When an Online Community Pro Retires
Community Signal
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!)
Community Signal
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
Community Signal
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
Community Signal
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
Community Signal
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
Community Signal
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
Community Signal
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
Community Signal
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
Community Signal
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_outlineAll reporting structures have their pros and cons, but product and community share the job of “deeply understand[ing] what the user wants and what their motivations are, and how to get them from point A to point B (2:17).” With a shared mandate, community and product teams that effectively partner can expand each other’s influence and success.
No matter what team you report into, creating a foundation in which all teams have respect for each other’s knowledge, experience, and processes is critical to every team, the business, and the community itself. Tune in to hear how Patrick and Danielle have fostered product relationships at Burb, CNN, Lyft, and more.
Danielle and Patrick also discuss:
- The value that community pros can bring to product teams
- Learning and leveraging product’s processes
- How the OKR (objectives and key results) goal structure can be adapted by community pros
Big Quotes
Community can be very repetitive (7:37): “[Product] structures don’t always work for a community team. Sometimes product teams are very much into launching features … and then feature usage. Community is a lot of repetitive tasks or maintenance. These things are important. It’s hard to fit under almost any team actually because we do have this kind of work where mostly, especially in tech, everyone’s trying to launch something and get awesome feedback on it. That’s not always the case in community.” –@daniellexo
Product and community can partner to expand each org’s influence and success (18:16): “Having community in your product team is an opportunity for product leaders to increase their mandate and increase their influence. It’s not just one way. It’s not just community influencing product. It’s increasing the influence of product within the wider org, too.” –@patrickokeefe
Approaching your product team with community feedback (22:35): “It’s really important to bring problems. Bring as much data as you can, make partners with other teams who are also getting this feedback and data. … Have as much support as you can around this problem. You can even tell stories from the community about this problem, but just don’t barge in with the solution that the community wants because it’s never going to get people on your side. It’s not going to motivate them to want to work on that project.” –@daniellexo
Maintain a bird’s eye view of issues impacting your community (25:14): “Fires are burning. People are fighting. People are upset. … There’s a little community [forming] that’s making this thing look like an emergency, and it’s not always an emergency. [It’s] really important to have partnerships with other teams; data science, research, customer service, and make sure you have a really bird’s eye view of a story before you go to product or engineering, trust and safety, or legal with your requests.” –@daniellexo
Being on the defensive for product enhancements can rob you of creative opportunities (31:38): “When you’re spending a lot of your energy, time, and mind thinking up all [the counterpoints to expected criticisms,] the defensive positions, and backing up everything you say, there’s little room to come to the table with someone and actually dream up something better. Usually, you’re just defending the bare minimum. If you can build that trust, and if you have a team that will trust you and work together to build that trust, you can use that time to be creative. Go leaps forward versus, ‘Ugh, we just need to maintain the status quo, so I need to fight for this one little thing.'” –@daniellexo
Being a community person on a product team can make you better (32:16): “Ultimately, I think that being on a product team can make, with some exceptions, you a better community person, and a broader community person.” –@patrickokeefe
About Danielle Maveal
Danielle Maveal is a serial founding team member. She’s been building community at Etsy, Airbnb, and Lyft for 15 years. She’s the chief community officer at Burb, a messaging, automation, and CRM toolset for community builders. Danielle also coaches community professionals and runs multiple support groups for community builders.
Related Links
- Danielle Maveal on Twitter
- Danielle Maveal on LinkedIn
- Burb
- Danielle’s past appearance on Community Signal
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.