Don't Let "Scale" Get in the Way of Good Community Strategy
Release Date: 11/11/2019
When an Online Community Pro Retires
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is a legend of the online community profession. After 30 years, she has retired. But what does it mean when we retire from this work? Her career began AOL in 1994, building communities and managing a massive volunteer program. Among her numerous stops, Rebecca found a focus in child safety, leading such efforts for Sulake (the company behind Habbo Hotels and Disney’s Virtual Magic Kingdom), Mind Candy (Moshi Monsters), and most recently SuperAwesome, a provider of tools for safer, responsible digital engagement with young people, who was acquired by Epic Games. A program manager for...
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Breaking: Online Community Consultant Discovers Brand New Concept (Again!)
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Online community consultants aren’t unlike consultants for any other area of work. Some are ethical, smart, and talented, and some aren’t. Consultants also don’t often make great guests for the show because they view it as yet another lead generational funnel for them to shout generalities into. But hopefully an exception is this episode with community consultant . On it, we discuss how being humble is often at odds with how many consultants promote themselves, as they place a certain importance on appearing authoritative and revelatory, even if that isn’t actually correct in the...
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Kinks vs. Crimes and Gender-Inclusive Content Moderation at Grindr
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Bodies aren’t moderated equally on the internet. Content moderation efforts, especially those at large, mainstream platforms, can suffer from policy-based bias that results in moderation centering a cisgender gaze. This reinforcing of heteronormativity can leave some of your most vulnerable community members – and potential community members – feeling alienated, ostracized, and simply unwelcome. Last year, in her role as CX escalations supervisor at , Vanity Brown co-authored a whitepaper, . Insightful, with a straight forward approach to making content moderation just a bit...
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Safeguarding a Diabetes Charity Community and Knowing if You’ve Done the Right Thing
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Safeguarding is a term used in Ireland and the United Kingdom that covers efforts to protect the health, wellbeing, and human rights of people, especially children and those who are otherwise vulnerable. At , four people alternate by week as the safeguarding lead, helping to protect those that the charity comes in contact with. One of them is Josh Poncil, the online community and learning manager. Among his responsibilities is . On this episode, we talk about safeguarding and knowing if you’ve done the right thing at the end of the day, plus: What is considered “too technical”...
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Empowering Employee Resource Group Leaders With Your Internal Community Platform
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Employee resource groups (ERGs) can do a lot to create a greater sense of belonging at your organization. But the folks who volunteer to lead these groups may find themselves in need of help when it comes to utilizing perhaps the greatest tool at their disposal: Your internal employee community platform. As a community strategist within large organizations, has trained employees to help them get the most out of these platforms. She has also managed two large migrations, both from Jive, and that has led her to have a (in her words) cynical perspective on the resources made available...
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The Chief Community Officer Hype Machine
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As we celebrate Community Signal’s 7th birthday, Patrick takes questions from Community Signal listeners and supporters in this first ever “Ask Patrick Anything” episode of the show. Questions include: If everything had worked with CNN+, what would community look like for the platform? Would you rather be a working community professional or a community consultant? Will we ever see community leaders in the C-suite as the norm? 2023 will be Patrick’s 25th year of community work, so this is an opportunity to reflect on that passage of time. A lot has changed and, surprisingly, some...
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Elon Musk’s Quest to Make Twitter Worse
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Elon Musk’s presence has loomed over Twitter since he announced plans to purchase the platform. And for these few weeks that he’s been in charge, many concerns have proven to be justified. Musk , and then . He is . The verification process, perhaps one of Twitter’s most trusted features, has been unraveled. He’s offered severance to those who don’t want to be part of Following the results of a Twitter poll, , who was suspended from the platform for his role in inciting the January 6th attacks. So, what happens now? What of the many social movements that...
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When Community is on 3 Teams in 5 Years
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As customer base and product offerings have grown, so has its community. The Zendesk community started in 2008, under the support organization, as a space for people to ask and answer questions about using the product. Since then, it has shifted departments multiple times, leading to changes in KPIs and core purpose. , the company’s director of community, joins the show to explain how she has navigated these challenges. Tune in for her approach on thoughtfully managing change and expectations within your community and inside of your organization. Patrick and Nicole also discuss: ...
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Why Community on the Product Team Works, From a Product Leader’s Perspective
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Recently, community pro Danielle Maveal joined Community Signal to discuss . In this episode, we’re getting the opposite perspective from product leader . Gitesh and Patrick worked together at CNN, where community reported into product. And while the product and community that they were building were short lived, they both speak highly of their time working together. Gitesh describes creating a team atmosphere where each individual’s expertise was respected and given room to ladder into organizational goals, giving each person the opportunity to see the impact of their work....
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Lessons in Building Safe, Inclusive, and Functional Spaces for LGBTQ+ Folks
Community Signal
If you’re wondering how you can more actively foster safety and belonging for LGBTQ+ folks in your online community, there’s precedent to learn and borrow from. In this episode of Community Signal, we’re joined by , the CEO and founder of . Venia shares lessons from her decade of experience building community for LGBTQ+ individuals, which started when she began sharing her transition journey on YouTube. Patrick and Venia discuss tools, policies, and practices that can help build queer friendly spaces over time. For example, how easy is it for someone to edit their profile...
info_outlineCommunities are good for business, but are businesses good for communities? This question has come up on the show before, specifically when we spoke to community hosts losing their Yahoo Groups and when IMDb’s message boards were closed and erased. What happens when corporation-led communities are determined to have outlived their usefulness to the corporation, but not to the members? Does this lead to more grassroots-led communities? How will the tools and examples we’ve created serve those grassroots communities?
Bailey Richardson, a community professional that helped build Instagram and recently co-authored Get Together, and Patrick address these questions on this episode, as well as:
- The current community software landscape and why there’s still room for growth
- What happens when you need to demote or ban a community leader
- Why graffiti is allowed on Instagram
Big Quotes
Not all interactions can infinitely scale (10:08): “When we left [Instagram], people on our team [asked], ‘What’s the one thing that we should remember?’ Our response was treating people well on a one-on-one basis, on a very human level, I think does scale. Those interactions that you build that are deep touch interactions, I think actually can have a very big impact on culture, on a platform overall, and that’s a principle that I think a lot of people try, as their businesses get larger, to do anything in their power to not do high touch things with a small number of people. … I participated in building one of the fastest-growing companies in the world. Some of what made the platform special was the fact that we met people who really cared about our platform where they were and got to know them and celebrated them.” –@baileyelaine
How boundaries keep communities on track (17:40): “Sometimes the structure that you put in can help people actually access the value they want from you in the first place. … If I’m coming to your karate forum, I want to talk about karate. I’m not showing up to talk about politics.” –@baileyelaine
When business goals outweigh community values (44:20): “There’s something quite fragile about someone showing up for something that they care so much about that they contribute an outsized amount of effort to with very little expectation of any kind of financial or real reward in their life. … The thing that I worry most about is the reality of business is that ensuring those people’s enjoyment, happiness, and respect is not the primary goal. … It’s just painful to see them let down when you know the purity of the way they showed up for you, and when you can’t match them with that, it’s just a difficult thing to carry around.” –@baileyelaine
About Bailey Richardson
Three years ago, Bailey Richardson started People & Company with Kai Elmer Sotto and Kevin Huynh, on a mission is to help people bring their people together. People & Company works with organizations to make smarter bets about investing in communities. They also interview extraordinary people organizers on their podcast Get Together, and in August 2019, they published Get Together, a book about how to build communities today based on the research and strategy work they’ve done with hundreds of community organizers.
Bailey was also one of the first 10 employees at Instagram, working on the community team. She has also worked for IDEO, StoryCorps, Pop-Up Magazine and The California Sunday Magazine, made a short film about a Pinoy inventor named Dado Banatao, interviewed Russians who are LGBTQ about what their lives are really like, asked Casey Neistat how to make and share videos people love, and started a Mola Mola Fan Club.
Related Links
- Bailey Richardson on Twitter
- Get Together, a book on building community with your people, written by Bailey Richardson, Kevin Huynh, and Kai Elmer Sotto
- Get Together, a podcast about the nuts and bolts of community building, hosted by Bailey, Kevin, and Kai
- People & Company, the consultancy that Bailey co-founded
- Quitting Instagram: She’s one of the millions disillusioned with social media. But she also helped create it. (via the Washington Post)
- Drew Kelly, an early Instagram user
- Tonic is a curated news app from Canopy
- Bassey Etim is the editorial director at Canopy and former guest on Community Signal
- Bogleheads, a community inspired by John Bogle’s investment ideologies
- Bailey names the following community platforms: Groups.io, Mighty Networks, Disciple, and Mixr
- Patrick names the following community platforms: Discourse, xenForo, and Invision
- Sarah Hawk is the vice president of community and product at Discourse
- CreativeMornings
- Heather Champ and the Biggest Threats to Great Online Communities
- Howard Rheingold, founder of the WELL
- IMDb’s Message Boards and Why Trolls Don’t Force Communities to Close
Transcript
Your Thoughts
If you have any thoughts on this episode that you’d like to share, please leave me a comment, send me an email or a tweet. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.