community managers

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 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.

Jenny Li Fowler, Director of Social Media Strategy at MIT, joins us in the next episode of The Community Corner Podcast. Jenny discusses the specific challenges in building a community at an educational institution. She also shares how her team at MIT thinks about community and social media and how they are adapting to changes in technology and the industry. MIT is one of the leading universities and global leader in science, research, technology, and education. Jenny provides consultation and strategy for any announcements, events, or campaigns at the institute level. She also manages social media channels. Social media management optimizes content for whichever channel it’s being posting on and targets the audience. Community management builds cohesive bonds within people, and it addresses its members. Social media helps the higher education community solidify and speak with it. Technological and innovative trends can engage positively with higher education communities and develop into something bigger. Try to familiarize yourself with the language of these innovations and use them to understand how they can be helpful.

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

Today we have a special episode, Community Manager Appreciation Day, where our guests reveal what they are grateful for and proud of about their communities: Katie Ray, Head of Customer Community at Clari, shares her accomplishments of growth and engagement from her time managing the Saleshacker community. She also discusses her current work, hyper-growth, and engagement growth in the Clari community. Next, Diane Yuen, the new Community Manager at Alation, has extensive organic community experience after building her gaming community for seven years. Diane shares her story of taking on her first full-time community role. Jennifer Serrat, Associate Director of Community Engagement at IE University and Community Moderator at CMX, shares a story about some out-of-the-box thinking that led to the revival of her community in the middle of COVID. Kaleem McGill is the Community Manager at The Better Product Community powered by Innovatemap. He shares how he and his team audited and revamped their onboarding process for new members. And finally... Neha Agarwal, Head Community at Quora India, shares the strategy she and her team used to launch Spaces in Hindi.

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, 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 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.

Today we’re joined by Jillian Bejtlich, Director of Community at Zapier, a platform that automates integration between multiple SaaS or non-SaaS platforms. Zapier eliminates the need for users to spend time dealing with code, and platforms having to manage partnerships/integrations with multiple platforms at once. Jillian’s team helps enable access to information for its partners, browsers, and users. They also recently took over Zapier documentation. Community managers can come from various careers, but they must be willing to work in the “happy middle” to enable synergy between the company and its customers. Being a data nerd helps in being an effective community manager who can help focus on narratives and find trends, serve content proactively, and map available data from the community with organizational goals. Customizing narratives according to users is also a crucial part of managing a community.

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”.

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 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 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.

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