bevy

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 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”

Today, we’re joined by Ilker Akansel, Community Manager, Builder, and Strategist at ilkerakansel.com. Ilker details the importance of and differences between developer relations and developer communities. He also shares some of his experiences working in the community space and his predictions for the future. Ilker describes his company, named after himself, as a community strategy and management consultant service. Developer relations are nurturing mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and software developers. It is an organization-centric function, where you make sure that the developers around the organization have the best relationship in the interests of both the developers and the organization. Managing developer communities or a group of developers is much more community-oriented. Technically, they are all specialists in their craft forming a tech community to help each other. Communities are crucial for developers to speak with other developers. They can interact with them in these respects, share their ideas, and act to consult in problem-solving. Developer communities are converging fast into talent communities. Forming and being part of talent communities will give competitive advantages to organizations. Move into developing, curating, and managing talent communities. Look into new technologies and skills your community is interested in. Focus on upskilling, reskilling, and outskilling.

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 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

Today, we’re joined by Nikki Thibodeau, Senior Community Operations Manager and Chair of the Women’s Employee Resource Group at Shopify, the powerful eCommerce platform. Addressing gender-diverse or racially-diverse groups is tough because it requires having some difficult and, sometimes, awkward workplace conversations. You want the right people to be there, but that also means you sometimes have to exclude the wrong people. It's really important for the success of our communities that we keep those who are not going to be helpful to those conversations out of those conversations. By having that space created at the very beginning - as Shopify does with “Empower Hour”, enables a real conversation to happen in a caring way. If you're not the right person to have the conversation with, step away and find the right person. Create your conversation safeguards and processes that you can refer to when stuck in difficult conversations.

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.

Today, we’re joined by Willa Tellekson-Flash, Director of Community at Public.com, a platform that helps people become better investors. On Public, members can build a diverse portfolio of stocks, funds, and crypto, and ownership unlocks an experience of content and education, created by a million+ strong community of investors, creators and analysts. Use your community as a product of its own and elevate it as a part of your brand. The conversations in the community can form a great resource to create content. Document and track direct feedback and ideas from the community. You may not be able to implement every idea that comes from them. A community manager’s job is to make community members feel heard while being transparent about the likelihood of implementing their ideas. It’s important to make your members feel welcome in asking for help when they don’t know something. The job of the community team is to set ground rules that help establish trust among members and between individual members and the community itself.

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, David Spinks, the co-founder of CMX, VP of Community at Bevy, and is the host of the Masters of Community podcast, joins us to discuss how to build a community and mistakes to avoid along your community journey. David talks about: --> What led him into community building, and how he had the best speakers for his first community event, even before booking the venue --> Signs/data to look at before taking the plunge to start a community --> Common mistakes most companies make when launching a community --> Roadblocks faced by David in the early stages of building CMX and how he overcame it --> The Spaces Framework for building a community --> What are the right metrics to measure the success and impact of a community, and a lot more...

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.

Today, we’re joined by David Spinks, VP of Community at Bevy and Co-Founder of CMX. The CMX Community recently launched its new set of values. These values are: • Be generous • Be ground-breaking • Be actively inclusive Community values are not the same as company values. Company values decide how your company does business. Community values define how community members - not necessarily the founders and managers but users of the company’s products/services - can interact with each other and create a supportive culture with communication as its base. These two sets of values should be aligned, but they do have to be independently defined. Hire a consultant for DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) to help translate your values through the DEI lens and make sure they’re future-ready. Collect ideas for values from your community management team, organize them into themes, take feedback from DEI consultants, and publish them as version one for the community to give you feedback. Take feedback from long-time members, moderators, and superfans in your community for the first round of revisions. Then take the second version of your values document to the rest of the broader collection of community members for their feedback. Your community members will embody the values, create the space, and essentially become the culture, and therefore, their voices must be heard. More of them will feel more invested in the community. Their feedback will improve your values into something that is more widely accepted and more accurate. Lead with these values during community registration, membership confirmation, and community events. Empower your members to report those who don’t comply with these values.

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.

Today, we’re joined by Stephanie Louis, Senior Director, Community and Developer Programs at PegaSystems (Pega), a software company that crushes business complexity through intelligent automation while providing great customer service and experience. It's an open platform that comes with out-of-the-box solutions but also allows clients to expand on it. Communicating technology is a key responsibility of community managers in tech companies. Community is a product of your company, it’s not just a “sidecar”. It needs to be appreciated and managed like a product. Therefore, more team members are needed in individual roles for managing a community. They also need to help connect all internal departments (product, sales, marketing, and other teams) of the company involved in the community efforts. Internal programs help gamify, measure, track, and reward the contribution from the company’s teams to the community. Also consider qualitative metrics of contribution to the community when deciding on rewards for your members.

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.

Today, we’re joined by Lauren Uyeno, National Director of SEC and SOX Professional Groups at Workiva, a computer software product that brings together everything you need—teammates, datasets, and data sources—so you can work better in the cloud. Lauren builds the SEC and SOX Professional Groups, which are member-driven, community-led events programs. These communities currently have forty chapters and are helping drive acquisition, contribution, and engagement for the business. Communities help professionals in industries find other people with whom they can share their problems and find a sense of belonging. On the events side, Lauren is tracking attendance percentage (how many of those who RSVP'd attend the event). Workiva also has their key tools all synced on the backend with the help of On24, which integrates smoothly with Marketo and Salesforce to track lead generation. On the community side, the key stats Lauren is tracking are unique visitors, the number of visits, and the percentage of activated users from posts and comments. Not everything that you track needs to be entered in reports. When inheriting a community, it’s important to introduce yourself to user groups, talk to them, and listen closely to get a read on the community.