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Community Signal

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Community Signal is a podcast for experienced online community professionals, including those working in audience engagement, association management, developer relations, moderation, trust and safety, and more. It's released every two weeks and hosted by industry veteran Patrick O’Keefe. This is a very community-focused program. There are plenty of social media and marketing podcasts out there. That’s not what this is. Social media is a set of tools. Community is a strategy you apply to those tools. Marketing brings new customers. Community helps you keep them.

Location:

United States

Description:

Community Signal is a podcast for experienced online community professionals, including those working in audience engagement, association management, developer relations, moderation, trust and safety, and more. It's released every two weeks and hosted by industry veteran Patrick O’Keefe. This is a very community-focused program. There are plenty of social media and marketing podcasts out there. That’s not what this is. Social media is a set of tools. Community is a strategy you apply to those tools. Marketing brings new customers. Community helps you keep them.

Language:

English

Contact:

2525580130


Episodes

When an Online Community Pro Retires

1/22/2024
Rebecca Newton 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 community in 1997, a community director in 2001, a chief community officer in 2007: Rebecca has held all of the titles. Along the way, she has paved a path for the community profession, pushing us higher in corporate environments and creating valuable resources for us. Most notably, her 24 year stewardship of the e-mint listserv for community pros, an iconic resource that has helped countless community facilitators. After such a career, what’s it like to step away from full-time work? What goes through the mind of a retiring community pro? That’s what we’ll discuss, plus: Big Quotes What will Rebecca miss most about being a full-time community pro? (17:32): “I’m going to miss working with people online the most. It’s a different animal than working with people offline, and I did plenty of that before I started in the online world. … Everybody thought they invented remote working. I’ve had remote teams since 1994, so it’s not new. I’m going to really miss that because there’s a special culture in the online world, as you know, that is really hard to describe, or it’s hard for me to describe but is not like the offline world. It’s like being in a special club, in a secret club. That’s how it feels to me.” -Rebecca Newton What won’t she miss? (23:07): “I won’t miss … people naively thinking they know better than everybody who built the widget. I’ve heard the conversations. ‘Oh, they can’t let go. They don’t know how to let go. They don’t know how to grow. They don’t know how to do this.’ Then I would think, ‘Okay, well, we’ll see who’s not growing in a year, so I’m going to go looking for another job because I know in a year this thing’s not going to exist.'” -Rebecca Newton The cyclical trend of online community obsession (31:09): “I remember in 2000 when dentists were [asking], ‘Do I need an online community?’ There was a trend of, “Oh, it’s online community,’ because of the success at AOL. I was like, ‘No. You’re a dentist.'” -Rebecca Newton Overreaction from government officials who aren’t active online (34:21): “I’m not saying anything about how smart [government decision makers] are, about how great their intentions were, or their abilities in the world. [But] if you’re not [active online], if you’re not a heavy user, if you’re not in the kid’s world using it, how can you possibly [make good decisions]? That’s what we see in Great Britain, in the EU. Something happens to one person under 16, they want to have 27 laws about it. Because this thing happened.” -Rebecca Newton Kids want to collaborate, they want a job (38:40): “That’s the biggest thing I learned about working with kids. The very first thing when they get online or game in an app, whatever it is, [they say] ‘I want a job. Can I have a job? Let’s do this together. Let’s do that together.'” -Rebecca Newton When legislation goes too far (39:18): “Over-regulation is detrimental. I think all it does is create a whole lot of jobs for people to do a lot of stuff that nobody’s ever going to look at. That’s a really rude thing for me to say, but I believe that.” -Rebecca Newton About Rebecca Newton Rebecca Newton has spent 30 years in the commercial internet industry. As head of digital trust and community, Rebecca led online community, online safety, moderation, engagement, and customer services efforts at SuperAwesome (of Epic Games) from 2015 to 2023. Prior to...

Duration:00:56:59

Breaking: Online Community Consultant Discovers Brand New Concept (Again!)

7/24/2023
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 Jenny Weigle. 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 context of the history of this work. Can you even be a community consultant or an online community resource if you haven’t taken a concept pioneered 30 years ago and thrown your logo on it? We also discuss: past guest Tim McDonald’squest for a liver donor Big Quotes When consultants and resources claim general concepts (3:57): “I’ve seen plenty of [community] consultants and resources pop up over my 25 years and throw a logo on something. The commitment curve, the activity ladder, the mountain of progression… how many different upward-facing shapes can we throw a logo on? I’ve seen a lot of that, and I’ve seen people claim something that has either been claimed decades ago or no one should be laying claim to.” -Patrick O’Keefe How much of the talk in community work is brand new? (6:01): “There are very few things that happen in our field today that make me pause and say, ‘Wow,’ either to myself or out loud. When I’m putting out my materials and what I’m personally working on, I’m just doing what’s top of mind and mainly it’s influenced by what my clients need at the time.” -Jenny Weigle The danger AI poses to community creativity (15:19): “[With ChatGPT and similar AI tools,] I’m worried about elements of communities where creativity is usually needed. An easy example is the writing of content, the writing of posts, the writing of conversations, and how those things start. I’m worried about everyone sounding the same. I’m worried about everyone getting the same prompts. I’m worried about everyone rewriting their posts using the same tool that learns on the same data set, and will all move them closer to the same center. Ultimately, that’s the death of community.” -Patrick O’Keefe Why community pros should read hospitality books (26:05): “There were so many things [that community builders can learn from the hospitality industry]. I was in awe as I turned each page of Danny Meyer’s book because he paid so much attention to wanting to know his customer’s preferences, their likes, dislikes, what was relevant going on in their lives at the moment, what would bring them in the door, and what would keep them from coming. These are all things that community managers are concerned about with their online communities, as well.” -Jenny Weigle About Jenny Weigle Jenny Weigle has been creating, executing, and reviewing strategies for online communities for more than 10 years. She’s worked with more than 100 brands on various aspects of their community strategy and implementations, including launch, migration, programming, and planning. These brands include, Airbnb, Google, HP, Intuit, Pinterest, REI, Samsung, Sephora, Splunk, Stubhub, and Visa. When she’s not geeking out on community strategy, Jenny spends time in Los Angeles with her partner, John, and stepdaughter. In her personal life, she is a proud member of a number of communities, including Southern California Gator Club, Spiritual Sisters of Los Angeles (which she founded), Oak Park LA (for CrossFit), Sofar Sounds, and D23: The Official Disney Fan Club. Related Links Jenny’s website Tim McDonald on Community Signal Good newsfrom Tim!TimsLiver.comJenny’s Substack The Hospitality Books That Made Me a Better Community ProfessionalSetting the TableHotel ImpossibleBar RescueKitchen NightmaresThe Profit The 2-Hour Cocktail PartyBe Our GuestJenny’s Community Roadshow templateJenny on...

Duration:00:39:06

Kinks vs. Crimes and Gender-Inclusive Content Moderation at Grindr

5/1/2023
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 Grindr, Vanity Brown co-authored a whitepaper, Best Practices for Gender-Inclusive Content Moderation. Insightful, with a straight forward approach to making content moderation just a bit better, I found that it was also a validation of good, thoughtful moderation that has been going on for a long time. Vanity joins the show to talk about these efforts, which are tempered by a realistic acknowledgement of the limitations of this work, and how our need to be in other places (like app stores) can often slow down the progress we’d like to make. We also discuss: Big Quotes How bodies are moderated differently online (2:16): “We want folks to express themselves and their sexuality joyfully, without judgment. Of course, without any harm. But what does that look like? … There traditionally are [community] guidelines for females and guidelines for males, but the world is changing and folks are becoming more in tune with who they are, and we want to be able to treat them equally and let folks, especially I emphasize our trans users, who are uploading photos … and if they are showing the top, then they’re considered a woman if they have female-presenting breasts versus male. There are just a lot of nuances there that we saw as we were moderating content from a community who is very fluid with their gender expression.” -Vanity Brown When do kinks create a moderation issue? (6:38): “[Kinks vs. crimes get] sticky when the kink looks like a crime. … Everything is about sex and kinks at Grindr. With this mass of kinky stuff, which of these things are harmful? I often echo that, in my work, I’m always driven … to do no harm. At the end of the day, are we harming someone? … Do we have a responsibility to protect them and keep them safe? As we continue to build trust with the community, we have to realize that folks are adults, too.” -Vanity Brown Empathy sits at the core of good moderation (14:38): “If you can’t be empathetic for the things you are not … then you’re not really doing good thoughtful community moderation, trust and safety work. … Ultimately, if you want to be truly great at this work, you have to protect the people who aren’t you.” -Patrick O’Keefe What can community pros learn from dating apps? (24:23): “[Community, moderation, trust, and safety pros] can learn from dating apps on the level of how personal and sensitive dating apps are in the content you’re sending back and forth. Folks using dating apps, a lot of times their heartstrings are attached, and their heartstrings are attached on a dating app, but not necessarily Amazon or shopping at Macy’s. … It’s just important to look at folks with a microscope and treat them with kindness as those in dating apps hopefully are doing when they’re handling their customers.” -Vanity Brown About Vanity Brown Vanity Brown is the CX escalations supervisor for Grindr, where she has worked in trust and safety for over 2 years, following more than 7 years at eHarmony. Vanity manages an escalations team of specialists devoted to handling the most complex cases that come through Grindr’s support channels. Related Links Vanity on LinkedInGrindr Best Practices for Gender-Inclusive Content ModerationAlice HunsbergerLily GalibJuliet ShenGrindr’s community guidelines OpenAI’s efforts to identify AI-generated textLove Light CommunityLove Light Community on Instagram Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you’d like to share, please leave me a comment or send me an email....

Duration:00:27:04

Safeguarding a Diabetes Charity Community and Knowing if You’ve Done the Right Thing

3/27/2023
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 Diabetes UK, 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 Diabetes UK’s online forum. On this episode, we talk about safeguarding and knowing if you’ve done the right thing at the end of the day, plus: Big Quotes When veteran members go bad (18:39): “[After 25 years in content moderation,] I really believe that the most stressful situation is when an experienced member takes a turn for the worst. … It’s painful because they are an example to other people in the community. Especially new members who see their posts and say, ‘That member has this number of contributions and has been in the community this long. If they [post] that and it’s up still, that’s probably how this community behaves.'” -Patrick O’Keefe An example of safeguarding in an online community (23:43): “I had someone on the forum saying, ‘I’ve just been diagnosed a couple of weeks ago. I’ve barely eaten.’ That’s like an alarm ringing bells in my head. I’ll take the lead and private message them. … ‘Is everything okay? Could you please contact the helpline or tell us what’s going on?’ “Let’s say they got back to me saying, ‘Yes, I haven’t eaten anything. I don’t feel well. I feel dizzy.’ Then I’ll contact back, ‘Do you need me to call an ambulance?’ Sometimes they’ll go back to me, ‘Yes, here’s my address, my telephone number.’ I’ll ring [the emergency service] 999. I have to be careful what I say at the beginning because of my accent. I’m American, but I live in London. I have to make sure I’m not coming off as a scam. I’m calling from a charity. I have a safeguarding concern.” -Josh Poncil With safeguarding, you regularly are questioning if you did the right thing (24:53): “I’ve had someone on the forum saying, ‘My mom is in quite a worrying state. She’s scared to go to the hospital. She’s dizzy, she’s not coherent. I’m scared she hasn’t been testing for blood sugars.’ On my end, I’ve contacted the daughter, ‘Please get your mom to [Accident and Emergency]. It sounds like she needs medical attention.’ They’ve got back to me, ‘Thank you for getting in touch, but my mom didn’t make it.’ This affected me, and it hit me quite hard not knowing if I did the right thing. I have to just take a moment of, ‘Did I make the right choice? Is there anything else I could do at this time?'” -Josh Poncil About Josh Poncil For the last 4 years, Josh Poncil has been the online community and learning manager for Diabetes UK, after a stint at Blood Cancer UK. He went to school for creative writing and journalism, before transitioning to community by way of social media management. Related Links Sponsor:Higher LogicJosh on LinkedInDiabetes UKDiabetes UK’s online forum Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you’d like to share, please leave me a comment or send me an email. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

Duration:00:30:52

Empowering Employee Resource Group Leaders With Your Internal Community Platform

1/23/2023
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, Lori Harrison-Smith 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 for these migrations, by both companies and the software vendors themselves. Lori and Patrick discuss: Big Quotes What’s really driving an internal community migration deadline (22:59): “When [an internal employee community] migration is happening, [companies are often] trying to save some money while they’re at it, and they’ve got this deadline. It’s usually a contract signature that is driving that deadline. There’s never enough time. It’s like, ‘We need to get off of this because the contract expires in November.’ It’s May when we’re having this conversation because that’s when everybody started looking at the balance sheet.” -Lori Harrison-Smith Instead of adjustments to their platforms, vendors can push “change management” (31:52): “With the different [internal community] vendors I’ve worked with, I’ve always had great relationships with them. The people have always been great and nice, but there’s just these struggles as a community manager because I’m hearing what the employees are saying. I’m hearing them talk about the pain points they’re experiencing. Then you go back to the vendor, and a lot of it is, ‘Well, change management. You just got to get them used to this new system.'” -Lori Harrison-Smith The downside of big dollar value community software contracts (33:57): “Maybe [the consolidation in the community software space is] a case for lower-cost platforms and open source solutions that may seem a little harder upfront but ultimately allow you to be a little more nimble internally as opposed to the sunk cost that makes you feel like you’re in a relationship you could never leave because you need to get that money back out of it.” -Patrick O’Keefe About Lori Harrison-Smith Lori Harrison-Smith’s career began in advertising, where she worked as a copywriter and editor. She found her real passion, though, when she transitioned to a role where she launched and supported an 8,000-strong employee community. Since 2011, Lori has held community roles within large organizations, leading platform updates and migrations, developing content and engagement programs, advocating for user experience, and guiding and supporting employees around communication and knowledge sharing. She is currently the collaboration network manager at VMware, following community roles at Motorola Solutions and Steelcase. Related Links Lori Harrison-Smith on LinkedInVMware Employee Resource Groups Create a Sense of Belonging, Foster Engagement Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that you’d like to share, please leave me a comment or send me an email. If you enjoy the show, we would be so grateful if you spread the word and supported Community Signal on Patreon.

Duration:00:38:01

The Chief Community Officer Hype Machine

1/9/2023
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: 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 things haven’t. Joining Patrick to ask the questions and dig deeper is previous guest Jared Smith. They also cover: Big Quotes You have to commit to be successful with D2C products (11:55): “If you build interactive products and kill them after three weeks, it’s hard to prove out anything. It’s hard to build out loyalty. It’s hard to build out a D2C product if you’re not willing to commit.” -Patrick O’Keefe The magic of the unexpected in media products (13:04): “I think there is something magical that can happen when you take some of the expected nature of television or media, of what we expect is going to happen, and you throw the consumer, the community, the members, the subscribers into that. You give them the freedom to make other things happen.” -Patrick O’Keefe Operators drive moderator tool development more than platforms (22:24): “[When it comes to moderator tools], it’s often the community of people who need something driving it more so than the platforms themselves.” -Patrick O’Keefe Developers still focus on the frontend more than the administrative backend (23:35): “It’s a cliché to say that software developers focus on the frontend and the user experience and not so much the admin and moderation experience. That’s a cliché in our business. I think that is largely the case with some exceptions. Those exceptions tend to be people who have run communities themselves or who have a really good foundational understanding of the web from being in it for so long.” -Patrick O’Keefe If you want to make a difference in moderator tooling, start with the communities that don’t have money (23:58): “I get pitched by developers, and I always tell them that the way to make change in this industry is to make your product available to the people who don’t have anything. The Fortune 500s of the world are always going to have money, and they’re always going to have engineers. They can figure their way around problems and pay for solutions. Most communities, 99.9% of people, don’t have any money. That’s where you make change.” -Patrick O’Keefe Artificial intelligence isn’t a moderation panacea (24:36): “If you think about it [going back 25 years], forums are not dead and the mod tools are basically the same that we had. Remove user, close thread, things like that, a lot of that stuff. It’s the same. I also don’t think it’s a bad thing. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. One of the things about these AIs is sometimes they get it really, really wrong in really offensive ways. You still need that human element to counter that.” -Jared Smith Banning Andrew Anglin is not brave, it’s obvious (27:09): “When [Elon Musk decides] to unban Andrew Anglin, who’s arguably the most prominent real nazi on the internet, the founder of The Daily Stormer, the most prominent nazi publication on the internet [that makes Twitter a place I am less likely to engage]. … Andrew Anglin can join any platform I own and he’ll be banned. That’s not a brave thing. That’s not a talking point or like, ‘Wow, that’s amazing.’ It’s obvious. It’s not an amazing thing.” -Patrick O’Keefe Hyping the chief community officer role isn’t helpful (39:46): “We’ve seen these tweets that are like, ‘Half of the Fortune 500 will have chief community officers in the next 10 years,’ or ‘10% of this or all big companies or all the Fortune 100 or the future of companies will be a chief community officer.’ It’s all hype. It’s all nonsense. For the most part, it’s to encourage hype in our industry. I don’t see it as healthy. I don’t see it as good. I don’t see it as aspirational. I don’t see those people as friends or allies of...

Duration:00:46:00

Elon Musk’s Quest to Make Twitter Worse

11/21/2022
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 laid off 3,700 employees, and then 4,400 contractors. He is firing those who are critical of him. 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 “extremely hardcore” Twitter. Following the results of a Twitter poll, he reinstated the account of Donald Trump, 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 manifested on Twitter? While some movements and followings may see new manifestations on other platforms, not everything will be completely recreated. For example, as writer Jason Parham explains, “whatever the destination, Black Twitter will be increasingly difficult to recreate.” In this episode of Community Signal, Patrick speaks to three experts: Sarah T. Roberts, associate professor in the Department of Information Studies at UCLA, trust and safety consultant Ralph Spencer, and Omar Wasow, assistant professor in UC Berkeley’s Department of Political Science and co-founder of BlackPlanet, about the current state and future of Twitter. They dissect the realities facing the platform today including content moderation, loss of institutional knowledge, and uncertainty about Twitter’s infrastructure, but also emphasize the importance of Twitter as a social utility for news and more. This episode also touches on: Big Quotes On the future of content moderation at Twitter (8:28): “There’s no way possible with the cuts [Musk has] made that he’s going to be able to do any type of content moderation. … [He] isn’t going to have anybody who remotely begins to know to how to do that [legal compliance and related work].” –Ralph Spencer Sarah T. Roberts’ moderation challenge for Elon Musk (11:19): “I want Elon Musk to spend one day as a frontline production content moderator, and then get back to this [Community Signal] crew about how that went. Let us know what you saw. Share with us how easy it was to stomach that. Were you able to keep up with the expected pace at Twitter? Could you … make good decisions over 90% of the time, over 1,000, 2,000 times a day? Could you do that all the while seeing animals being harmed, kids being beat on, [and] child sexual exploitation material?” –@ubiquity75 Bumper sticker wisdom doesn’t make good policy (15:46): “Everything [Musk has said about free speech] has had the quality of good bumper stickers but is totally divorced from reality, and that doesn’t bode well, obviously.” –@owasow The responsibility in leading a social media platform (19:41): “One thing that we are seeing in real-time [at Twitter] is what a danger there is in having one individual – especially a very privileged individual who does not live in the same social milieu as almost anyone else in the world – one very privileged individual’s ability to be the arbiter of … these profoundly contested ideological notions of something like free speech which again is continually misapplied in this realm.” –@ubiquity75 Musk’s peddling of conspiracy theories (20:29): “[Musk is] running around tweeting that story about Nancy Pelosi’s husband, the false article about what happened between him and his attacker. What kind of example is that to set? … What it is to me is like this kid who has way too much money, and he found a new toy he wants to play with.” –Ralph Spencer Leading with humility (21:23): “[If you’re running a site like Twitter,] you have to have a ‘small d’ democratic personality, which is to say you really have to be comfortable with a thousand voices flourishing, a lot of them being critical of you, and that’s not something that you take personally.” –@owasow There are always limits on speech (23:50): “When you declare that...

Duration:00:55:11

When Community is on 3 Teams in 5 Years

10/24/2022
As Zendesk’s 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. Nicole Saunders, 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: Big Quotes Going from scrappy to resourced as your community team grows and develops (04:36): “[While community was part of the support organization,] we were functioning very scrappy, very much like a startup team within a larger organization. … Being within [the] integrated marketing organization let us connect to a lot more pieces and parts of the business, which as we built our strategy became increasingly important.” –@NicoleinMadison Participate in the community you serve (14:20): “I’m always encouraging my team to [step] out of the ticket queue on a regular basis … and just wander around [the community] and try to have that same experience as the end users to make sure we’re not missing anything, make sure that the queue isn’t keeping us in just a transactional space.” –@NicoleinMadison Why you can’t tell people to contact support in the Zendesk community (24:58): “We were getting a lot of people that were just saying, ‘You should contact support for this,’ and what it was doing was discouraging other users from jumping in and trying to help. A lot of these were questions that people could answer for one another, and … it was short-circuiting the community conversation.” –@NicoleinMadison The knowledge and value that community can offer (26:17): “You’re going to gain so much more out of talking to somebody [in the community] who has done what you are trying to do, than someone who knows what functionality you should use to try to do it. Even the best support agent in the world probably hasn’t done exactly the thing that you’re trying to do. There’s actually a real benefit to talking to other users.” –@NicoleinMadison About Nicole Saunders In over 12 years as a community professional, Nicole Saunders‘ experience has ranged from consulting to launching communities for startups to currently leading the community team at Zendesk. She’s built communities across forums, social media, and offline. Her background also includes social media management, event production, communications, and freelance writing. Passionate about building community both in her work and in life, Nicole engages in several volunteer efforts, including mentoring for the Wisconsin Women’s Network, singing with the Philharmonic Chorus of Madison, and teaching dance fitness classes. Related Links Nicole Saunders on LinkedInZendesk communityZendesk knowledge base Zendesk’s community code of conduct Transcript View transcript on our website 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.

Duration:00:32:35

Why Community on the Product Team Works, From a Product Leader’s Perspective

9/26/2022
Recently, community pro Danielle Maveal joined Community Signal to discuss her experiences reporting into the product organization at Burb. In this episode, we’re getting the opposite perspective from product leader Gitesh Gohel. 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. Patrick shares how this fostered trust in processes and created great experiences for the community and the brand. If you’re debating a community role that reports into product, this conversation will give you insight into how that can be productive when the team has a strong foundation. Patrick and Gitesh also discuss: Big Quotes Making room for each individual’s expertise within your org (11:35): “One thing which is really important, especially when it comes to collaboration, trusting each other, and being able to lean in on the skill set or experience that everyone brings to the table to accomplish a shared vision, is being able to create space and autonomy for folks to be able to do their jobs. One thing that we did at CNN, specifically working on Interview Club, was create goals which your team had by itself, but also having those goals be integrated into the success of the product itself.” –@giteshg The background of a product professional (12:54): “Most people don’t train to be a product manager or to have an expertise in product development. … Most of my training came through experience. It was being part of a team who was building a product and being able to play a small role in it, being able to see what really good successful products look like, being able to see what do really healthy relationships look like across cross-functional teams.” –@giteshg Is product the right org for community? (25:42): “When you make community part of product, [you’re saying] that your users are important, that the relationships that you develop with your users are important and positive, that you want to be able to not have a transactional relationship with your users, but actually one where you proactively engage, where you’re proactively identifying ways in which you have your users connected.” –@giteshg Why should a community pro be excited about being part of the product org? (26:50): “[When community sits within product], in a way, you’re closest to the decision maker, and I think that’s important. What you are able to do is influence product strategy and how you think about what you build and who you’re building for, and being able to bring the skills and expertise that you have directly into that conversation. [Product is] where you get to do the most fun stuff. It’s where you get to say and explore different ideas that you want to try. It’s a way in which you get the voice of the user closest to the way in which you think about what you end up doing.” –@giteshg About Gitesh Gohel Gitesh Gohel has 14 years of experience as a product leader solving user problems in the startup, consumer, media, political, and civic tech space for organizations like CNN, Tumblr, Giphy, Facebook, Jumo, and Obama 08. He is currently the VP of product for Narwhal. Related Links Gitesh Gohel on LinkedIn The Pros and Cons of Community Reporting to ProductBrigadeBassey Etimmultipleepisodesof CommunitySignal Transcript View transcript on our website 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.

Duration:00:49:06

Lessons in Building Safe, Inclusive, and Functional Spaces for LGBTQ+ Folks

8/29/2022
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 Samantha “Venia” Logan, the CEO and founder of Socially Constructed. 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 information within your online community? What specific policies do you have in place to protect LGTBQ+ people? And a big one – how are others in your organization (outside of the community team) contributing to diversity and inclusion? At this point you might be asking, “how do I measure or communicate progress?” To this we ask, what are community-based outcomes that indicate someone feels safe contributing and like they belong? As Venia explains (15:23): “As a person feels more and more comfortable self-disclosing, they’re going to use more organic language, they’re going to talk a lot more, their rate of inclusion is going to increase, but so will the length of their posts.” Work with your community to figure out which behaviors relate to their sense of inclusion and measure those over time. Patrick and Venia also discuss: Big Quotes Make space for everyone to share their pronouns in everyday conversation (08:48): “Pronouns are not just a segment that you’re going to put on your profile. … At every meeting, [if] you invite people to share their pronouns – cis, trans, doesn’t matter – it essentially says, pervasively speaking, this is a queer-friendly, queer-safe space. … Oftentimes, you want to implement these rules so that you’re not looking for explicit consent, you’re looking for implicit acceptance.” –@SamanthaVenia Focus on tracking the behaviors that matter most to your community (14:23): “[With behavioral metrics], we need to return to a notion of simplicity, where we are recording things that people actually want us to listen to. When people engage in our online communities, they are leaving behind comments, behaviors, artifacts of conversation, and they want us to pay attention to those things, so why are we recording every single move they make in a community and not recording anything about the nature of the comment they left?” –@SamanthaVenia Perfectly accurate data reporting does not exist, instead, try replicating your results (18:06): “Instead of worrying about gross amounts of accuracy in your data … [measure] it again. The exact same thing that you did, in a second spot, in a second scope, just do it again, and again, and again. Once you repeat the same process and you have four corollary actions that are all telling you the same thing and one that’s different, what is the resolution of your action? It just skyrocketed without you ever having to be accurate. Social science is not about causation, it’s about enough correlation to infer causation.” –@SamanthaVenia Keep spaces safe by upholding the commitment to exclusivity (20:50): “Don’t expand what’s working for a safe space because keeping an exclusive space is what made that place safe. Instead, go over to the other place, reproduce your success, diversify it. The phrase that I use is ‘Don’t expand, diversify.’ Exclusivity breeds inclusivity.” –@SamanthaVenia If you’re creating a space for everyone, you’re creating a space for no one (23:56): “When you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one, and you end up having no one because no one feels particularly special, or catered to, or welcome in those spaces.” –@patrickokeefe Focus on your role of setting precedent, building momentum (24:59): “I will boil down any community management job from architect, coordinator, moderator, facilitator… it doesn’t matter what you do in...

Duration:00:39:45

The Pros and Cons of Community Reporting to Product

8/15/2022
Which team or leader does your community organization report into? And which would you like it to? Community teams can be successful as independent pillars or as part of other verticals, like product, ops, or marketing. In this episode of Community Signal, Danielle Maveal, the CCO (chief community officer) at Burb, shares how community professionals can be successful within a team’s product organization. All 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: 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.”...

Duration:00:32:43

Bridging Continents and Countries in a Professional Association Community

8/1/2022
Do you manage an international community? How do you thoughtfully foster community across different continents, languages, and norms? Mercedes Oppon-Kusi, the community manager for Europe for the International Legal Technology Association, is working to do just that for their community of technology pros working at law firms. With ILTA originating in the U.S., Mercedes shares the differences in behaviors between U.S. and Europe-based community members, and how she has approached expanding the European chapter to include more countries. Her strategy comes back to advice that’s helpful no matter what stage your community is at: Overcome your biases as a community professional. Take time to learn the interests and challenges that impact your community members and scale thoughtfully. As Mercedes puts it, “[It’s] about building that practical knowledge of the market, and then figuring out where to go first.” Plus: Big Quotes How ILTA community members help each other grow (6:45): “You have the people that have been there and done it, you have people that are looking to branch into it, and you have the people that want to grow in it. That’s what our communities do. They help our members learn how to become better than they are.” –@M4Mercedes Tech pros at U.S. law firms are more likely to share experiences (7:38): “[With] our membership pool in the U.S., you will not struggle to get a big firm to share. They’re proud of it. They’re like, ‘We’ve done this so well because we’re amazing, and this is how we did it,’ but in the UK, they’re decidedly more reserved. It’s very hard to get the big firms to share about anything. I don’t know what it is, but it does seem like people are nervous because they do not want to be seen as bragging, so it differs according to the geographies. It’s not really by firm size.” –@M4Mercedes Localizing matters to your community members (19:07): “A lot of our material has the word attorney, which doesn’t exist in the UK. We have solicitors and barristers. … There are little tweaks around the material and our language that we’ve had to do in order to localize what we’re providing to [the UK] region. … It’s a big deal to people.” –@M4Mercedes Growing the ILTA community and reaching new members (24:25): “The challenge is finding your first [community members] that are going to be your champions. Once you have that, they’re usually a good insight into the networks and what topics exist, and they’re really good at introducing you to other individuals that might have similar interests.” –@M4Mercedes About Mercedes Oppon-Kusi Mercedes Oppon-Kusi is the community manager for Europe for the International Legal Technology Association, a community for technology pros working at law firms. Related Links Mercedes Oppon-Kusi on LinkedInInternational Legal Technology AssociationThe Chatham House Rule Transcript View transcript on our website 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.

Duration:00:25:12

When Companies Sponsor Their Employees to Contribute to Open Source Software

7/18/2022
WordPress, the popular open source CMS, powers a reported 43%+ of the web, including this site. It is backed by a global community of contributors who volunteer their time in all sorts of ways, from code to documentation to training. But did you know that many of the project’s biggest contributors are sponsored by their employer to provide that time? As we discussed with Brad Williams of WebDevStudios, the success of WordPress has created an economy around the software, growing and launching many businesses that serve the needs of its users, from personal blogs to major corporations. And one of the way those companies give back is through these sponsorships. No company is more tied to WordPress than Automattic, the owners of WordPress.com, which was founded by the co-founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg. Hugh Lashbrooke is the head of community education at Automattic, which sponsors him for 40 hours a week, primarily to contribute to WordPress’ training team. Hugh joins us on this episode to give us an inside look at these sponsorship arrangements and how they influence WordPress team dynamics. Plus: Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform. Big Quotes How sponsored contributors bolstered WordPress’ training team (6:49): “[After COVID struck, the community team] realized that people weren’t getting the training they normally get at events. … It started off as an informal conversation with the existing training team, which wasn’t huge in terms of numbers. … We came together and now, we have this platform called Learn WordPress, which is where all of this content is housed. The idea for Learn WordPress existed in the training team before but because they were a small team … they didn’t have the resources to really get that going like they wanted. When we came on board, and because we are sponsored volunteers and we have more time and access to more resources, we were able to help them do more and now, we’re working alongside them very closely to make the platform better.” –@hlashbrooke Automattic can’t track the financial impact of contributors they sponsor (21:16): “As WordPress improves, and becomes more popular, that helps Automattic improve profits and revenue. In our division, we don’t track financial ROI at all. We don’t have anything to track in that sense, so we don’t. But our work in the open source project does benefit Automattic financially. … As people get better with WordPress and WordPress becomes more popular, easier to use, and more well-known, Automattic’s business grows.” –@hlashbrooke COVID led to volunteer drop-off (27:18): “COVID had a big impact on [volunteers dropping off]. The lockdown, everyone being at home, and just the general stress of what’s going on in the world. As we got to mid-to-late 2020, and then going all through 2021 and even now, a big dip in contributors. People weren’t as committed as they were before. People who said they would be committed, they just slowly disappeared. There was just a trend that we saw, and it was very clearly because of the response to everything going on and the world being so stressful.” –@hlashbrooke Allowing people to weigh-in can slow things down, but increase long-term engagement (35:40): “If you make a decision about how we’re going to lay out the homepage of something, for example, if we say, ‘This is what we do’ and we do it, then people look at it like, ‘Oh, okay.’ If you’ve had 15 people in the community contribute their voice to it and give their input on it, they’ll be more interested, and they might be more interested in contributing further because they’re like, ‘Oh, my voice actually matters, so I want to contribute more.’ Sure, it makes things take longer, but it means they generally stick around for longer because they can see the impact and the effect of their input.” –@hlashbrooke About Hugh...

Duration:00:48:04

The Disappearing News Media Comment Sections

6/20/2022
As the former director of community for HuffPost, where he led the management of an active, massive comment section, Tim McDonald has had a unique vantage point to the mass closure of news media comment sections. Patrick and Tim go in depth on that topic on this episode. Toward the end, Tim shares what he believes will be his greatest community ROI story: He has stage IV colon cancer and is in need of a liver donor and could get a lot closer with your help. Please visit TimsLiver.com for more info. Plus: Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform. Big Quotes You can’t make everyone happy in moderation (10:56): “I would hate it when there was a close call [as a soccer referee] because I knew in my head what the call was but I knew if I looked at it objectively from one team’s viewpoint and from the other team’s viewpoint, half were going to be happy with me, half were going to be upset with me, and I wanted to make everybody happy. You can’t do that in comment moderation, and you can’t do that being a referee.” –@tamcdonald Allowing influential members to do the talking (11:34): “I didn’t need to get into the [HuffPost] community and be the face of the community. I could just have relationships with about a dozen of our community members who were very well respected and let them do the talking. But in exchange, I would take phone calls from them at home, at night, on the weekends. I would listen to them, I would understand what they were going through, but I would also be able to convey what, from a company standpoint, we were trying to achieve. When I did that, they started understanding.” –@tamcdonald If we aren’t going to invest in it, why spend so much effort? (19:08): “My very last day [at HuffPost was] when we pushed the button and [switched to Facebook Comments]. Everybody looked at me like I was crazy, but I just told everybody, ‘I’ve come up with solutions. I’ve come up with options. Nobody wants to pay for this. If we can’t invest in it, and we’re not willing to invest in it, and we’re not going to generate any revenue off of it, why are we supporting it?’ That was the end of it. Obviously, they still had comments. They still do have comments, but it’s nothing to what it was back when I was at HuffPost.” –@tamcdonald Document your community wins (22:53): “The subscriber growth of The New York Times is often cited … by media folks and executives as an example of the D2C model, but I think people would do well to remember that The New York Times never closed their comments. … People want that success of, ‘Look at all the people they have paying for news,’ but they don’t necessarily want to do that work that is moderating comments for 20 years to build a section that is befitting of The New York Times.” –@patrickokeefe Document your community wins (30:02): “We say [document your wins], but we don’t necessarily always talk about the process through which we capture that, and so it fails. … If it’s easy and it’s comprehensive, then you’re going to do it. Whereas if it’s manual and it’s slow, not only are you not going to do it, but when you don’t do it, you’re going to not be able to access that information as easily.” –@patrickokeefe Generous giving is the greatest community ROI (34:16): “When I find [a liver] donor through [the communities] I’ve built up over the years, that is going to be the greatest ROI because I don’t think there’s a price that we can put on our lives, and I don’t think there’s a price that we can put on the amount of giving that that would take from another human being.” –@tamcdonald About Tim McDonald Tim McDonald is the community account manager for HomeRoom.club. He is the former director of community at HuffPost, founder of My Community Manager, and director of communications for Social Media Club Chicago. Tim works with organizations and...

Duration:00:36:05

The Community Management Jobs You Turn Down

6/6/2022
What are the reasons why you would voluntarily end the interview process for a community role? If you give it some thought, you’ll probably come up with some! Ryan Arsenault and Patrick share real stories from their careers, giving the reasons why they decided against continuing to interview with certain companies, including some you’ve heard of. This leads to a conversation on the community opportunists, and how Web3 and NFT projects often fit into this category. What does it mean for your career if a rug pull happens on your NFT project? What responsibility do community industry players have in hyping these projects? After they remove the .eth from their handle, who is left holding the bag? Patrick and Ryan also discuss: Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform. Big Quotes A case where Ryan ended the interview for a community role (1:39): “[I have become] more experienced in identifying the red flags that might not set me up for success in [a community] role. … In one interview, the platform was purchased already. No community goals in mind. No strategy. How do you know if the platform is even going to meet your needs if you don’t know what you need the community for yet?” –@RyanArsenault Does the community talk to each other? (10:48): “I got to talking with the [recruiter for a community role], and I realized something. I said, ‘Let me stop you for a second. These people that are in this community, do they talk to one another?’ She said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Oh okay, I understand. I have to say I don’t think I’m right for this.’ … That’s just a different role from what I do.” –@patrickokeefe Does buying an NFT make it a community? (12:35): “To me, the concept of buying an NFT, and then you’re part of a Discord community, doesn’t make it a community. A community’s built on trust and moderation.” –@RyanArsenault Using “community” to keep people from leaving an NFT project (16:51): “When there’s a rug pull … whatever they were thinking they would get out of this NFT project, it’s gone now, or there’s almost no chance. To use the term ‘community’ as a way to try to make people feel better or to ensure they stay bought in with that project and don’t sell … it feels incredibly manipulative. … ‘We’re part of this community, we’re all in this together, hold on for dear life, we’re all going to make it,’ all that stuff. It’s all just social manipulation that’s been going on forever.” –@patrickokeefe About Ryan Arsenault Ryan Arsenault has been fascinated by the power of community as a member of online forums for two decades. He has managed communities for over 7 years, building strategy and scaling super user and advocacy programs, while establishing trust and lasting relationships. He has worked in pre- and post-IPO companies, and won a 2018 TheCR Connect Award for Best Recognition + Reward Program (for Mimecast community). Related Links HivebriteRyan Arsenault on TwitterIntuit’sTurboTax “I worked at Vistaprint – maybe you’ve heard of them?,” Jacob Silverman on Community Signal Transcript View transcript on our website 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.

Duration:00:28:37

Building Up Your Community Members, One Phone Call at a Time

5/23/2022
Is speaking one-on-one with your community members part of your community strategy? For Tosin Abari, when building paid professional communities, it’s an integral part. His phone calls with community members provide an opportunity to reset the tone and remind each member of what they can learn, share, and achieve with their fellow community members. Through this work, Tosin often finds that these one-on-one conversations with community members translate into their first forum post, or later down the line, becoming a community ambassador. What personal touches help you form deeper connections with your community members? Where’d this strategy come from? Tosin has also worked as a director of player development Vanderbilt University’s football team. He explains how his work building relationships with students and their parents, helping them start off on this new chapter of their lives, prepared him for work in community management. Patrick and Tosin also discuss: Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform. Big Quotes Helping members see the potential in the community (10:22): “There’s so many people out there that have the same struggles that you do, or maybe something that you’ve conquered, and you have expertise that you can share with someone else. … [Each community member has] an opportunity to make a difference, or have someone else make a difference in their lives. They can make something beautiful happen.” -Tosin Abari Having phone calls with members (12:35): “Most places I’ve been at, they’re like, ‘No, we don’t have time [for phone calls with members].’ … We have X amount of members, we just got to do what we got to do through email orientation, and they’ll figure it out. That always gnawed at me a little bit, because these people are paying X amount of dollars for a membership, and we want to give them the best experience of their life. … [These one-on-one calls can help] other people feel like they’re not isolated, that they’re in a place that holds space for them.” -Tosin Abari Giving each member the space to feel heard (18:06): “I don’t know how many times I’ve gotten nasty emails [and] I’m like, ‘Oh my God, this is going to be a very contentious call.’ I let them talk [and] by the end of the conversation, they’re like, ‘Thank you for having this call with me. You calmed me down, and I feel so much better.’ It was just because they wanted to be heard.” -Tosin Abari Owning your work with your manager (25:50): “Never let [your manager] be surprised by bad news. If there is bad news, [they] should hear it from you first, before anyone else. Don’t let [them] be surprised, because if [they are] surprised, it’s going to make matters worse. … You should be the person who delivers the message.” –@patrickokeefe About Tosin Abari Tosin Abari (he/him/his) is a former collegiate football administrator turned motivated community manager and social media aficionado. With over 10 years of experience in community management and memberships, as well as front-end and back-end social media management, Tosin is extremely passionate in bringing people together with the goal of fostering authentic community. Related Links HivebriteTosin Abari on LinkedInPhotos of Patrick’s son, Patrick JamesKindred Transcript View transcript on our website 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.

Duration:00:34:37

Making Room for the Next Generation of Community Professionals

4/4/2022
Which community leaders helped you grow as a professional? Who in the industry do you study from or reference? On the last episode of Community Signal, our guest Mohamed Mohammed mentioned how his former manager, Joe Pishgar, helped him feel welcome in the industry. “You belong here” were Joe’s encouraging words to Mohamed, and this phrase signifies an ethos that Joe brings to his role as chief community officer for VerticalScope. Managing an organization of 27 full-time community pros, 30 contracted admins, and over 10,000 volunteer moderators across 1,200 sites, Joe understands the necessity of scale and delegation, but also realizes that delegating is not always as simple as it sounds. “There’s competing thoughts in your head that surround the force of delegating. On the one hand, you don’t have enough time to do it all. The time you spend in operational or in tactical, you’re not spending at the strategic, and no one else is going to spend time at the strategic level.” (13:18) Joe also explains that by delegating and creating space, we give our team members the opportunity to grow and experience community management for themselves. How have leaders made space for you to grow as a community professional and how can you create that space for others? Joe and Patrick also discuss: Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform. Big Quotes Giving your team the space to grow (03:48): “Give [your team] as much space as possible within the quantity of trust that you can hand them, let them complete those tasks, learn the discipline, and develop in the discipline so that they develop that confidence. It comes with getting it right, having space to get it right, but also making sure that you as supervisor [are] around for when they bump into those really tricky questions.” –@Pishgar Autonomy will help newer recruits to develop their confidence as community managers (14:45): “If your name, clout, expertise, background, and experience is required for every single decision, you’re in trouble. Then you’ve got a bunch of people who are basically your eyes and ears out there who aren’t really taking things off of your plate as much as they need to be or as much as you need them to. … Sometimes you have to go hands-off, even if it means embracing that fear that it’s not going to get done 100% to your spec.” –@Pishgar What drives your sense of fulfillment as a community manager? (17:15): “When I know that communities under my wing are growing, that I’m helping to make the world a better place, one individual forum member at a time, because they got an answer to their question, or they felt like they belonged, or there was something that they were shopping for that they got word of mouth on through a post that they found on one of our forums and they were only able to do that because the place was kept civil, that to me is fulfilling. That is my life work.” –@Pishgar About Joe Pishgar Joe Pishgar joined VerticalScope as its chief community officer in 2020. Joe is an 18+ year veteran of online community management. Prior to joining VerticalScope, he served as vice president Global Communities at Future plc, where he launched communities for PC Gamer, Space.com, Live Science, What Hi-Fi, and more. Previously, he served as director of community for Purch Inc., where he built the communities for Tom’s Hardware, Tom’s Guide, and AnandTech. Related Links HivebriteTwitterLinkedInwebsiteVerticalScopeMohamed MohammedCommunity SignalJoe KingCommunity SignalRebecca NewtonLinda CarlsonSanya WeathersValerie MasseyTroy HewittGail Ann WilliamsCommunity SignalCommunity Signal Transcript View transcript on our website 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...

Duration:00:55:02

Deepfakes in Your Community are Inevitable

3/21/2022
This conversation with Mohamed Mohammed, a community manager and a PhD student studying deepfakes, is timely. Just last week, a deepfake emerged attempting to spread misinformation that the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, was announcing surrender to Russia’s invasion. In that situation, preparation and rapid response helped minimize the spread of misinformation. So, what’s your community strategy against deepfakes? Mohamed recommends starting with learning from the information and experts in our field. He also shares an important reminder: As community professionals, while we may want to prevent all harms from happening, we simply can’t. However, we can minimize the harm that’s caused, and we can educate our community members to identify and flag suspicious behaviors. Just as many platforms adjusted their community guidelines and enforcement rubrics to prevent the spread of misinformation, deepfakes represent a new area for us to learn about and help our communities adapt. Mohamed and Patrick also discuss: Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform. Big Quotes Ground your moderation in your guidelines (6:13): “There was no way to not iterate our [community] policies when the world shut down because of a global pandemic, when flat Earth or conspiracy theories found their way to the forums. When these things happen, you have to make changes. Otherwise … we look shadowy. We start banning content or removing forum posts simply because we think it’s a bad thing. Even if everyone agrees with us, the perception is so important. The perception that we’re consistent within the scope of our guidelines is massive to being able to, for lack of a better term, keep the peace.” –@MMohammed_Comms If your community has the same problems as a big social media platform, why should people stick around? (9:24): “If you’re not consistent [in your community moderation,] and if you happen to have the same problems as bigger platforms, then what’s the difference? Why am I investing all of this time as a user into this forum of yours when all of my efforts are being met with inconsistent approaches to keeping the place safe?” –@MMohammed_Comms Antagonizing people to engage (11:30): “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that [the antagonistic content we discourage as forum managers] is the same thing a brand whose KPI is engagement on Twitter will post just to get engagement and to antagonize someone into giving the rapid-fire answers that get people. Nothing brings engagement on a place and an echo chamber quite like a divisive question. We’re trying to be the opposite.” –@MMohammed_Comms In the words of Sam Gregory, “Prepare, don’t panic” (40:48): “Don’t get scared about this apocalyptic vision of deep fakes … [just] read as much as you can about them. I know it’s going to sound scary, but the more you understand them, the more you get comfortable with the fact that tools are advancing.” –@MMohammed_Comms Shoutout to the supportive managers out there (46:01): “Having a [supportive] manager is to me the difference between having this long career that can be fulfilling and rewarding and can help you feel better about yourself versus something where you have to build this foundation all by yourself.” –@MMohammed_Comms About Mohamed Mohammed Mohamed Mohammed is a community manager at Future Plc, managing forums for brands such as PC Gamer and Space.com. He is also a PhD candidate at the QUEX Institute, researching the platform governance of deepfakes. Related Links HivebriteLinkedInTwitter A Zelensky Deepfake Was Quickly Defeated. The Next One Might Not BeFuture PLCPC GamerSpace.comQUEX InstituteAmanda PetersenCommunity SignalTruepicCommunications Decency ActSam GregoryWITNESS Media LabJoe Pishgar Transcript View transcript on our website Your Thoughts If you have any thoughts on this episode that...

Duration:00:48:46

Providing a Safe and Functional Community for Cancer Survivors

3/7/2022
Online communities are can be essential for people impacted by illness. For those directly affected, their families, and support systems, these communities can provide a much needed place to share experiences, to vent, and to learn about different symptoms, treatments, and the intricacies of navigating the healthcare system. For our guest, Amanda Petersen, Planet Cancer provided such a community as she fought breast cancer in her early twenties. Amanda has since continued to be an active contributor and moderator in online spaces dedicated to providing a safe and functional community for cancer survivors. In this conversation, she talks about the role that Planet Cancer played in her life in addition to why she felt motivated to start participating in r/breastcancer. The community exists and is functional because of its people –– people like Amanda that help to moderate the space and people that are looking to connect with others and find support in their journeys. Whether a moderator takes a break or community members sadly pass away or move on, the rules that they have created and the space that they’ve fostered will continue to provide a meaningful community for cancer survivors. Amanda and Patrick also discuss: Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform. Big Quotes What makes a space for cancer survivors not functional? (12:27): “[After you have been in the] support community space for so long, there are certain things that you start IDing [that indicate] this is no longer a functional space for survivors. People flooding it when they’re concerned about having cancer, while totally legitimate, will drive away your survivors. People asking for donation requests will drive away your survivors. People asking for research requests will drive away your survivors.” –@amandarhiann The important roles of active moderators in a subreddit (15:46): “Unless the moderators are paying attention, Reddit can be a very unsafe place for many reasons. With strong moderator teams, it can be a safe place of healing.” –@amandarhiann Why r/breastcancer does not allow pre-diagnosis posts (19:13): “Don’t take advice about your health from someone at a grocery store, [and that also] applies to Reddit. [People] need to go to their doctor, and there are tons of pre-diagnosis resources out there that aren’t going to force people who are actively going through treatment to answer questions they shouldn’t have to answer.” –@amandarhiann The emotional tax of research requests for cancer survivors (21:04): “[r/breastcancer] is a place for helping people navigate the complexities of breast cancer. It’s not a place to help other people do their jobs better. Sure, if you want to come and read [or] do text analysis on Reddit, go ahead, it’s all public, but don’t harm the people that we’re trying to help, even inadvertently.” –@amandarhiann About Amanda Petersen Amanda Petersen is the program manager for community operations at MURAL. Prior to working in community, Amanda spent ten years of her career helping people who used challenging behaviors to communicate complex needs. In tandem, she moderated and managed online support communities for young adults with cancer. Related Links HivebriteAmanda Petersen on TwitterMURAL Communityr/breastcancerPlanet CancerFirst DescentsAmerican Cancer SocietyYoung Survival CoalitionBreast Cancer Research Foundation Transcript View transcript on our website 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.

Duration:00:34:04

Leveling Up Your Community Team With Specialized Roles

2/21/2022
As community leaders, we’re responsible for people. The people in our communities and the people that serve them. In this episode, Chris Catania, head of community at Esri, shares how he approaches planning for growth and specialization for his community organization, for his people, and for his own role. Chris is currently hiring for three roles, a community operations manager, a community manager for engagement and content, and a community manager for ArcGIS Ideas. Chris shares the responsibilities and scope for each of these roles, in addition to the challenges and advantages of hiring right now. In addition to the effects of the “great resignation,” as specialization and scope of responsibility within the community industry grows, so does the need to be clear in our job listings, success metrics, and paths to growth. Chris and Patrick also discuss: Our Podcast is Made Possible By… If you enjoy our show, please know that it’s only possible with the generous support of our sponsor: Hivebrite, the community engagement platform. Big Quotes Esri’s community team is two sides of the house (1:49): “[Our community team has] a structure where we have two halves. I’ve been using the analogy of a house: Two sides of the house. … An operational side, community ops, and on the other side, we have community experience and programs.” –@chriscatania The current landscape for job applicants and hiring managers (4:31): “There’s a multi-layer effect that’s going on in the job market where you have the Great Resignation going on … [and] then you have this other layer that has emerged over the last five years where you have this proliferation of community jobs.” –@chriscatania All job candidates have areas where they need help (10:20): “Having been in the community industry for a while, [I’ve been able to] get a good idea of all the different paths that you can take. … [This is] influencing how we are approaching the strategy of the hiring process, and knowing that there’s not one person out there that is going to do everything that we [need a given] role to do.” –@chriscatania Planning for your team’s growth (24:46): “I started really looking at our new org structure for the community team early last year because I saw the team was growing, … individually and as a team. I saw the community industry starting to advance … people coming into it were really accelerating. I looked at my team, and [said], ‘Okay, I need to think about promotions. I need to think about their path.'” –@chriscatania Planting the seeds to grow and promote your team (25:33): “As I have meetings with my boss about our team and what our team is doing, I plant seeds with them. ‘Look what this person’s doing.’ Because I’ve seen that work with executives over the years of trying to get buy-in incrementally, just walking in and boom, put down the plan. I like to plant seeds. I like to make a case over time so that when you go for the ask [to grow or promote], it’s like, ‘Yes, you got it.'” –@chriscatania Giving out skimpy raises will often lose you money (28:41): “I’ve worked at places where I’d have to grind out an $8,000 raise to go with a promotion for someone who’s been there five years. I was like, ‘They need $10,000.’ ‘You can have $8,000.’ That $2,000 in our pocket, it’s worth nothing. That $2,000 in their pocket is worth something, because if we lose that person, the amount of time that I’m going to have to spend training, interviewing, we’re going to lose way more than that, in my time and in our company’s time.” –@patrickokeefe About Chris Catania For more than 20 years, Chris Catania has developed a versatile array of skills and experiences in strategic communication, community management, customer experience, global business strategy and emerging media production. He is a dedicated community and collaboration leader, who always thinks “people first, technology next,” and uses his passion for emerging community and communication strategies to drive...

Duration:00:35:58