Masters of Community is hand crafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Masters of Community is hand crafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Masters of Community is hand crafted by our friends over at: fame.so

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

Learn more about Holly:Holly Firestone's LinkedInVenafi Warrior CommunityHolly Firestone at MediumHolly Firestone's TwitterEpisode resources:The Business of Belonging: How to Make Community your Competitive AdvantageIf you enjoyed this episode then please either:Subscribe, rate and review on Apple PodcastsFollow on SpotifyMasters of Community is hand crafted by our friends over at: fame.so

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

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

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

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

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