Community Pulse

This episode is an important one, and one of our most intense to date. We covered so much in this episode that I strongly suggest you simply listen, but here's the tl;dr: Jason Yee, PJ Hagerty, and Carina C. Zona join Jason and Mary to talk through some of the prevalent struggles in community management: what our roles actually entail (and how to communicate that to the rest of the company), how we define ourselves, how to protect our roles, what we need in order to survive the day in and day out of this job that we love, and if a company decides to let their community department go, how (and when) to do that. Here are a few highlights: Who are we? We are the listeners, the connectors, the avatars of the company we represent. We're the low-bullshit communicator -- the people who are known for being honest, as well as someone the community can be honest with, and as such, we're a reflection of the company to the rest of the world. We're the oracle that's supposed to make sense of the unknown and then transmit that information to the decision-makers... easy, right? We're specialists. Just like the engineers. Just like the sales people. We're specialists. Companies need to understand this, and allow us to do the things we specialize in instead of forcing us into situations where we do things that aren't our job poorly. What do we do? There's so much "mysticism" in what we do that people get confused about what it is that we do and how we show our worth. It's essential for us to find ways to communicate what we're doing on a regular basis back to the company. Despite how it appears, we don't keep flipping hats around, choosing whichever one suits us that day... we keep adding more hats, which makes our results difficult to quantify. How do we protect ourselves? Make sure our manager has our back. We need someone to fight our battles for us, even shield us to a certain extent, so that we can do our job. In the perfect world, the person above us is the umbrella that protects us from the things going on above us, not by keeping us from knowing what we need to know in order to do our job, but allowing us to focus on our day-to-day tasks while they take care of the higher-level conversations and the fight to keep our department afloat. The question companies need to start asking isn't "Can we continue to afford to pay these people?" but "Can we afford to lose the goodwill and amount of work that these folks are putting into our community?" Check It Out: [Evangelist Collective Slack Channel](evangelistcollective.github.io) [Prompt](mhprompt.net) - looking for someone to speak about mental health in tech? we'll provide financial assistance to help you find a speaker. Vicky Brassuer's 4-part series on opensource.com re: ROI and metrics around community management Debugging Teams: Better Productivity Through Collaboration #DevRelsFTW to decompress: Fuller House (skip the first episode) Peewee's Big Holiday Enjoy the podcast? Please take a few moments to leave us a review on iTunes and follow us on Spotify, or leave a review on one of the other many podcasting sites that we’re on! Your support means a lot to us and helps us continue to produce episodes every month. Like all things Community, this too takes a village.Special Guests: Carina C. Zona and Jason Yee.

*TL;DR: * David Spinks (CEO, CMX Media, @davidspinks) and Carrie Jones (Director of Content, CMX Media, @caremjo) joined Mary and Jason for this episode of Community Pulse. CMX was launched in 2014 as the community for community professionals. These days, through their summits, online community, content, and more, they work to advance the community industry, and give community professionals all of the resources they need to be successful. The CMX Summits bring in voices from psychology and behavioral analysis, as well as non-profits, plus stories from the trenches of technology. The theme for CMX West 2015 was “Community is the Future of Business.” We talk through this idea, and what it means for the future of community professionals, as well as why the essence of community is at a tipping point right now. In the process, we highlight how to help companies understand what it’s like to build community on a professional level, how to set the standards for this relatively new role, Links: CMX Hub Facebook Group The Community Manager - community management-related tips, news and case studies. CMX Summit - “TED for Community Professionals” Fundamentals of Community Strategy Training Course Seth Godin (author) Content Strategy for Community Professionals (ebook) Guide to Community Platforms (ebook) Sarah Judd Welch’s “Community Is” Newsletter The Culting of Brands by Douglas Atkin (book) Start With Why by Simon Sinek (book) Enjoy the podcast? Please take a few moments to leave us a review on iTunes and follow us on Spotify, or leave a review on one of the other many podcasting sites that we’re on! Your support means a lot to us and helps us continue to produce episodes every month. Like all things Community, this too takes a village.Special Guests: Carrie Jones and David Spinks.

*TL;DR: * On this episode of the Community Pulse, Jason and Mary sit down with Tim Falls, Vice President of Community at Keen.io, and Jesus Gonzalez-Barahona, co-founder of Bitergia, to dig into metrics -- the community manager’s arch nemesis. We talk through a number of different options of how to face the reality of making your value known in a world where community is all about relationship-building and word-of-mouth. From bringing awareness to what you’re doing as a team, to not just knowing the numbers, but understanding what the numbers mean, to bringing other coworkers into the community effort whose job titles don’t indicate that they “should” be involved in community, Jesus and Tim offer solutions to this very real problem. Links: Cauldron beta -- community metrics for github repositories Evaluating Free / Open Source Software Projects -- work-in-progress book FCM2 -- FLOSS Community Metrics Meeting FeverBee Sprint -- conference about the psychology of community CMX -- conference, community of community pros, and awesome FB group dashboards.community -- a github repo from Keen.io on how to measure community Measuring Community -- blogpost that Mary quoted at 13:15 Enjoy the podcast? Please take a few moments to leave us a review on iTunes and follow us on Spotify, or leave a review on one of the other many podcasting sites that we’re on! Your support means a lot to us and helps us continue to produce episodes every month. Like all things Community, this too takes a village.Special Guests: Jesus Gonzalez-Barahona and Tim Falls.

TL;DR: Andrew Hyde has no lack of experience when it comes to community, whether that’s organizing local events or connecting people who have similar interests. In this episode of Community Pulse, Mary and Jason talk to him about how to pursue your passions, the importance of taking care of your newest members, and how being a “yes person” is usually the foundation of being a successful community builder. Links: Kathy Sierra — blog and XOXO talk (will be up posted soon here) Takeaways: Launch stuff. Reach out. Be supportive. Enjoy the podcast? Please take a few moments to leave us a review on iTunes and follow us on Spotify, or leave a review on one of the other many podcasting sites that we’re on! Your support means a lot to us and helps us continue to produce episodes every month. Like all things Community, this too takes a village.Special Guest: Andrew Hyde.

TL;DR: On this episode of Community Pulse, Jason and Mary talk to Jono Bacon, Community Strategist and Leader, and author of The Art of Community. Jono joined Canonical in 2006 as a Community Manager, which provided a “stomping ground” for him to learn how to build good communities. It was here that he learned there is value in those individuals who can understand the interesting “connective tissue” between the people and the product. Throughout this 40 minute podcast, we’ll touch on the difference between “read” and “write” communities, how difficult (and important!) it is for us to define our role, how to deal with our harshest critics, and more. Links: Community Leadership Forum The Art of Community (Amazon) or free PDF Nudge (Amazon) Predictably Irrational (Amazon) Dr. David Rock’s SCARF: a brain-based model for collaborating with and influencing others (PDF) The Starfish and the Spider (Amazon) Upcoming Events: DevRelCon: Sept 30, London, UK CMX Summit: Oct 14-15, San Francisco, CA Chef Community Summit: Oct 14-15, Seattle, WA Corrections: We stated in the podcast that the first edition of The Art of Community came out in 2012. The second edition was actually released in 2012 and the first in 2009. Enjoy the podcast? Please take a few moments to leave us a review on iTunes and follow us on Spotify, or leave a review on one of the other many podcasting sites that we’re on! Your support means a lot to us and helps us continue to produce episodes every month. Like all things Community, this too takes a village.Special Guest: Jono Bacon.

TL;DR: Jason and Mary introduce themselves and announce that they’re starting a podcast on building communities. Why? There are a lot of really awesome communities and fantastic ideas both within and outside of the tech community, but there aren’t a lot of resources for those of us who are actively building communities. (Shoutout to Jason Hibbets for suggesting our name: Community Pulse.) In short, this podcast is for those of us who keep a pulse on our communities. Our hope is that this podcast will be an opportunity for us to learn and share aspects of community building with developer evangelists, technical community managers, community builders, and advocates alike. Links: Community Manager/Developer Evangelist Slack Group Community Leadership Forum Upcoming Events: DevRelCon: Sept 30, London, UK CMX Summit: Oct 14-15, San Francisco, CA Chef Community Summit: Oct 14-15, Seattle, WA Enjoy the podcast? Please take a few moments to leave us a review on iTunes and follow us on Spotify, or leave a review on one of the other many podcasting sites that we’re on! Your support means a lot to us and helps us continue to produce episodes every month. Like all things Community, this too takes a village.Special Guest: Sarah Allen.