The Community Corner with Beth McIntyre

This is a special episode of the Community Corner podcast as it's the last one for a while for its host, Beth McIntyre. Over the last year and a half, Beth has spoken with almost seventy community professionals from all different kinds of businesses, managing various communities and community programs. In her last episode, Beth reflects on what she has learned from them. First of all, there is no one size fits all. One of the biggest challenges we hear from community professionals is the...

In this episode of The Community Corner, Sheldon Maye joins Beth McIntyre to discuss the strategies and processes for building employee resource groups (ERG). He also shares how he ensures a successful ERG at Accenture and some of the metrics he tracks to prove their value. ERGs are basically clubs that support employees' professional development and career growth. Sheldon talks about the right time and approach for starting an ERG. He also reveals how they implemented a new scorecard to...

Startup Grind is the world's largest startup community of startups, founders, innovators, and creators, with over 600 chapters in 125 countries worldwide, which brings like-minded yet diverse individuals together to connect, learn, teach, help, build, and belong. Phin leads the community and partner success teams. The advantage of operating in the startup world is seeing the different trends as they develop. One of these trends that Startup Grind has been focusing on more recently is Web 3....

Zoom is a communications platform that started with video as its foundation. It's known for being intuitive, user-friendly, scalable, and reliable. They launched the Zoom community in August 2021. As the Senior Manager for Global Community, Alexis has the role of strategizing, building, deploying, and growing the community for all zoom users across the globe. Launching the Zoom community included a specific role specialization approach, where someone on the team manages gamification, other...

Andreia Tulcidás joins us today to talk about building an advocate program within a community. She takes us through the steps she took to launch the OutSystems' user groups, how they've become an integral part of their community, and how they work together with their leaders to incentivize and reward. OutSystems is a modern application platform that enables organizations to tackle any critical application. Building a champion program from the ground up requires understanding the purpose of...

Today, we’re joined by Howard Gray, Founder of Wavetable. He discusses engagement, creating engaging experiences for audiences and community members, and how to inspire them through edutainment and personal stories. Wavetable is a production studio that integrates a variety of creative experts and educators of learning and live entertainment. The company focuses on learning, discovery, and community-based projects. Wavetable helps brands, influencers, and IP owners uniquely leverage their...

Jenny Li Fowler, Director of Social Media Strategy at MIT, joins us in the next episode of The Community Corner Podcast. Jenny discusses the specific challenges in building a community at an educational institution. She also shares how her team at MIT thinks about community and social media and how they are adapting to changes in technology and the industry. MIT is one of the leading universities and global leader in science, research, technology, and education. Jenny provides consultation...

Today, we’re joined by Nivi Achanta, the Founder and CEO of Soapbox Project. Nivi wears almost all hats associated with community engagement, content, and events. Today, she talks about how she built her community from scratch with diversity in mind and how she implements it into every stage of planning and programming. Soapbox is a media company that makes social impact easy for busy people. Keeping a community inclusive without being exclusive requires a set of filters. One of the primary...

Today, we’re joined by Triin Ilves, Community Manager at Klaus. While Klaus is a customer success company, community is in everything they do. Triin manages Quality Tribe, their community for people interested in quality and customer success. Triin discusses how they make data-backed decisions to community programming and how they are inspiring their members to become advocates for their community. A community is a great resource when it comes to creating new content, getting partners on...

Today we have a special episode, Community Manager Appreciation Day, where our guests reveal what they are grateful for and proud of about their communities: Katie Ray, Head of Customer Community at Clari, shares her accomplishments of growth and engagement from her time managing the Saleshacker community. She also discusses her current work, hyper-growth, and engagement growth in the Clari community. Next, Diane Yuen, the new Community Manager at Alation, has extensive organic community...

Today, we’re joined by Ilker Akansel, Community Manager, Builder, and Strategist at ilkerakansel.com. Ilker details the importance of and differences between developer relations and developer communities. He also shares some of his experiences working in the community space and his predictions for the future. Ilker describes his company, named after himself, as a community strategy and management consultant service. Developer relations are nurturing mutually beneficial relationships between...

Today, we’re joined by Maxwell Lyons, a Community Manager at Course Hero. Maxwell shares how they drive engagement in their community, and how through a combination of feedback and data, they know what kind of programming their community wants. He also explains how going virtual has had a positive impact on the community. Course Hero is an online learning platform with over sixty million course-specific study resources for students to access worldwide. These resources consist of practice...

Today, we’re joined by Jan de Vries, Senior Community Engagement Manager at Mendix, an application development platform in a market called low code. It makes it easy for people to create apps visually instead of having to write code all day. You can just drag and drop, which makes it much more accessible, easier, and faster to build applications. It’s important for people to connect not just digitally but in person as well. Start by organizing the small group of people around you, understand...

Today, we’re joined by Nikki Thibodeau, Senior Community Operations Manager and Chair of the Women’s Employee Resource Group at Shopify, the powerful eCommerce platform. Addressing gender-diverse or racially-diverse groups is tough because it requires having some difficult and, sometimes, awkward workplace conversations. You want the right people to be there, but that also means you sometimes have to exclude the wrong people. It's really important for the success of our communities that we...

Today, we’re joined by Willa Tellekson-Flash, Director of Community at Public.com, a platform that helps people become better investors. On Public, members can build a diverse portfolio of stocks, funds, and crypto, and ownership unlocks an experience of content and education, created by a million+ strong community of investors, creators and analysts. Use your community as a product of its own and elevate it as a part of your brand. The conversations in the community can form a great...

Today, we’re joined by Laura Galbraith, Director of Community Impact at Vidyard, a video platform to help users create, manage, and optimize their video content with features for personalization and measurable video experiences. We all have an obligation, and we all have the privilege to give back to our communities in a very tangible way. If employees love the companies they work for, they will come forward and volunteer to help in various ways by leveraging their own communities. Having...

Today, we’re joined by David Spinks, VP of Community at Bevy and Co-Founder of CMX. The CMX Community recently launched its new set of values. These values are: • Be generous • Be ground-breaking • Be actively inclusive Community values are not the same as company values. Company values decide how your company does business. Community values define how community members - not necessarily the founders and managers but users of the company’s products/services - can interact with each other and...

Today, we’re joined by Stephanie Louis, Senior Director, Community and Developer Programs at PegaSystems (Pega), a software company that crushes business complexity through intelligent automation while providing great customer service and experience. It's an open platform that comes with out-of-the-box solutions but also allows clients to expand on it. Communicating technology is a key responsibility of community managers in tech companies. Community is a product of your company, it’s not...

Today, we’re joined by Lauren Uyeno, National Director of SEC and SOX Professional Groups at Workiva, a computer software product that brings together everything you need—teammates, datasets, and data sources—so you can work better in the cloud. Lauren builds the SEC and SOX Professional Groups, which are member-driven, community-led events programs. These communities currently have forty chapters and are helping drive acquisition, contribution, and engagement for the business. Communities...

Today, we’re joined by Tuvy Le, Program Manager, Community Content at GitHub, a website and cloud-based service that allows developers to store, manage, and control changes to their code. They’re most commonly known for hosting open source projects. As part of the GitHub Community team, Tuvy is currently focusing on content strategy. Community management efforts should start by building relationships with highly engaged members who consistently contribute to the community in their own way....