Augmented Reality, Randonautica, AYA) 6. Weirdest community you’ve been a part of? A Virtual Cult of traditional Chinese medicine with the leader Master Sha 7. If you’re on your death bed and you could only leave one piece of life advice behind for all the future generations, what would that advice be? We are the stories we tell ourselves. If we aren’t happy with who we are and what we are, we need to tell better stories. Links: Teal- https://www.tealhq.com Community Manager Guide- https://guide.cmgr.page/community-manager-page/ Twitter: @Hueypriest Reddit: @hueypriest

Episode Summary: In today’s episode, we’re joined by Lauren Hagerty - Director of Marketing & Community at Power to Fly. This community helps marginalized groups grow and advance in their career, as well as implements and improve companies' DEI programs. Lauren discusses the Power to Fly Virtual Events Program hosted on Bevy and their internal platform, and how they host unique hiring events, community-member hosted events, intimate Keynote Speaker events, and much more. We also dive into the DEI initiatives instilled into their clients’ organizations and metrics used to measure progress. For more information on this community, sign up on powertofly.com Who is this episode for?: B2C, Online, Scaling 3 key takeaways: 1. Power to Fly’s 3-Prong Approach to its organization: 1. Always improving the products they have, 2. How to better serve their clients, 3. How they innovate on new products and services. 2. Various DEI Metrics of Power to Fly: Diversity of Speakers, Diversity of content, diversity of photos used on homepage, and diversity of who’s creating the content. Implement diversity, equity, and inclusion in every aspect of your community. 3. Power to Fly has community members self-organize events starting with an application where the individual must demonstrate the core values, and then through a training program on virtual events and finding the best jobs for their community members. Notable Quotes: 1. “Just as important as it is for us to diversify our companies.It's just as important to diversify the communities that we're building alongside our companies. So the real work here is done in equity and making sure that the people that are coming to your company and coming to your community are staying, participating, and engaging in what you're creating.” 2. “Something that's super interesting about the community world is this is one of the spaces where I think having a wide variety of transferable skills can be utilized to its fullest potential. Whether you have a background in sales, customer success, marketing, social media event planning, there are so many nuances to being a successful community builder. On top of this, just a high level of emotional intelligence and ability to communicate with people. You really can come from any industry from any part of an organization and thrive here because so many roles require such vast experience in multiple different sectors.” Rapid fire question answers: 1. What’s your go-to pump-up song? Remind me to Forget by Kygo 2. What’s your favorite gift to give to others? Perks of Being a Wallflower by Steven Chafsky 3. How did you go from doing Genetic Counseling with a major in Medical Laboratory Science Research to being a Community Manager? Both are about helping people navigate tough information and I transferred my knowledge and passion over. 4. What’s a go-to community engagement tactic or conversation starter? What are you binging on TV right now? 5. Have you ever worn socks with sandals? Yes - with Crocs 6. Who in the world of community would you most like to take for lunch? Lisa Khan of Gather Around 7. What’s a community product that you wished existed? A product with more customization - EX: GA Pixel Embed 8. What’s the weirdest community you’ve ever been a part of? Babs of Peloton - Anyone to talk and share anything around Peloton. 9. If you were to find yourself on your deathbed, what would your last piece of advice be? Everything happens for a reason, but if you work hard, it’s always for the right reason. a. Sub-Advice - Don’t keep your jacket on when you’re in the car, your body’s going to acclimate and you'll stay warmer if you put it on outside.

Scott K. Wilder, Head of Customer Engagement & Community at Hubspot, joins us in this Masters of Community episode to share his years of community knowledge gained from working at Adobe, Apple, Google, Intuit, and more. We discuss the intersection of community and marketing, and where community truly fits within an organization. Scott shares his community building strategy of determining what the customer wants, diving into the data and outages, and implementing integrations and tools to solve any problems. We wrap up talking about working with partners and integration tools, like Bevy and Khoros, to create a seamless community and events experience. Who is this episode for?: B2C, In Person & Online, Scaling 3 key takeaways: 1. Move community around to different parts of the organization every 6 months to integrate community into the DNA of every group in your organization. 2. Initiating community in your organization begins with 1. What do the customers want?, 2. Dive into outages and data to see where people are dropping off, 3. Make sure integrations, systems, tools, navigation are set up properly for experience. 2. To truly understand your community, bring in the customers and have them sit at a table so everyone on the team can hear directly from the customer - not just through text-based answers. Don’t just invite the customer champions, bring in the day-to-day customers. Notable Quotes: 1. “I think of it as a triangle in three parts. So the bottom part are those small fixes you have to do as the outages. In the middle are these things that we think would be successful in the site. And then the top part is like, what are the few big bets that you're going to make? 2. “What we did would move community around to different parts of the organization every six months...but it was a great way of getting community into the DNA of all these different groups. Community became more than just marketing, it became part of product engineering. It is really important to work closely with those that are facing customer facing all the time, like customer success and sales and marketing and support.” Rapid fire question answers: 1. New York or San Francisco? New York bc obnoxious and tenacious, SF because laid back, outdoorsy, spiritual 2. What’s your favorite book to recommend to others? Organizing Genius by Warren Bennis 3. What’s your go-to community engagement starter? Tell me your story, how you got there, and the challenges you faced. 4. Socks and Sandals? No, I’m a croc guy. 5. What's a tip that you have for somebody who is managing community teams? Bring in customers and have them sit at the table so everybody can hear directly from the customer. Get them in the room, not just text. 6. Who in the world of community would you most like to take to lunch? Howard Rheingold 7. What's a community product you wish existed? Embeddable community widget that you can embed into any site that’s text, audio, video, to indicate what type of person is answering questions, etc. 8. Weirdest community you’ve been a part of? Reddit Group of Counting 9. What post-covid activity are you most excited for? Baseball 10. Who’s a leader that has impacted you? Brad Smith, former CEO and Chairman of Intuit. Have to be a great thinker and a great doer to be successful. 11. If you’re on your deathbed and you could only leave one piece of life advice behind for all the future generations, what would that advice be? The only way to predict the future is to just make it.

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Mia Birdsong, a social activist and the author of “How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community”. In this book, Mia explores and expands on the idea of how we connect in a community or family. And in this episode, David and Mia talk about how a culture of self-reliance and how a system of oppression became hurdles for forming community and how overcoming them can help us form more connected relationships. Who is this episode for?: Community Managers, Activists, Social Anthropologists 3 key takeaways: 1. In a culture of self-reliance, we see asking for help as a transaction that we have to reciprocate. When we have more resources, we tend to not seek help because we just use those resources to hire people to do things for us. This culture of self-reliance can alienate us from our community. 2. We can find community during times of struggle, celebration, joy, and sharing. It’s not something we have to learn to do. The emotional need for human connection will reveal itself if we can unlearn the social conditioning of our individualistic culture. 3. Removing systemic oppression from our societies is about dealing with sexism, patriarchy, racism, and ableism and that work will free us to be more human because we won’t be held back by outdated systems of control. Notable Quotes: 1. If you're poor, your experience of being poor is less crappy if you are in deep relationships with folks, because you can leverage social capital and take care of some needs that you have that people who have more resources use financial capital for. 2. There's this box that men fit inside of, and it doesn't allow men to be comfortable in feeling vulnerable or sad or ask for protection or hug each other or cry in front of their friends or tell them that they love them or hold hands. All of these things that men are just trained from a very young age not to do. It's so restrictive. 3. There's the expansiveness we get to lean into around who we are and the discovery of who we are that we get to have because we were no longer held to some preconceived idea of what our identity is, is so freeing. 4. As we expand our understanding of the ways in which we hold power and privilege, we start to notice other people more fully, which then is allowing us to notice ourselves more fully. Rapid-fire question answers: 1. What’s your favorite book to recommend to others? Parable of the Sower and other books by Octavia Butler 2. What mic do you use on your podcast? Shure SM7B 3. In one minute or less, share your wildest community story? (Declined to answer). 4. What’s your go-to community engagement/conversation starter? Food. 5. Have you ever worn socks with sandals? During camping or when it gets cold at night but she doesn’t generally go out like that. 6. Who in the world of the community would you most like to take out for lunch? She has already had meals with most of her favorite people through her work on her book 7. What’s the weirdest community you’ve been a part of? Beekeeping. 8. What have you learned about community building from beekeeping? Most bees are solitary bees, but honeybees can not live individually. Most bees are solitary. Honeybee hives are mostly female. When new Queens emerge and they want to find drones to mate with during warm/spring weather, they go to drone congregation areas far from their hive to maintain health in their community. 9. If you were to find yourself on your deathbed, how would you condense all of your life lessons into one Twitter-sized piece of advice on how to live? Laugh more, love more, rest, more. Listen more, seek joy and pleasure by less shit. Give fewer f***s. Look at the sky. You know, notice, smell the roses, be present in your life. Hydrate.

In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with Maurice Woods, Principal Design Lead at Microsoft and Founder and Executive Director of the Inneract Project. The Inneract Project is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing free design education to underrepresented minority youth, from middle school to high school, to college. Maurice shares his journey using design to ‘change the world’ and how he scaled the Inneract Project to reach thousands of students today. We dive into creating truly diverse and inclusive communities and companies by planning and preparing for the upcoming generation, not just the current pool of candidates. Learn how you can get involved in the Inneract Project and provide opportunities for underrepresented youth in this episode and on www.inneractproject.org Who is this episode for?: Non-Profit, In-Person & Online, Scaling 3 key takeaways: 1. Inneract Project was designed to educate and create opportunities to explore design in career and life for underrepresented youth. 2. Expand more broadly to the bigger issue of inclusivity and diversity. It goes beyond recruiting a diverse workplace and transcends to supporting the upcoming generation of youth and going to the environments where people of color are to see those barriers and work through them. 3. Designer Analogy: The contractor builds your home whereas the architect draws up the plans - they look and try to understand what the terrain is, who the people are, what materials are needed, etc. That is the difference between a designer and a product engineer. Notable Quotes: “That's what Inneract Project is trying to do, and that's what we're working on, and until companies really invest more broadly, they're going to be swimming in two feet of water. They're going to just be getting only a small segment of the potential opportunity that they could be getting if they reach more broadly and get more people of color into that business.” “Design plays a huge role in architecting and developing and helping all parties understand how something should be built and how do you build something that people can actually use and find the value out of.” Rapid fire question answers: 1. What’s your current go-to pump-up song? Disappear by Foreign Exchange 2. One concrete piece of advice that you would give to community builders in how to design communities intentionally? Start small and think scale. 3. What’s your favorite book to gift to others? Small Teaching by James M. Lang 4. What is your proudest mentoring moment? The student went through middle school, high school, and got accepted into design school - lots of retention and work. 5. Have you ever worn socks with sandals? No to flip-flops, yes to slip-on 6. Who in the world of the community would you like to take to lunch? Barack Obama 7. What advice would you give for others who are looking to have a similar impact on their work? Have passion. Care about the people you’re doing it for - that’s all that matters. 8. What is a community product or app you wish existed? Communities across the nation are able to connect with opportunities for their kids - especially with design. 9. What’s the weirdest community you’ve been a part of? A breakdancing community where they would go to parties and practice their dancing and represent. 10. How do we identify and misappropriate people of color through visual representation? We have a prejudice that informs how we interact with other groups outside of our own. Images and portrayals haven’t been communicated by people of color but by whites for years. 7. If you’re on your death bed and you could only leave one piece of life advice behind for all the future generations, what would that advice be? The measurement of success is helping others.

Today we sit down with the one and only, Jon Levy, behavioral scientist and author of “You’re Invited: The Art and Science of Cultivating Influence”. In this episode, we discuss the SOAR Model, how to engage influential people and the three different types of networker. Jon shares the results of years of research from his various different studies of human behaviour… he touches upon the results of a study of 431 matches from the dating app Hinge, why you are 45% more likely to be obese if you have an obese friend and why the shortcut to changing your behaviour is to simply get around those with the behaviour your strive for. Check out the full episode to learn more about how you… can have more influence over influential people. Who is this episode for? People that want more influence 3 key takeaways: 1. Model for creating a sense of belonging and community: Generosity - give without expectation of return Novelty - unique & make sure you enjoy the activity Curation - diverse, unique backgrounds with zero competition - humbling - sense of accomplishment “Aha” moment - breakthrough moment to change opinion or experience 2. Steps to transitioning from novelty to belonging Discovery - people hear about you (Novelty gets people in the door) Engagement - people show up and interact Membership - gives feeling of belonging and creates true community 3. What makes for an effective invitation and experience: The Ikea Effect - People want to assemble it, earn it themselves, or feel like they’re adding value. Information Gap - this gap between your knowledge and what you're being presented with sparks curiosity and intrigue into attending the event/experience. Provide connection and a sense of influence Notable Quotes: “So initially it wasn't even about becoming more influential. That was kind of an end result. For me, it was just about like, how do I get out of debt? How do I lose weight? How do I like meet somebody? I really like, and hold on to that relationship rather than break up after a few weeks. And I figured that the answer was with people... not with just another self-help book title, or I don't know, another personal development course.” “Let's look at Davos, right? Davos is that event where world leaders come together, there is nothing novel about that experience. It is the same old same design, same old experiences, but when you're standing in the snow with Bill Gates and Angela Merkel, that curation is good enough, right?” Rapid fire question answers: 1. What’s your favorite book to recommend to others? The Little Prince 2. Who’s an up and coming community builder you think is going to do big things? Tina Roth Eisenberg 3. What’s your wildest community story? Guessing what people do and she asked if she was a lifesaver - that ended up being the women who saved her life when she was dying of cancer - her song came in the radio and brought her back 4. What’s your go-to community engagement starter? A catalyst question. Ex: ‘If you could break any Guinness book of world record, which would it be?’ OR ‘When was the last time you acknowledged yourself for being proud of yourself, like you actually said, or thought, ‘I'm really proud of myself’ and what was it for?’ 5. Who is someone or a few people that you'd like to invite to one of your dinners that you haven't reached yet? Peter Cullen, the voice of optimus prime from transformers; Michelle Obama; Oprah; or Richard Branson. 6. What’s a community building technology or app that more people should be using? recommendations are one use a news feature - set follow-ups with people that you like for three months later to send them a note that you’re thinking of them and you’re a big fan. 7. Weirdest community you’ve been a part of? Cutco Cutlery - schedule appointments with people to sell them knives. 8. If you’re on your death bed and you could only leave one piece of life advice behind for all the future generations, what would that advice be? The greatest predictor of anything we care about is who we’re connected to, how much they trust us, and the sense of belonging that we share.

Today we welcome Alex Blanton, Senior Community Program Manager at Microsoft to the Masters of Community podcast. Alex studied at the Middlebury College, and had a stint as an Editorial Assistant at the Yale University Press, and has now spent 23 years working at Microsoft. In this episode, we discuss what drew Adam to journalism and then the world of community, the different types of communities Alex has been building at Microsoft, and the business impact of his work. We wrap up by talking about the metrics that can be used to track effective community-building activities, the mistakes Alex has made that he would like you to know about and the tactics he uses to drive engagement. Listen to the full episode to level up your community-building game... Who is this episode for?: Community Managers 3 key takeaways: When connecting community members: think win: win not zero-sum Simple things to make virtual events more effective: get your speakers online 30 minutes early, be a present host and be clear about how to attend the event When tracking community metrics, don’t be to concerned with the raw number, be more concerned with its trajectory Notable Quotes: “And then I read this report that was titled something like “the emerging role of the community manager”. That was about 2010 or 2011. And it was like a light bulb went off in my mind. Cause I thought, this is what I'm doing. Someone has defined what this job is, you know, and that was, I think, where I really started to feel like community management is my calling.” “You are going to need to have someone who's driving that community. Personally in my context, I think like there's very few organic, completely organic communities where Hey, someone just has a great idea and there's a bunch of people in the organically get together and somehow things happen and it keeps happening and just goes on. It's not that those don't ever happen. It's just, they're quite rare. They're the exception. They Def I think they definitely are. You need someone who's the community lead or the community manager. They could be part-time or full-time, it could be official part of their job or an unofficial. Part of their job, but they've taken ownership of it, but you just need someone to kind of turn the crank.” Rapid fire question answers: 1. What's your go-to pump up song? We Will Rock You by Queen 2. What’s your proudest ultimate frisbee moment? Took the disappointment of being cut from a Master’s level team into re-invigorating his career 3. What's your favorite book to give as a gift to others? Watership Down by Richard Adams 4. What did being an editor teach you about community? Publishers understand what the audience wants and then creates that content, Alex is doing this now but for his community! 5. Have you ever worn socks with sandals? In my backyard, yes 6. Who in the world of community would you most like to take for lunch? Alison Michaels, ex. Microsoft 7. What's a go-to community engagement tactic, or conversation starter, that you like to use in your communities? “Tell me something I don’t know about this?” 8. What's a community product you wish existed? A true complete event management tool 9. What's the weirdest community you've ever been a part of? The Ultimate Frisby Community 10. What's a question I didn’t ask you that I should have? “What is your Twitter bio? People are the most interesting technology” 11. If you were to find yourself on your deathbed, and you had to condense all of your life lessons into one tweet-sized piece of advice for the rest of the world for how to live, what would that advice be? Honour your own experiences but still see the world through other people’s eyes

In today’s Masters of Community episode, you’ll hear from Community Industry expert of 20 years and native New Zealander, Sarah Hawk. Hawk began working as a software developer at Xerox in the 90’s, where her interest in the tech community was sparked and led her to eventually landing the role as a community manager. Her experience as a community manager at SitePoint network, head of Community at FeverBee, and an online community consultant finally led her to migrating to Discourse in 2016 as the Head of Community. Hawk discusses the shift that’s occurred from necessary, organic, and authentic communities to communities starting with a business goal and focused on statistics and metrics. Hawk also talks about the challenges and courage it takes to step down and move on from a community. Finally, Hawk shares the steps for figuring out a community strategy, beginning with your research, finding the fundamental need, and being a successful community manager. As well as how to find your community platform, make the most of it, and the most important metrics to measure. Notable Quotes Referring to Community Managers: “I think without the right kind of personality or the right kind of character, and depending on the kind of community, we know that the fundamentals they've got to have good product knowledge, and they've got to have the respect of users is all of those standard things that we talk about all the time, but they've also just got to have that something magic that works for that kind of audience. They need to be approachable, but knowledgeable. Right.” “My number one metric would be DAU over MAU. So calculating your stickiness. Calculate your monthly active users and dividing by your daily active users. So yeah, the stickiness of your community, because speaks across the board to a good experience, right? If people keep coming back, they either love it and love everything, or they love one thing so much that they're willing to overlook the parts that they don't like. And so the holy grail of stickiness would be, you know, around the 30% mark, but it's extremely rare to see that.”

Adam Smiley Poswolsky, author of Friendship in the Age of Loneliness, joins us today to talk about the loneliness epidemic and the power of in-person friendships. Smiley shares his experience of digitally detoxing at ‘Camp Grounded’ and the positive impact that this has on overcoming loneliness and finding purpose. We discuss how media can be a way-station to connect and meet others in real life, and the steps that can be taken to enhance meaningful friendships. Learn how to help your community form meaningful relationships through deep one-on-one connection and encouraging true friendship in community and the workplace. Who is this episode for?: Everyone 3 key takeaways: 1. Enhance meaningful friendships by nurturing one-on-one, in person connections, being more playful in your character and questions, and becoming a better friend to others. 2. Encourage friendship in the workplace and your community to reduce loneliness and create meaningful connections. Provide spaces for your community to discuss what they’re going through, a safe space to check in, opportunity to play and team-build, a time to build friendships, etc. 3. Digitally Detoxing lessens feelings of loneliness and helps you become aware of your tech use, live a more balanced life, and focus on nurturing IRL relationships. Use tech and social media as the waystation to meet others, get new ideas, be inspired, find out about an event or community, and then use that to connect off the platform in real life. Notable Quotes: “If social media and tech are used as the way station where people meet people, get new ideas, get inspired, find out about a great product, find out about a great event or community and then they use that to connect off the platform....then the tech is actually contributing to meaningful connection.” “It's the disconnect between where your connection levels are and where you want them to be or where you think they should be. That's what loneliness is. It's that gap. And I think one of the reasons...has to be technology and social media. Because if you think about the disconnect, it's like, okay, here's how I feel. You know, everything's really hard, but then I'm spending the entire day looking at what everyone else is doing and where everyone else is, and the amazing places they might be, even if the photo is from three years ago and the people that they're with, wherever they are, being like, ‘Man, why didn’t they invite me to hang out?’ or ‘everyone's life is so cool’ or ‘everyone's so connected and engaged and happy.’ And I'm sitting here at home by myself on a Friday night looking at this damn phone. So, I mean, I think that has to be a big factor in it.” Rapid fire question answers: 1. What’s your favorite book to recommend to others? The War of Art by Steven Pressfield 2. What’s Your Go to Pump- Up Song?: Hang With Me - Robyn 3. What’s your wildest community story?: The Starting Block Institute for Social Innovation - a leadership development program for people interested in social impact, social innovation, and social entrepreneurship. This experience spring boarded Smiley to moving to DC and become a writer and completely change the trajectory of his future. 4. What community builder would you want to take out for lunch? Priya Parker 5. What’s a community product you wished existed?: An app or platform that provides the opportunity to say ‘hey do u want to connect over this person and get together in real life?’ 6. What’s the weirdest community you’ve been a part of? Zen as F*** 7. If you’re on your deathbed and you could only leave one piece of life advice behind for all the future generations, what would that advice be? Find believers. Find more people that believe in the beauty of your dreams.

In this episode, we sit down with Naj Austin, the founder of Ethel’s Club, to learn how she created a community for Black professionals after facing microaggression and racism in co-working spaces. Naj began her community just last year in January 2019, and after a month she already had journalists rolling in to write up posts and articles on Ethel’s Club. Naj had never experienced a space where people of color were empowered, thriving, and healing. So she set out to change this by hosting multiple events per week where people of color would gather and share creative ideas, provide wellness help, and engage in meaningful conversation. Ethel’s Club now hosts multiple events per day and has launched a virtual clubhouse with the onset of Covid-19. The question Naj continues to reflect on is: “are we still a place for everyone? If not, how do we change that?” Naj discussed how a community can remove all systemic racism, and how Ethel’s Club has been affected by the Black Lives Matter movement. Ethel’s Club is currently working on creating a social marketplace for people of color to explore, shop for products, communities, and experiences. Who is this episode for?: B2C, in person and online, Starting 3 key takeaways: -Naj affirms that an inclusive, diverse community must begin from Day 1 in order to completely remove any systemic racism. -Ethel’s Club has been ‘transformative’ for people of color who now feel like being a person of color is the norm, and they are fully empowered, celebrated, and centered. -Ethel’s Club’s core value is that their space is a space for everyone, and they continually reflect on this each day to ensure they live and represent this belief.

In this episode, we're joined by Casper ter Kuile. He's the author of "The Power of Ritual," a Harvard Divinity School fellow, host of the award-winning podcast "Harry Potter and the Sacred Text," and a co-founder of Sacred Design Lab. In this video we connect past (more traditional) communities to modern day communities and discuss how they are intertwined.  This discussion focuses on: 1) Where community comes from. 2) How ancient community practices show up unwittingly in today’s world. 3) Echoes of old practices finding new form in today’s world. 4) How can old traditions be valuable in today’s world and how can we learn from them? We also take a deep dive into the why and how religion/religious institutions have evolved over the years.  Additionally, we discuss religious rituals and how they can be seen everywhere from our fitness communities to our workplaces.  In this discussion we focus on: 1) What has been attributed to the decline of religion over the past 50 years. 2) Religion as an institution vs. religion as a belief and value system. 3) How people satisfy their spiritual desires in today's world. 4) Where are people finding things that have been unbundled from religion. What platform/technology will allow customers to connect better with themselves, others, nature, and a sense of a higher existence (transcendence) in a coherent way. Finally, we discuss what all community builders can learn from religious communities, and how to identify rituals that bring deeper purpose and soul into your community spaces.  This includes: 1) How the workplace provides for a more meaningful community. 2) What does a community need to help people make meaning and build authentic relationships. 3) Where do people go/who do people trust to “shape” them. 4) Rituals that take place in our lives and in community spaces. Links and learnings: — https://www.caspertk.com/ — https://sacred.design/ — https://twitter.com/caspertk — https://cmxhub.com/academy/the-community-mba/

Today we welcome Marissa King to the Masters of Community podcast. Marissa is the author of the new book, social chemistry, and a professor of organizational behavior at Yale. In this episode, we discuss the 3 types of networks: brokers, conveners, and expansionists, and how communities and networks differ. Marissa shares her insights into cliques, gossip, and the 6 degrees of separation and how these play into networks and communities. We wrap up talking about creating authentic networks through proximity and interaction frequency while being fully present. Listen to the full episode to enhance your communication skills in community, business, and your personal life. Who is this episode for?: Everyone 3 key takeaways: - The 3 network types consist of: brokers, conveners, expansionist - The 2 ways we create networks are proximity (space) and interaction frequency (formal project assignment - Community: higher sense of identity & common goals vs network: a simple descriptive tool that maps a set of social relationships who can come together in certain configuration but may not identify as a community. Notable Quotes: “ What allows for successful mobilization? Or successful behavioral change? Or what allows for people to truly feel engaged with one another and supported? For every single one of those outcomes, it's not the size of the network that matters. What's far more important is trying to understand, how are those networks structured?...And so I refer to these three network types is brokers, conveners and expansionists in each of these types has this certain set of properties.” “A network is just a simple, descriptive tool. It's a way of mapping a set of social relationships, but I think the difference between a network is you can have a lot of people who come together in certain configurations, but they may not necessarily identify as a community. And I think, with the overarching differences is that a community has some sort of higher identity or a set of common goals and a set of common purposes. That higher level identity or shared purpose is what's unique about community that doesn't necessarily exist just by having a collection of individuals coming together.” Rapid fire question answers: 1. What’s your favorite book to recommend to others? "The Science of Sync" by Steven Strogatz 2. Most memorable community experience? When Marissa observed 12 step groups in action. These were such diverse groups of people coming together with the emerging issues of substance disorder. 3. If you’re on your death bed and you could only leave one piece of life advice behind for all the future generations, what would that advice be? It’s all about love. At the end of the day, you’ll remember relationships the most. 4. What’s your go-to community engagement starter? What’s something you’re most excited about right now? 5. Weirdest community you’ve been a part of? Reed college - weird school in Portland Oregon: 6. Would you prefer to have strong ties or weak ties for the rest of your life? Strong ties 7. #1 tip to someone who wants to improve their networking skills? There’s extraordinary value in your current network - focus on that first.

Matthew Kobach is the Director of Content Marketing at Fast, a PhD dropout, and former social media manager at NYSE. Matthew joins us in this episode to share how he used community building lessons to create gripping content, grow social media channels, and communicate more effectively. Matthew shares his three steps to building a social media brand, which consist of being unbelievably niche, being consistent, and compounding tweets. He teaches how to become a lighthouse on social media and his routine for planning and ideating social posts. We wrap up talking about the necessity for passion in what you do and letting what you're good at become a passion. Check out this episode to improve your social media presence and become an effective communicator. Who is this episode for?: B2B & B2C, Online, Revitalizing 3 key takeaways: - Three ways to build your social media brand: Be Unbelievably Niche, Be Consistent, Compound Tweets. - Be the lighthouse for topics you’re interested in. 90% of people don’t post, they just read. Get this 90% to look at your content. - Need to be passionate about and enjoy what you’re doing. Being good at something makes you passionate about it. No matter what you do, there will be aspects you don’t love - but make sure it’s something you’re curious about. Notable Quotes: “You need to be passionate about it. You need to actually enjoy it. So being good at something makes you passionate about it. You know, so if you're, if you're able to, uh, tap into something, you've got this really active community and, and you're, you know, you're the one kind of heading it, you're going to be passionate about it. So it's probably going to work out, but for you to go through that kind of the muck and mire of it when it's not really going that well, that's when it should be something that you're actually interested in.” “90% of people don't really post on social media, 9% post, a medium amount, and 1% of post most of it. So those 90% of people, they have interests, they want to participate. Maybe they'll reply once in a while, but for the most part, they just want to read interesting thoughts. So that's the lighthouse - you’re trying to get those 90% of the people, and they're looking for topics that interest them. The only way for them to find you is if you turn your light on and you start talking about the things that interest you, and you've just got to hope that they're actually attracted to what you have to say.” Rapid fire question answers: 1. What’s your favorite book to recommend to others? How to win friends and influence people 2. What’s your most memorable story? When at the stock exchange, Snapchat had just started and he needed to enlist Snapchat in the stock exchange. His goal was to make his snapchat really good. Recognized in NYC as the “New York Stock Exchange Snapchat Guy”. 3. What’s a Community tool or platform that you love to use? None, doesn’t like using them. 4. If you could only follow 3 people on Twitter, who would they be? Danye Taylor, David Parrell, OrangeBook 5. What’s your ultimate tip for someone who wants to improve their reputation online? Get better at communicating exactly what it is you mean. 6. Weirdest community you’ve been a part of? Traded and burned CD’s with others from the band ‘Fish’. 7. If you’re on your death bed and you could only leave one piece of life advice behind for all the future generations, what would that advice be? Say what you mean to say, say what you want to say. So much in life is about not communicating what we feel because we can’t or are scared to articulate it.

On this episode, we’re joined by longtime community leader, Sarah Leary, the Co-Founder of NextDoor and investor at Unusual Ventures. Sarah discusses the influence community is having on personal and professional lives, and its key role in building businesses relationships with customers. We discuss Sarah’s experience building the NextDoor community, growing it from 1 to 250,000 neighborhoods across the United States. Sarah emphasizes the need to embed community into the product team to create a change in the product and put community insights into action. Dive into the full episode to learn what Sarah looks for when investing in communities and how she measures the business value of community. Who is this episode for?: B2C, Online and In Person, Scaling 3 key takeaways: Embed the community into the product team to enact change into the product itself. Community insights are actually put into action and lead to a better product over time. Invest in building community early on by authentically interacting with your users. Identify the early adopters and develop relationships with them that will lead them to become the voice of the community. Measurable impact of community: Percentage of growth coming from organic sources and referrals Notable Quotes: “Where can you get the resources to put the ideas into practice? So sometimes that means just embedding it in the product team, right. So the simple act of having someone who owns community, who's sitting in the weekly, or potentially even daily product meetings and constantly raising what the issues are and getting that team to be hyper-responsive to the needs of the community, like that can have a huge impact.” “You can plant the seeds, but you've got to nurture it and turn over the soil and water it and cultivate it in the early stages of building any community, and this was true with next door, you've really got to do the hard, heavy lifting of nurturing a community.” Rapid fire question answers: 1. What’s your favorite book to recommend to others? Bowling Alone - Robert Putnam 2. What are critical Industries you’re looking to invest in? FinTech, Crypto 3. What’s your wildest Community story? Epinions blows dogs. Revolt from community. Changed reward system and limited ability to edit reviews. Cannot take away community’s ability to change content. 4. Who’s an up and coming community builder you think is going to do big things? Evan Hamilton at Reddit, Erica Kuhl formerly at Salesforce and now a consultant 5. What’s a community building technology/app all should use? Nextdoor Contra, which is a place to connect with other independent/freelance workers - profile is at the forefront Building robust profiles should be a focus of all communities 6. A community product you’d love to invest in if someone built it today? A platform to help our country unite across political lines 7. What’s your go-to community engagement starter? Personal Appeal - tell a story when you have a need. 8. Weirdest community you’ve been a part of? Son of Sam Horn community, Foodie Community (Food 52) 9. If you’re on your death bed and you could only leave one piece of life advice behind for all the future generations, what would that advice be? Most treasured things in life must be earned. There’s not shortcut. The harder they are to achieve, the more they will be treasured. True in personal life, business, and community. Work on things that have impact and extend beyond your direct day-to-day involvement. If it feels hard, that’s a good sign. Contact Info Twitter: @SarahLeary Unusual.vc

Rarely do we see a community leader make a difference in so many diverse departments and programs, but Erik Martin is one of a kind. He’s currently the Chief Community Officer at Teal, but over the past 20 years he has worked in the film industry, Reddit, DePop, WeWork, Airtime, and Nike! In this episode, we discuss why the community industry is blowing up and how community stands out from traditional marketing. Erik discusses his role as a Chief Community Officer and shares the vision for Community becoming its own department in businesses. We talk about the benchmark metrics needed to truly understand community health and the complexities of community conversions and analytics. Erik shares valuable nuggets of wisdom about adapting to the needs of the community you’re growing and teaches that the community is always smarter than you and will lead you in the right direction. Who is this episode for?: B2C, In person & Online, Revitalizing 3 key takeaways: Community is always smarter than you are and will lead you in the right direction. They are the ones invested in the product or community and will give you a look into what people actually want and need. The Chief Community Officer Role signals that community is a central pillar to the organization and not just an aspect of another department, such as marketing, sales, or operations. Benchmark metrics is the goal for understanding community health. Having a relative baseline to compare the community metrics to will provide a much more comprehensive, holistic view of the impact on community. Notable Quotes: “I've been reminded over and over again, that the community is always smarter than you are. Meaning myself, the individual, but also the company in a sense, and that if you're really building products, not just for users, not just for community, but with the community, they'll really lead you in the right direction, especially in early stage startups or when you're launching something new. Collectively the group of people is going to be smarter than any one individual or even small group of people.” “I'm the chief community officer but we have a relatively small team, but what it means and the reason why I think it's important... is because what it signals is that community is a central element, it's a central pillar, it's a part of our DNA. It reports to the CEO and I think that's important. The titles themselves are more for external usage, but internally it's like, okay, community is not just a part of marketing or just a part of support or just a part of operations or just a part of a product. It's its own thing that has its own scope, its own metrics, its own contribution to the business.” Rapid fire question answers: 1. What’s your favorite book to recommend to others? Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman 2. Who’s an up and coming community builder you think is going to do big things? Jocelyn Hsu at Picsart and Sanmaya Mohanty (creator of the Community Manager Guide) 3. What’s your wildest community story? ACL Subreddit for people with ligament problems. It’s become a place for people to talk about ACL surgery and post-op recovery, etc. Asked the community on Reddit what was going on with his ACL and found out he had a screw loose in his knee. 4. What’s your go-to community engagement tactic? Challenge -30,90,10 day challenges. Very social and gives accountability. Ex: new vocab word of the day challenge, career challenge, 5. What’s a community building technology App people should be using: Spatial communities or asynchronous real life (ex: Pokemon Go, Augmented Reality, Randonautica, AYA) 6. Weirdest community you’ve been a part of? A Virtual Cult of traditional Chinese medicine with the leader Master Sha 7. If you’re on your death bed and you could only leave one piece of life advice behind for all the future generations, what would that advice be? We are the stories we tell ourselves. If we aren’t happy with who we are and what we are, we need to tell better stories. Links: Teal- https://www.tealhq.com Community Manager Guide- https://guide.cmgr.page/community-manager-page/ Twitter: @Hueypriest Reddit: @hueypriest

Today we have the pleasure of hearing from Kat Vellos, author of “We Should Get Together”, who discusses all things friendship and how to establish meaningful connections. When Kat first moved to the Bay Area, she struggled to have ongoing, deep friendships due to the transient nature of Silicon Valley. She took this opportunity to learn about the loneliness epidemic and how to create meaningful connections. We dive into the loneliness effects of social media as well as the impacts of Covid on loneliness. Kat teaches how community builders can help their members form real lasting deep relationships through the 4 Seeds of Connection: Compatibility, Frequency, Commitment, Proximity. We wrap up discussing how to be intentional and honest with your needs and boundaries in friendships and community. Who is this episode for?: Everyone, In-Person & Online, Revitalizing 3 key takeaways: The 4 Seeds of Connection are: Compatibility, Frequency, Commitment, and Proximity. Both building or being a part of a community and establishing individual close friendships are crucial to finding meaningful connections and escaping the loneliness epidemic. Creating a norm for deep, real talk in communities will establish a culture of real friendship and lifelong bonds. Provide prompts to start real conversations, help people help each other, and make it known that this is a place to talk about XYZ. Notable Quotes: “Community is a wonderful source of those friendships and sometimes those friendships lead us to community. But I really think of them as two like branches on the same tree. I think life is full when there's a bit of both. When there are those intimate, close friendships with just a few people and then of course there's the outer rings of like less close friends, but you know, you feel good, they're your homeys, they can come to your birthday, you know? And then there's the friendly acquaintances and then there's community where there are interrelated ties between each individual person. So it's not just like a pile of disparate people that don't know each other, but they all know you in community. There's a sense of belonging within the group, to each person in the group, with each person in the group.” “The less you keep it in the shadow and keep it invisible, the easier it is to solve. So when I said to people, ‘I'm working on a book about adult friendship’, people were like, ‘Oh my God, I really want to talk about that. It's been hard or it's been this’, but they don't talk about it to anybody. Because everybody feels like you can't talk about it, but everybody wants to talk about it. So say this is the place to talk about XYZ thing, you know, no matter what it is, whatever topic that you tend to focus on in your work or that you want to bring to your community as a source of growth and learning.” Rapid fire question answers: 1. What’s your favorite book to recommend to others? The Secret Lives of Color 2. Who’s an up and coming community builder you think is going to do big things? If Lost, Start Here by Amanda Sheeren and Claire Fitzsimmons. 3. What’s your go-to community engagement starter? Instead of ‘how are you?’ - ‘What’s been in your tabs lately?’ ‘What’s something you’re looking forward to or something you’ve been dealing with?’ ‘What’s been on your mind that you want to talk about?’ ‘What do you do or don’t want to talk about today?’ 4. What’s your go-to self care practice? Nature 5. Would you rather have one good friend for the rest of your life or a hundred loose connections? One good friend. 6. Weirdest community you’ve been a part of? Living in an Intentional Community. Semi off-the-grid in a rural coastal jungle of the Southeast edge of the Big Island. 7. If you’re on your death bed and you could only leave one piece of life advice behind for all the future generations, what would that advice be? Whatever your gift is, give it. Whatever your purpose is, live it. Links: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katvellos_author/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/KatVellos Books and events: weshouldgettogether.com Work: katvellos.com

Lolita Taub and Jesse Middleton from The Community Fund VC join us in this week’s Masters of Community Episode. They are early stage community investors searching for community-driven founders. Having the community embedded across the organization is crucial as it drives marketing growth, product decisions, customer service, and more. Lolita and Jesse discuss the business behind community, what metrics they look for when determining a community to invest in, and measuring the value of this community in the organization as a whole. They dive into where community should fit in an organization and the importance of having community as its own individual department. Lolita and Jesse continue to search for underestimated founders serving underserved markets, with the goal to tap into this potential and transform the business through community. Who is this episode for?: B2B, In person and online, Starting 3 key takeaways: - Community should be its own pillar in the business - separate from sales, marketing, R&D, etc. The goal is to have community be its own department one day. - The Community Return on Investment: (Value Gained - Cost) / Cost Lolita and Jesse search for founders who are community builders themselves. - Community needs to be embedded across the leadership of the company, so having a community-driven founder is crucial to the growth and success. Notable Quotes: “My personal preference, especially when we're looking at pre-seed seed companies, is that the founder be a community builder themselves. Similar to how, when we were looking at our investment partner team and putting it together, we were looking for those community builders, community leaders, because we want our founders to have that DNA of building community.” “Community builders spot community builders, community sees community. It's by design - great community leaders are amazing at that many-to-many interaction. And that is what we want our partners at The Community Fund to spot in the founders that they’re backing as well. Those that are great at many-to-many interactions.” Rapid fire question answers: 1. What’s your favorite book to recommend to others? Lolita - “Good night stories for rebel girls” Jesse - “Never Split the Difference” 2. Who’s an up and coming community builder you think is going to do big things? Lolita - Rei Wang and Anita @ The Grand Jesse - David Fano @ the Teal Community 3. What is a community building lesson that’s stuck with you? Lolita - ‘Authenticity and sense of belonging are two ingredients you must have in a community’. Jesse - ‘When a customer is not always right, the community is.’ 4. What’s the weirdest community that you’ve been a part of? Lolita - Indigenous area in Burkina Faso with the Peace Corps - stayed with a family in mud huts - and they spoke a dialect that taught her about community. Needed the community to survive, to eat, to move forward, etc. Jesse - Hacker Community, it’s a highly connected and diverse, crazy community 5. If you’re on your deathbed and you could only leave one piece of life advice behind for all the future generations, what would that advice be? Lolita - Face your fears. Do what you love. Live the life you want to live. Jesse - Do what you love. Work on things that you love. Helpful Links: The Community Playbook Cheat Sheet - https://medium.com/the-community-fund/the-community-playbook-cheat-sheet-31ae9ae77f3c Thread on community-driven companies - https://twitter.com/lolitataub/status/1298381835794182145?s=20 Dame products - https://twitter.com/DameProducts Root dolls - https://twitter.com/RootsDolls The Community Fund: How We Source, Select, and Support Startups https://medium.com/the-community-fund/the-community-fund-how-we-source-select-and-support-startups-74f48ada262a Community-Driven Companies: What They Are and Why We’re Investing in Them https://medium.com/the-community-fund/community-driven-companies-what-they-are-and-why-were-investing-in-them-f72629d11f86 Thecommunity.vc https://twitter.com/thecommunityvc Twitter.com/@lolitataub https://twitter.com/srcasm

In this episode of Masters of Community, we sit down with Nir Eyal, the best-selling author of “Hooked” and “Indistractible”. Nir talks about building healthy habits and breaking bad ones using the HOOK model. He talks about product managers and community leaders’ role of solving the users’ pain while providing an element of surprise that keeps them coming back. We talk about intentional time and being purposeful with where you put your time and energy. Nir wraps it up by providing his top four pieces of advice for community leaders to create better habits and identify distractions. Who is this episode for?:  All Community Builders, In person & online, Scaling 3 key takeaways: The HOOK Model: - Trigger - external or internal (90% internal with phones) - An Action - A Reward - (the Hunt, the Tribe, the Self) - An Investment - How can community pros create better habits and identify distractions? - Talk about and master internal triggers - Make time for traction (put time blocks on your calendar) - Hack Back the external triggers - Prevent Distraction with Pacts -Your role as a community leader or product manager is to solve their Pain Point. Build a solution of surprise that keeps them coming back. 2-3 Powerful Quotes from this episode: “Nobody says, ‘Ooh, I really need connection today’. That's your job. As a community manager, as a product manager, to go deeper into their psyche and understand, what are they looking for on a psychological basis here? What's the itch that my product seeks to scratch.” “You can not call something a distraction unless you know what it distracted you from.” “Time management requires pain management.” “The Opposite of Distraction is Traction” Rapid fire question answers: 1. What’s your favorite book to recommend to others? Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham 2. Who’s an up and coming community builder you think is going to do big things? David Parell - Building a personal monopoly 3. Favorite app/tool for managing time and attention: Google Calendar and Nir’s tool for timeboxing (linked below) 3. What’s the weirdest community that you’ve been a part of? Barefoot running 4. What’s the routine in your life you’re most grateful for today? Consistently make time to be with my wife. 5. If you’re on your deathbed and you could only leave one piece of life advice behind for all the future generations, what would that advice be? ‘The antidote to impulsiveness is forethought.’ AND ‘Happiness is enjoying the success of others’. Helpful links: Book Link: http://geni.us/Indistractable Indistractable summary article: https://www.nirandfar.com/skill-of-the-future/ Schedule Maker Tool: https://nirandfar.com/schedule-maker/ Why schedules are better than to-do lists: https://www.nirandfar.com/todo-vs-schedule-builder/ Distraction guide here: https://www.nirandfar.com/distractions/ Habits vs routines article here: https://www.nirandfar.com/habits/

This week, we sit with the legendary LGBTQ+ community builder, Shana Sumers. Shana began her career as a music therapist, but after five years working to change lives through music, she shifted to changing lives through diversity and inclusion in the HER community. Sumers’ music therapy background provided her with a strong foundation of listening and understanding different types of people, which led her to become the Head of Community of the HER app. The community grew to 4 million members with 40+ subgroups of safe spaces, for LGBTQ+ individuals to gather, grow, and learn from one another. Shana discusses how to identify Moderators and how she built out the Moderator program. Zero tolerance policies against phobias were enforced and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion discussions were supported and encouraged. The HER app continues to find ways to build this diverse and inclusive community and bring the voices of underrepresented groups to the front. Who is this episode for?: B2C, Online, Starting 3 key takeaways: - Shana learned early of the power of building WITH the HER community by walking in their shoes, learning their needs, desires, and struggles, and not FOR the HER community. - Shana built an inclusive and diverse community by having a zero-tolerance phobia policy, actually talking to the community members to see what they could do better, encouraging continual DEI education, building new subgroups for all identities, and having a diverse set of moderators. - To identify a good moderator, Shana found individuals who wanted to build community instead of their own ego and had genuine concern for the community members. She would interview them, provide training manuals, videos, and monthly meetings to provide support, encourage, and educate them about current issues. Notable Quotes: 1. “The prime definition of what being a community manager is providing spaces for people to connect over general interests. I wanted to be that person so as I started to get into actually building my first community space and what that looked like, I continue to be like, ‘this is awesome’. Who else gets to sit there during their day and figure out techniques and strategies to bring people together. Then you get to sit and watch all of these new connections happen and all of the people find love or friendship or groups to meet up with. It's so cool because you're the person who helped do that. It's like an ongoing party planner without having to pause.” 2. “You have to do the work to go out and learn what the actual issues are and then figure out how you're going to address it. Have company understanding of why this is important and that it's ingrained in your missions and policies and then put programs together that support these communities and continue to support them, not just on a monthly basis, not just when it's black history month, and not just when it's pride.” 3. “So what do you look for in an interview to tell you if someone's going to be a good moderator or not? One that I look for is that they're looking to build community and not to build their own ego or brand or anything like that. There's a very clear language where it shows that they want to give outwardly. So they're saying, ‘I want to give back’, ‘I want to be more in this space’, ‘I'm seeing X, Y, Z’, ‘I wish I could help’. The types of phrases that are helpful, actionable, and show a genuine concern for the community are the people that I look for. Anybody else who's like, ‘Yeah it’ll look good on my resume or I'll be around for a bit, I'm jobless right now so I'm hoping that this will just lead to a job.’ Things that are more beneficial for them, those are the people that we don't want.” Rapid fire question answers: 1. What’s your favorite book to recommend to others? ‘More Than Enough’ by Elaine Welteroth, Gabrielle Union’s Book, ‘We’re Going To Need More Wine’, and ‘Becoming’ by Michelle Obama. For community-centric books, Jono Bacon’s ‘People Powered’, and ‘Building Brand Communities’ by Carrie Jones. 2. Who’s an up and coming community builder you think is going to do big things? Mica Le John of 2Swim 3. If you had to eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be? Crab Legs or French Fries 4. What’s Your Go-To Community Engagement Conversation Starter? Set up scenarios and ask people how they’d respond to those scenarios. 5. What’s Your Go-To Self Care? Cleaning 6. If you could choose one metric to use forever to measure communities, what would it be? Participation Framework from Jono Bacon - likes seeing people hit their rewards. 7. What’s the weirdest community you’ve ever been a part of? Australian Lesbian Single community 8. If you’re on your death bed and you could only leave one piece of life advice behind for all the future generations, what would that advice be? Take those unexpected chances and go with your gut.

This week, we have the pleasure of hearing from Evan Hamilton, the Director of Community at Reddit. Evan joined the Reddit team at a time when trust was broken between the moderators and the Reddit team. Evan rebuilt trust in the community by ensuring transparent communication with the moderators, addressing concrete issues, humanizing both the employees and the moderators, and creating small programs and teams to work directly with moderators. The community council became crucial to building trust and was created as a safe space for moderators to share feedback, challenges, questions, and insights with the executive team of Reddit. We talk about the beauty of Reddit’s pseudonymity and how users bring their true selves to the table and talk openly about their low points and experiences, finding a sense of belonging by connecting with ‘their people’. Reddit will continue growing its community programs at scale to enable and support its moderators through any challenges and questions they have. Who is this episode for?: B2C, Online, Scaling 3 key takeaways: - The steps to building community trust include communicating transparently, addressing concrete issues, humanizing everyone, and creating programs to enhance community communication and processes. - The benefit of pseudonymity in the Reddit community is that it gives people a place to be 100% themselves and share vulnerable, real experiences that they have been through. This outlet helps users find ‘their people’ and feel a sense of belonging. - Reddit scaled its large moderator community by creating a Community Council to provide information, receive feedback, and communicate effectively with moderators representing ‘subreddits’. These members would distill information from the council to their moderator teams and ensure everyone was on the same page. Notable Quotes: 1. What did you practically do to make it feel like a safe space? I think some of it is just the access. It's easy to be frustrated when you're talking to a representative, right? It's the, “I want to talk to your manager syndrome.” You feel like the person you're talking to doesn't have power and so you just try and push past them to get to their manager. By actually involving the product managers who are building these products and eventually involving our execs, it was clear that you're not going to get any higher up the chain. This is the person who's building this thing and I think that helps. Having a buffer in between can be good but can also be detrimental because people feel like this representative isn't going to go fight for me. I think the other part was just framing and priming and setting up the conversation as, ‘Hey, we're all here because we're on the same page. We want Reddit to be great. We want moderators to be a big part of that.’ 2. “What we've seen on Reddit is the benefits that pseudonymity brings and that people can really bring. They're their true selves to the table, right? I've seen amazing conversations where, you know, mothers are sharing their experiences with postpartum depression, something that they really may not feel comfortable sharing, attached to their name in a public setting.We have amazing communities for marginalized groups. We have support communities like stop drinking, where people are talking very, very honestly about their low points and because of the pseudonymity combined with a very robust safety team, making sure that regardless of what pseudonym you're using, you're behaving, people are able to be themselves and let this raw part of them loose.” Rapid fire question answers: 1. What’s your favorite book to recommend to others? “Predictably Irrational” OR “Big” 2. Who’s an up and coming community builder you think is going to do big things? Shana Sumers & Carter Gibson 3. What’s your go-to community engagement starter? Food or a bracket system 4. What is your favorite subreddit? ATBGE - Awful Taste But Great Execution 5. One metric to use for the rest of your career to measure communities? Trust Barometer. 6. Weirdest community you've been a part of? Theater (extraverted actors and introverted tech people) 7. If you’re on your death bed and you could only leave one piece of life advice behind for all the future generations, what would that advice be? Listen to People. We spend way too much time thinking about ourselves and not listening to others.

Today’s Master of Community is Dr. James McLeary, a forensic psychologist and elder member of the Inside Circle Foundation. McLeary’s life mission is to help incarcerated individuals heal from their past. James himself ran into his own issues with the Judicial System and witnessed first-hand the systematic approach to incarcerating young black people. His experiences led him to working with Rob Allbee in prison ‘Circles’ to provide a safe, trusting, yet firm place for inmates to work through repressed issues, traumas, and wounds. Past and present incarcerated individuals voluntarily join these ‘circles’ to work through their ‘Hero’s Journey’ - reframing, rescripting and reorienting their negative experience into a process that moves them forward and gives them purpose in life. McLeary reiterates the importance of acknowledging the issues in your life or the world around you, talking through those challenges, and reminding yourself that anyone can change and labels are not permanent. McLeary and his son produced the award-winning documentary, The Work, to communicate James’ experience with the Inside Circle Foundation and the power it’s having on incarcerated and previously incarcerated lives. Who is this episode for?: Non Profit, In person & Online, Starting 3 key takeaways: - Labels are temporary and every individual has the potential to change and heal themselves for the better. - The Inside Circle positively impacts current and past incarcerated individuals as they openly discuss repressed pain, develop empathy for one another, and embrace change. - McLeary’s documentary, The Work, provides an in-depth look into The Inside Circle and the work taking place at Folsom Prison to providing healing, purpose, and meaning for justice-involved youth and adults. Notable Quotes: “The idea was just to check in. Who are you? What's going on? The check-in is generally your state of bank. How are you feeling? What's bothering you? You know, some men just checked in with their name...And people began to share and as they began to share, there was this bonding and cathartic release. So even if you're not doing your own work, you were watching someone do their work and identifying with their pain and with their release and it’s a development of empathy along the way. And that empathy grows into a sort of a nurturing wisdom that people care for each other in a circle and it just kept developing.” “The four stages of the hero's journey is that someone hears the call so they show up somewhere. There is the descent and that's the stripping of the armor that keeps you from being transparent, vulnerable, and honest. Then there's the ordeal where you actually confront what your issue is. And then there's the ascent and that's where you determine what's the new vision/purpose for yourself in this thing or in life. And then there's a celebration, which is the coming home. So that's the model method, the hero's journey. And then we introduce processes that help each of those phases progress.” Rapid fire question answers: 1. What’s your favorite book to recommend to others? Sense of Man, the Science of Mind, Sense of Mind. 2. Who’s an up and coming community builder you think is going to do big things? Elder Jackson the Third - hosts Ashanti Workshops 3. Favorite Question to ask to spark interesting conos when facilitating a group discussion? Why Are You Here? 4. One thing all members of Community should believe about themselves? Within yourself, you have medicine that’s brilliant and has the capacity to heal lots of people 5. If you’re on your death bed and you could only leave one piece of life advice behind for all the future generations, what would that advice be? Pause. Do an inventory on yourself to understand what you're thinking, feeling, believing, and know what you want then you’re congruent and are right with the world and know where you fit in.

Today we’re joined by an experienced community leader, Holly Firestone, whose work at Birthright, Atlassian, Salesforce, and now Venafi has transformed the way these communities are built and structured. We dive into where Community fits within an organization and the importance of having a separate community team with goals focused on the company goal and the role it can play across the organization. Holly has years of experience designing community teams and discusses the power of having a senior community manager overseeing specialized community managers, as well as the benefits of a community operations manager. Holly dives into the ins and outs of these roles and the importance of having a specific career path and goal for each member of the community team. We finish up by talking about key aspects of managing and hiring a community team, ensuring you make time for one-on-ones and everyone on the team is making decisions within their work scope. If you’re trying to build, structure, lead, or hire a community team - this episode’s for you. Rapid Fire Questions: - Up and Coming Community Builder/Creator: Brittni Cocchiara & Beth Vanderkolk Go-To Community -Engagement Tactic/Convo Starter: What was your first job? (p.s. Holly’s was Chuck E. Cheese) - One Community Metric to Use for the Rest of Her Career: Engagement & valuable conversation. (Although communities are dynamic and this often depends on the business goals). - Weirdest Community Holly’s been a part of: BBYU - jewish sororities and fraternities - Final Life Lesson: Slow down, be kind to others, appreciate yourself, stand up for what you believe in, do what you love, drink water, wear sunscreen, the best support you’ll ever get is the support you give yourself. Notable Quotes: 1. “David: What are the things that you look for when interviewing in order to be able to identify who, who would be a great community manager, community operator for your team? Holly: Number one is empathy. And I think that you can find that in your conversations with anybody and understand, are they thinking about the experience for the people in your community first and foremost, can they put themselves in their shoes? Are they thinking about, you know, building for that, for that group of people? So I think that that's the most important because I don't think anybody can do the work that you do in a community team without that.” 2. David: “What do you think is really important for someone who's managing a community team? What were the systems or things that you did to make sure that team was successful and supported and had what they needed to do their work?” Holly: “ I think a regular one-on-one is so important and it's not just, you ticking off a list of everything that you want to talk to them about. They really have to be in the driver's seat for your one-on-one. So there's always, you spend, you know, half talking about the things that they need to get answered from you or, you know, Whatever questions or topics you need to discuss. And then half you're talking about them, what do they need? How are they feeling, what's going on? But they're equally important in my opinion, you know, and I think that creating a space for them to be able to share is also really important to share on a regular basis.“

This week, we have the pleasure of hearing from Derek Andersen, CEO & Founder of Startup Grind and Bevy. Startup Grind began in 2010 when Derek started hosting monthly gatherings with friends and acquaintances to discuss and brainstorm ideas for new projects he was launching. The community took off and participants began running events in their own cities, eventually becoming the largest community of startups and entrepreneurs with millions of members across the world hosting 200-300 events per month. Derek talks about the importance of articulating and living by community values, which Startup Grind did by being authentic, a friend to all, and focusing on helping others before themselves. We dive into determining whether to build or buy a platform and discuss the launch of Bevy - the virtual events and community platform used by Startup Grind, CMX, and hundreds of other global business communities. Derek also shares insights into acquisition and how acquiring CMX was mutually beneficial for both Bevy and CMX. He talks about the shift to virtual events and the importance of being real with data and what’s really happening with the world, then taking that knowledge and acting quickly. Virtual events and Bevy helped make the community industry stronger during this time, and one day the world will be back to in-person, but in a new way that provides a space for people who can’t attend in person to participate virtually. Notable Quotes: “And he said, do you know what's special about StartupGrind? I was like, I know, I really don't like, what is it? He said, look, it's the values. StartupGrind is about helping people before you help yourself. It's about making friends. It's not about LinkedIn connections. It's about giving before you take, like that's evident speaking and attending your events. And I was like, well, yeah, of course it is. And he's like, no, like that's different, that's unique.” “So how did you make that decision and what do you think the future of community and events looks like in this post COVID world that we're all hoping will come soon? I think you have to be real with the data and what's really happening and not just what you hope is happening, or, you know, what somebody tells you you want to hear. I think for me, like when I saw and heard the conversations happening with customers in March and early April, I realized very quickly that not only was the world changing, but our business was sort of in a collapse and we needed to do something dramatic. And so, you know, we orchestrated and ran a, what I think is an incredible play, and it made, I think virtual events are absolutely community building activities done well. And so we added that aspect to our product to make our events, product, more community building, community driven. And so it wasn't what we had planned to build this year. It wasn't what we were hoping to build, but I think this year has made our foundation of our community product so, so much stronger.” Rapid Fire Question: - Favorite Book: How You Measure Your Life by Clayton Christianson - Who’s an awesome community builder/creator to follow: Holly Firestone - Tool/App you can't live without: Slack - One metric to use for rest of career to measure community: lives improved - Weirdest Community You’ve Been a Part of: weird unofficial fraternity in college If you’re on death bed, what’s your life lesson: Live Every Day Like It’s Your Last Who is this episode for?: B2C/B2B, In person & online, Starting & Scaling

In today’s Masters of Community episode, you’ll hear from Community Industry expert of 20 years and native New Zealander, Sarah Hawk. Hawk began working as a software developer at Xerox in the 90’s, where her interest in the tech community was sparked and led her to eventually landing the role as a community manager. Her experience as a community manager at SitePoint network, head of Community at FeverBee, and an online community consultant finally led her to migrating to Discourse in 2016 as the Head of Community. Hawk discusses the shift that’s occurred from necessary, organic, and authentic communities to communities starting with a business goal and focused on statistics and metrics. Hawk also talks about the challenges and courage it takes to step down and move on from a community. Finally, Hawk shares the steps for figuring out a community strategy, beginning with your research, finding the fundamental need, and being a successful community manager. As well as how to find your community platform, make the most of it, and the most important metrics to measure. Notable Quotes Referring to Community Managers: “I think without the right kind of personality or the right kind of character, and depending on the kind of community, we know that the fundamentals they've got to have good product knowledge, and they've got to have the respect of users is all of those standard things that we talk about all the time, but they've also just got to have that something magic that works for that kind of audience. They need to be approachable, but knowledgeable. Right.” “My number one metric would be DAU over Mau. So calculating your stickiness. Calculate your monthly active users and dividing by your daily active users. So yeah, the stickiness of your community, because speaks across the board to a good experience, right? If people keep coming back, they either love it and love everything, or they love one thing so much that they're willing to overlook the parts that they don't like. And so the Holy grail of stickiness would be, you know, around the 30% Mark, but it's extremely rare to see that.”

On today’s episode, we’re joined by entrepreneur and creative director, Scott Shigeoka. Scott spent his early years exploring creativity at The Washington Post, IDEO, and working with artists and musicians. He has since shifted to working on overcoming divisions in the country, ranging from politics, to LGBTQ rights, and the workplace. Scott recognized the desire the world has to understand one another, after his launch of “The Bridging Differences Playbook” that received a quarter million downloads in the first few months. Scott dives into the concept of bridge-building, explaining the importance of learning what values others have, what their stories are, and how we can lean into tension with some healthy disagreement and conflict in order to truly understand different perspectives. Scott traveled the country to understand others’ points of view and created design spaces for intentional bridge-building conversations. During this time, he practiced mindfulness and self-awareness to be in the right mindset to speak openly with others who had different opinions and understand their perspective. He discovered that the three steps to bridge-building are: 1. Get experts to help co-design and be involved in the conversation, 2. Understand power and make sure you have a sophisticated perspective on how to design these interactions and conversations, and 3. assign people of power as the listener and give the marginalized individuals the chance to share their perspectives and feelings. Scott continues to scale culture change through bridge-building in businesses, communities, and the country. Who is this episode for?: (B2B, B2C, Governmental Org), In person & Online, Scaling 3 key takeaways: - The Bridge Building Formula: 1. Get experts to guide, 2. Understand the role of power, 3. Give marginalized individuals the chance to share their views with the person of power as the listener. - Scaling culture change and implementing bridging starts by working with leaders and can occur in the workplace, communities, political groups, the government, and more. - Disagreement executed in a healthy way helps us understand different perspectives and challenge our own biases, thus preventing harder evils and further division.

In today’s episode, community consultant and Salesforce Former VP of Community, Erica Kuhl, joins us to share her greatest community growth advice. Years before community was a known industry, Erica used three methods to successfully get buy-in from the Salesforce Executives. She worked with Salesforce users and product managers to strengthen and build the product. She then put the community on the brand new product, creating further excitement. Erica then showed data for how community aligned with the key ROI’s of Salesforce, the resulting revenue impact, and resulting product adoption. Today, Salesforce has a Trailblazer community forum, MVP programs, User Groups and a democratized learning platform, Trailhead, that mentors and educates others to receive jobs and develop skills. One year ago, Erica left Salesforce to become an independent community consultant. To successfully get her client’s community up and running, she implements the V2MOM strategy of establishing vision, values, methods, obstacles, and metrics. Erica works with her clients to create a program, staff the team, launch, and grow a community. She hopes that community will become integrated into every part of businesses and provide a service to companies as a whole. Who is this episode for?: B2B, In Person & Online, Starting 3 key takeaways: - As an independent contractor, Erica uses the V2MOM plan as a strategic roadmap for launching a community: Vision, Values, Methods, Obstacles, Metrics. - Erica’s used 3 methods to get buy-in from Salesforce: Work with the community and product managers to build and enhance the platform, put the community on the new product, and prove the power of community through data. - Salesforce is now well-known for its variety and strength of communities, including the Trailblazer Community, MVP Programs, an advanced learning platform for mentorship, and many others.

On today’s first ever live podcast, we’re joined by Jono Bacon, Community Consultant and Author. Jono was 17 years old when he discovered the world coming together through the operating system, Linux, and a light bulb went off that he should start joining and learning everything he could about community. He has since become one of the most influential and talented community builders out there, specializing in open-source communities that contribute actively to create an experience or product. Jono gives a glimpse of his new book, People Powered, where he shares the methodology for building community. 1. Be intentional about who your audience is and what your purpose is, and 2. Provide value by serving their best interests and solving their problems. In order to get buy-in for your community, start with casual members who find value in the community, build a habit of them coming back, and then they become regulars and shape your community. He also dives into the renaissance that community is experiencing with the shift to online. People are now sharing what they are doing in communities through books, seminars, social media, events, and more. Whereas, previous to the online community explosion, the platforms and products for building community were nonexistent. Jono talks about the future of community metrics and hopes to reach a point where he can measure happiness and sense of community, instead of obsessing about data and graphs. But at the end of the day, some data metrics of community are better left unknown and that’s the beauty of it. Who is this episode for?: In Person & Online. Scaling. All types of communities. 3 key takeaways: - Jono’s methodology for building community is: 1. Be Intentional about who your audience is and their needs. 2. Provide value by serving their best interests and solving their problems. - Community is going through a renaissance with the societal switch to technology, and community is now talked about on podcasts, social media, in events, and more. - The true metrics of community are happiness, the sense of community, and trust - but these metrics may always be better left unknown.

Not often are experts in community deeply researching at a scholarly level how community works, our next guest Nadia Egbal does. She's the Head of Writer Experience at SubStack and the author of Working in Public, where she dives into the history and evolution of Open Source communities. They ended up laying the groundwork for how online communities outside of Open Source behaved and built culture. Not to mention, how that lead to people actually getting involved and becoming contributors (or not) in those communities. Even in the largest software projects or popular services like Wikipedia, a very small percentage of contributors make up most of the content available. She also discusses a rarer topic in the world of community, intensive research. Stemming from her work with the Ford Foundation “Roads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital Infrastructure”, Nadia has taken an approach of dissecting how community works through a more academic lens. She shares how she sees this kind of research so impactful and how companies, venture capital firms and other institutions might be able to empower more of this kind of research and what those roles might look like. She also shares how she has brought this approach to SubStack and her current community of writers and content creators and the trends she is seeing in the world of written content. Who is this episode for?: B2C, Online, Scaling Communities 3 key takeaways: - The stories and evolution of Open Source communities can tell us a lot about how our current online communities can evolve even outside the world of software. - The majority of contributions come from a small number of highly engaged users, even from the largest crowd sources communities projects like Wikipedia. - Implementing more research and research roles will help shape not only the communities of our companies but how we can build as a community industry.

Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia is the Founder and CEO of Product School, the largest community of product managers in the world. After recognizing a gap in the Product Management industry, Carlos created a niche hybrid between engineering and business school. From 1 to 1 million, the community skyrocketed in growth over 6 years and continues to educate, train, and certify product managers globally. In 2013, Carlos moved from Spain to Silicon Valley to work on an online education marketplace startup - Floqq. After four years of grinding, he decided to shift gears and focus on what would benefit others and make them happy, resulting in Product School. Carlos wanted to give back and share his knowledge so he created a space for others to access product management resources and began training and educating people at events. Carlos recruited high level product managers from companies like Facebook, Netflix, and Uber, to mentor, support, and teach the community members. Across the world, Cohort classes of 20 students were created to educate and certify eager product managers, with a lead mentor, guest speakers, career support, and networking opportunities. Ninety percent of resources are free - including recordings, templates, and a variety of training courses, with paid certifications available. Product School now hosts 5 conferences a year and 2 events a day. The community of 1 million is made up of 20,000 alumni, inner circle product leaders, and event attendees, and is the ideal place for product leaders to test out new products and features. Who is this episode for?: B2C, Online, Starting 3 key takeaways: - Giving back and educating others with the knowledge that high-quality product managers gained was what made Product School so unique and successful. - The Product School Community became the best place to test out new ideas and theories, because everyone was learning and growing together with the same end-goals of success. - Product School filled the void in the market for product management training, resources, and connections and now has 1 million members benefitting from the program.

Gordon Bellamy and Kobie Fuller take the stage to discuss how they grew their inclusive, pride-focused communities. Gordon speaks about the queer industry unitedly coming out and removing the anonymity that previously existed. Within the Gay Gaming Community, Gordon created ‘Default Spaces’ to create a place for people of different orientations, expressions, or identities to connect and be authentically themselves, without being identified by labels. The nonprofit community provides scholarships, resources, and employment for those marginalized or underrepresented. Gordon’s final piece of advice was, “There’s a difference between waiting for the world to act on you and waiting to act on the world.” Kobie Fuller, the Co-Founder of Valence, then dives into how he developed a solution to the underrepresented black individuals in the corporate setting. He created an interactive database of black talent to celebrate and showcase talented and admirable individuals who previously went unnoticed. Kobie invested $1 million into this product and watched the community grow from a mere 3,000 members to 11,000 and counting. The recent Black Lives Matter movement greatly impacted black community growth and brought black individuals together to unite in power and support. Gordon and Kobie end with reiterating the importance of self-realization and having pride in who you are and what you stand for. Who is this episode for?: Non Profit, In Person & Online, Starting 3 key takeaways: - Self-realization and having pride in who and what you are is key to community growth and establishing authenticity. - Gordon emphasized the importance of ‘default spaces’ to ensure all members are recognized for who they truly are, rather than their label. - Kobie discusses the need to associate being black with positivity and not as a setback, and using that self-realization to unite in power with other black individuals.

Elizabeth Kinsey is the Senior Marketing Manager at Slack and runs the in-person community, Slackcommunity.com. The Slack community consists of developers, power users, admins, builders, as well as segmented pockets of community. The in-person volunteer led community gathers to discuss different aspects of Slack, whether that’s developing, building, or administering. Each segmented community within Slack has a different focus, for example the San Francisco group is primarily made up of Founders so the meetups emphasize monetization and integrating apps with Slack. Elizabeth discusses how Slack hosts events to complement its community and meet the needs of all members. She also discusses the need to let go of control and hand the reins over to community leaders with regards to posting and hosting events. Slack provides clear brand guidelines for chapter leaders to keep the Slack brand image consistent. Elizabeth shares her tips for successfully executing events and encourages community leaders to be clear and exact with sponsors, stay organized with an event agenda, and be proactive with attendee communication. Who is this episode for?: B2B, In Person, Starting & Scaling 3 key takeaways: - Slack executes successful events by providing guidelines for chapter leaders and handing over the reins to give leaders a voice and flexibility. - Personally reaching out to customers before and after events is a key way that Slack maintains and grows its community. - The Slack community continues to grow with its segmented community groups across the country, constantly developing, sharing, and learning more about Slack and its capabilities.

Mike Porath began The Mighty after being inspired by his daughter Annabel, who was diagnosed with Duplication Q15 syndrome – a rare disease that rapidly slows down development. He built this community to understand other families’ experiences with this syndrome, create a safe space for individuals to share their health challenge stories, and for individuals to help one another. Mike and his wife bought The Mighty URL and began recruiting individuals to write their health challenge stories and convert them to members of the community. As more and more individuals joined the community, Mike noticed how simple some solutions were and saw individuals in similar situations providing tips and solutions to issues that doctors couldn’t resolve. The Mighty focused on the storytelling side of community and real connections were built, more individuals spoke up about their struggles, and they grew to have over 15,000 writers in the community. Mike talks about the importance of listening to what community members want and how they used Bevy to create the events and interaction that the members desired. The Mighty now has over 3 million members and continues to support, uplift, and provide a safe space for anyone dealing with health challenges. Who is this episode for?: Non Profit, In person & Online, Starting 3 key takeaways: - The Mighty found success in recruiting individuals to share their health stories and write thank you letters to those who helped them on their health journey, eventually growing to 15,000+ writers. - Mike grew The Mighty to over 3 million members by focusing on listening and learning from community members to ensure the community evolved in the way they desired. - When The Mighty community members’ shared struggles, many solutions were found amongst other community members sharing insights and suggestions when doctors had no answers.

Sarah Leary began her research of community back in 1999 which led to developing a sports community in 2008, Fan Base. The community had little success and Sarah faced the question of “when do you cut the rope and try something else? Or hustle a little more to get the momentum?”. Sarah decided to cut the rope and two years later founded Next Door. She recognized that people had both social and professional identities, but there was an underserved neighborhood identity that needed attention. Sarah began going door to door, meeting to meeting, and person to person explaining the concept of Next Door. She began a long and thorough process to find neighborhood champions who would invest time in their neighborhood to recruit and introduce the platform to others. As the community grew, racial profiling became an issue, but after implementing detailed checklists and procedures for members to stop and think before taking action, Next Door’s racial profiling reduced by 75%. Next Door now has communities in 94% of US neighborhoods and continues to grow rapidly. Who is this episode for?: B2C, In Person & Online, Starting & Scaling 3 key takeaways: - The quality of neighborhood community champions was crucial to the success and growth of Next Door. - Next Door reduced Racial Profiling by 75% after initating a detailed checklist for community members to stop and think before reporting. - Gathering individuals together in a physical space developed deeper connections that strengthened the Next Door community and made it possible to scale online.

This week’s Master of Community is Anika Gupta, the author of a new book and moderator expert. We discuss the importance of moderators - both the invisible and the visible, the role they play in defining the community, and the best way to deal with difficult conversations. Back in college, the comment section of news articles sparked Anika’s love for community and years later developed into her writing the book, “How to Handle a Crowd”. Anika’s research for her book involved engaging with a variety of communities, ranging from large subreddit’s to tight knit political communities like ‘Let’s Make Dinner Great Again’. Anika shares her findings with us, explaining that Moderating is a Proactive role that creates a space for healthy, respectful engagement. Moderators shape the purpose of the community and take on an emotionally tolling position. Anika opens up about the challenges of moderating such as dealing with race and politics, imperfectly inclusive communities, trolling, cancel culture, and more. Anika continues to uplift, mentor, and develop resources and guidance for Moderators, due to the emotionally taxing nature of the job. Who is this episode for?: Nonprofit, Online, Revitalizing Community Builders 3 key takeaways: - Moderating is proactive, rather than reactive and shapes the purpose of the community by creating a safe and respectful environment. - Anika reveals that much of the moderation that occurs is ‘invisible’ work done behind the scenes to establish guidelines, community values, and define who the community space is for. - Alison’s new book ‘How To Handle A Crowd’ will educate and enlighten all community members and moderators of the reality and hard work that goes into moderating and best practices moving forward.

In this episode, we sit down with Naj Austin, the founder of Ethel’s Club, to learn how she created a community for Black professionals after facing microaggression and racism in co-working spaces. Naj began her community just last year in January 2019, and after a month she already had journalists rolling in to write up posts and articles on Ethel’s Club. Naj had never experienced a space where people of color were empowered, thriving, and healing. So she set out to change this by hosting multiple events per week where people of color would gather and share creative ideas, provide wellness help, and engage in meaningful conversation. Ethel’s Club now hosts multiple events per day and has launched a virtual clubhouse with the onset of Covid-19. The question Naj continues to reflect on is: “are we still a place for everyone? If not, how do we change that?” Naj discussed how a community can remove all systemic racism, and how Ethel’s Club has been affected by the Black Lives Matter movement. Ethel’s Club is currently working on creating a social marketplace for people of color to explore, shop for products, communities, and experiences. Who is this episode for?: B2C, in person and online, Starting 3 key takeaways: -Naj affirms that an inclusive, diverse community must begin from Day 1 in order to completely remove any systemic racism. -Ethel’s Club has been ‘transformative’ for people of color who now feel like being a person of color is the norm, and they are fully empowered, celebrated, and centered. -Ethel’s Club’s core value is that their space is a space for everyone, and they continually reflect on this each day to ensure they live and represent this belief.

In today’s episode, we welcome to the stage the one and only Allison Esposito, Founder of Tech Ladies. About 5 years ago, Allison began organizing events in New York for women working in tech to come together and share experiences, collaborate, and network. This came as a result of Allison’s perceptions on sexism in the tech industry and her inability to make long lasting connections in a male-dominant industry. As these women came together, they realized they were not alone in their struggles and over time, the community grew to 100,000 women. Eventually, Allison transitioned the community from a side job to working full time, and Tech Ladies turned into a business, offering a Founding Members Paid Exclusive Membership. Allison emphasizes the importance of being able and willing to define the feminine voice of the community and creating a safe space for all underrepresented genders, including woman, non-binary, and transgender individuals. Tech Ladies continue to grow and represent women’s rights by helping hundreds of women land jobs in the tech industry, learn from one another through webinars, and network with each other at coworking events. . Who is this episode for?: B2C, In person & Online, Starting & Scaling 3 key takeaways: - Allison shares the importance of being able and willing to define her community and not being afraid to take a stance. - Transforming a community into a business does not transform the people into clients, community and business is about truly helping people and creating connection that is what makes a community and business grow. - Allison left her Google career to dedicate her full time to her passion and joy, Tech Ladies, which has since skyrocketed into 100,000 member community and business.

Today we get the pleasure to hear from Rosie Sherry - founder of the Ministry of Testing, the largest network of software testing professionals, and is the current Community Manager of Indie Hackers. Rosie began her career as a software tester in 2000 and began hosting her own casual, community events, which eventually resulted in the Ministry of Testing Community. In the beginning, she recruited volunteers in different cities to run local software testing events. Eventually, she decided to host a conference that resulted in 60 attendees, and has since skyrocketed to 9 yearly conferences earning $1.5 million in annual revenue. She discusses the challenges of growing a community and determining whether to buy or build community software. Eventually, Rosie outgrew this community, handing over her title as CEO, and discussed the hardships, challenges, and the emotional toll it takes to leave a community she built from scratch. She transitioned to the Indie Hackers Community and has continued to break out of her shell by speaking and educating others on the power of community. Who is this episode for?: B2C, in person and online, starting 3 key takeaways: -Rosie has discovered that you don’t build a community tool until you need to because it’s not the tool that makes the community it’s the people. -Rosie successfully left the Ministry of Testing after outgrowing and losing interest, and affirms that it’s normal to move onto other opportunities. -Community isn’t about one person leading, it’s the person to person relationships that cultivates community, as shown by the Ministry of Testing growing from 1 conference a year to 9.

Natalie Franke is today’s speaker, the Founder of the Rising Tide Society and Global Head of Community at Honeybook. Natalie started out as a freelance photographer and began to grow a community around the hashtag #CommunityOverCompetition. She quickly began hosting meetup events and two months later, Rising Tide Society was acquired by Honeybook. After this acquisition, the growth was explosive to a point where it became hard to manage. The community matured and she began to build the infrastructure needed to scale, such as training for leaders, a community playbook, and defining success in ROI. By scaling while staying true to the community beliefs, they grew to 77,000 members and 400 chapters. Rising Tide continues to grow virtually as a result of Covid-19. Who is this episode for?: B2B, In-person and Online, Scaling Community Builders 3 key takeaways: - Natalie was able to define success in community by finding the key metrics and ROI that helped grow the community. - Natalie created training programs and playbooks for Chapter Leaders to manage community growth. - Natalie has found success by staying true to the community’s core value, #CommunityOverCompetition, because this message resonated deeply with her audience, small business owners.

Greg Isenberg is an online community builder that is dedicated to finding what people are passionate about and building communities for them. He is the Co-Founder of Late Checkout, a company that designs, creates, and acquires online communities that are off of the big social media platforms. Greg shares how he identifies business opportunities with communities that he knows can be monetized and scaled, and what he does to turn this potential into a reality. Greg is a community builder that finds what people are passionate about and creates spaces for them to share their enthusiasm while also making a profit. Greg and David discuss the future of social media and what this means for community builders that want to build a “true community” in 2020 and beyond. Greg knows what it takes to build and scale a community and he shares what he knows to be the key to leading a successful community as an individual. Who is this episode for?: Online communities in all stages (starting, scaling and revitalizing) 3 key takeaways: - The benefits of a community existing on a platform that was created specifically for their community and tailored to its mission - The truth about venture capital funding in the community industry - The impact of showing up for your community consistently and with deep commitment to its purpose

Erin Wayne is Director of Community and Creator Marketing at Twitch as well as a content creator and influencer in the gaming community. Erin has a unique approach to community at Twitch, focusing on collaboration between the community members and the influencers that they are engaging with. By creating ways for the community to actively participate in and affect the experience that the gamer is having during a livestream, Erin has created a community that engages its leaders and members with the experience. Erin shares how Twitch uses the community as a resource for providing the company with new ideas and testing products before their launch. Erin Wayne is passionate about creating a safe and engaging community for Twitch users and has spent years building the Twitch community into the force it is today. Who is this episode for?: Online B2C starting and scaling 3 key takeaways: - How Erin collects feedback from the community and how they use this to build their new products - The steps that Erin takes to create safe spaces at scale for the community and its chapter leaders - How Twitch structures their community of millions of users

Mary Thengvall is the Director of Developer Relations at Camunda and the author of the book, The Business Value of Developer Relations. In this episode, Mary and David cover what it means for a business to build a community and a developer relations program. Mary shares her wisdom on how to build a community team and how she developed a career path for her community team at Camunda. This career path is based on her three pillars of developer relations and has a structured way of determining when her team members are ready to take on a new stage in their career. She describes the different levels that they use, that you can use for your own community teams. Mary introduces the idea of Community Qualified Leads that will help community professionals track and share their impact on their company. Who is this episode for?: In person and online, starting their communities 3 key takeaways: - How to measures the successes of a community team using “CQLs” and how to share this information to ensure that the company can see the tangible impact of their community team - The different roles within a Developer Relations team and how to hire the right people for each role - How Mary has structured the career path for her DevRel team at Camunda based on four distinct stages that all support her three pillars of Developer Relations: Developer Advocacy, Developer Experience, and Developer Community

For this episode of Masters of Community we are bringing on Max Altschuler, founder of SalesHacker, a global online community for B2B Sales professionals. Before SalesHacker, Max was co-founder of CMX with our host David Spinks. Max and David talk about what it takes to get a community up and running and how to tailor your community events to the specific needs and personality of your community members. Max talks about the importance of learning from failure along the way of his career path and describes what he discovered to truly work for him and his business throughout his path. Max has been a virtual event creator long before the rest of us had to transition in 2020 and he shares his wisdom on what he has found to be the key to hosting a successful virtual event. Max’s advice is straightforward and incredibly valuable to anyone looking to make their virtual community grow. Who is this episode for?: Community builders who are starting or scaling an online community for B2B Companies 3 key takeaways: - Max explains how he considers the common personality type of the individuals within a community as an important factor when deciding what kind of event to put on. - He describes the different phases of his career and emphasizes the importance of focusing on learning early in your career in preparation for earning more later in life. - How SalesHacker grew to the point of acquisition by Outreach.io and how he maintained the integrity of the community through the transition

Our guest Jennifer Sable Lopez has led the communities for Moz, WeLocalize, and is now the Director of Community for OutSystems, a low-code platform that provides tools for companies to develop and manage enterprise applications. Our host David Spinks and Jen talk about how to build a community team, and how to set that team up for success using each team member’s strengths. Jen explains how to discover an individual’s strengths through training and describes which are best for particular community team roles. Jen describes the steps that she takes to uncover someone’s strengths and get them into the right position. Give this episode a listen to find out what roles you and your teammates should take on in your community. Who is this episode for?: Community builders who are starting an in-person and online community for B2B Companies 3 key takeaways: - Jen explains how training her new hires in a wide array of skills and seeing where they did their best work allowed her to understand and utilize their strengths. - How teams can effectively communicate about their strengths and weaknesses to optimize support and cohesiveness within the team. - Jen understands that community professionals are often asked to take on more work than one person can handle.

This episode we speak to the Founder and Managing Partner of Backstage Capital, a venture fund that invests in very best founders who identify as women, People of Color, or LGBTQ. She talked about taking action instead of making pledges, and why not speaking up for fear of saying the wrong thing is counterproductive. She talks on how we can build more equity and diversity showing their most diverse people as much as they can but rather apply the same work ethic that built their company towards bringing on more diverse staff, especially in positions of power. Who is this episode for?: All community builders! 3 key takeaways: - Arlan talks on the current topic of white leaders stepping down and giving their role to someone who is underrepresented, she compares it to asking someone tall to move when you’re at a concert; you don’t have to remove yourself rather make sure you invite people in. - When it comes to talking about topics like Black Lives Matter, Arlan shared how being afraid of saying anything is counterproductive and those who are completely against Black Lives Matter are better off not apart of the community. - She shared becoming black people should not be tasked with being the teachers always explaining issues facing their community, rather people should do their own research to understand how they can be educated and take action in a way that has an actual impact.

In this episode, David Spinks speaks with Craig Forman, Lead People Scientist at Culture Amp about authenticity in communities. Culture Amp helps companies create an incredible culture and in today’s episode, David and Craig explore how culture can drive growth, engagement, and overall health for communities. Craig also led their community, Culture First, as they launched their in-person and now virtual community events and have fostered a place for everyone interested in culture. They also dive into how internal company culture is closely tied to the external community of contributors, ambassadors, and customers, and how companies can shift their workplace culture to benefit the overall good of the company, the community, and the world. Who is this episode for?: Community builders who are starting an in-person and online community for B2B Companies 3 key takeaways: - Craig believes that internal company culture is tied closely to the external community of contributors and ambassadors. When they both have the greatest good of their employees and community members in mind, the company and its community will thrive. - You have to trust that the ambassadors you’ve brought together have the passion to build your community when they share your values and how important it is to not have too many bottlenecks and allow them to run their community. - Craig talks about what they measure in their survey’s like did this meet or exceed their expectations, would they come and again and other questions that help them quantify the sense of culture and belonging.

In this episode, we're joined by Jennifer Dulski. She’s a seasoned tech and community executive who’s had leadership roles at companies like Google, Change.org, Facebook, and more. Today, she’s the founder and CEO of Rising Team. In this episode, Jennifer shares the philosophy and framework she’s cultivated over her career for building successful teams. She breaks down the Three C’s that are key to a manager’s success, how you can discover the unique talents of the teammates and leaders in your community, and more.

In this episode, we're joined by Kevin Huynh, cofounder and partner at People & Company and coauthor of "Get Together." Kevin shares insights on three core questions you need to ask before starting a community, the responsibility of community builders to take a stand against racial injustice, and how to be successful as a community consultant working with incredible brands like Nike and Porsche.

Today's guest is Marjorie Anderson. She's the manager of digital communities at Project Management Institute and is also the founder of Community by Association. In this conversation, we talk about how PMI approaches its programming to serve its million-plus community of project management professionals. Marjorie also dives into their virtual events, which they've been running since 2014, and shares insights into how community teams can make sure their work is driving measurable impact.

Today's guest is Andrea Middleton. She's the open source community growth strategist at Automattic and leads the Wordpress open source community. In this conversation, we start by discussing what the community program looks like at Wordpress and the community team responsibilities. This discussion includes: 1) What are the goals/objectives of the community team unique to Wordpress 2) Key Elements needed for a high scale community to create/adopt, while maintaining quality and inclusivity 3) What the orienting process looks like at Wordpress We further dig into the frameworks, tools, and resources she's developed to support and grow the massive Wordpress open source community worldwide. We discuss important topics such as: 1) How Wordpress vets for alignment a) What happens when someone isn’t a fit for the program 2) The major challenges the Wordpress community faces a) What systems are used to manage conflicts and create solutions b) How Wordpress copes with intermember conflicts 3) Tactics used to engage people in the Wordpress community We conclude by hearing Andrea’s unique message to anyone who’s interested in pursuing a community based company.

In this episode, we're joined by Casper ter Kuile. He's the author of "The Power of Ritual," a Harvard Divinity School fellow, host of the award-winning podcast "Harry Potter and the Sacred Text," and a co-founder of Sacred Design Lab. In this video we connect past (more traditional) communities to modern day communities and discuss how they are intertwined.  This discussion focuses on: 1) Where community comes from. 2) How ancient community practices show up unwittingly in today’s world. 3) Echoes of old practices finding new form in today’s world. 4) How can old traditions be valuable in today’s world and how can we learn from them? We also take a deep dive into the why and how religion/religious institutions have evolved over the years.  Additionally, we discuss religious rituals and how they can be seen everywhere from our fitness communities to our workplaces.  In this discussion we focus on: 1) What has been attributed to the decline of religion over the past 50 years. 2) Religion as an institution vs. religion as a belief and value system. 3) How people satisfy their spiritual desires in today's world. 4) Where are people finding things that have been unbundled from religion. What platform/technology will allow customers to connect better with themselves, others, nature, and a sense of a higher existence (transcendence) in a coherent way. Finally, we discuss what all community builders can learn from religious communities, and how to identify rituals that bring deeper purpose and soul into your community spaces.  This includes: 1) How the workplace provides for a more meaningful community. 2) What does a community need to help people make meaning and build authentic relationships. 3) Where do people go/who do people trust to “shape” them. 4) Rituals that take place in our lives and in community spaces. Links and learnings: — https://www.caspertk.com/ — https://sacred.design/ — https://twitter.com/caspertk — https://cmxhub.com/academy/the-community-mba/