Recap notes from CMX 2023 Summit session. Grammatical errors and typos are my own 🙂

Abstract

Are you maximizing your community’s potential? When you harness the collective knowledge and skills of your community members and workforce, you can unlock new possibilities by creating a sustainable ecosystem fueled by meaningful knowledge sharing and continuous learning. Join us as we explore how to tap into your people’s expertise to foster collaboration, innovation, and engagement in your community. We’ll discuss how to leverage teams and resources across your organization to enhance your strategy and build the internal support you need to create a thriving and sustainable community. – Larry Imgrund, Product Manager, Khoros and Monique van den Berg, Head of Online Community at Atlassian (Principal Online Community Lead), Atlassian

Notes

Atlassian Community – team of 54 people. Goal is to turn users into champions

• Learning (training & certification)
• Online Community (forums and groups)
• ACE (in-person and hybrid events)
  • including community-led events

Community Strategy

• Remind teams that community exists and convincing teams that it’s worth investing (storytelling)

Focus on customers and advocates

Community leaders program

• Answer 40% of questions on the community and go above and beyond
  • Develop initiatives, make videos, etc.
• Next level down – “rising start”
• What keeps them coming back? Survey them.
  • Learned a lot. I’m still learning
  • Learned a lot. I want to give back
  • Perks: front-row seats, trips with founders, exclusive swag, etc., vouchers for certifications – competitive element
    • Philanthropy – planted trees on behalf of the community based on engagement
    • Not always what’s in it for me, but how can I give back
• Who’s participating?
  • Leaders, non-community teams, support team has a small % as they are focused on escalations

Rallying support from your organization

• Approach – storytelling
  • Added gamification within a group – engagement rose from 9% to 116%
  • Keep telling the stories – people leave. You can keep on selling people the community
• Partnerships with marketing
• Gamification with internals
• Biggest challenge rallying the organization
  • When people leave and regaining traction with the teams
  • Certain teams aren’t as engaged as others
    • People are busy and have their own OKRs
    • Demonstrate how community can help achieve their OKRs
      • Think of community as a service organization to tell their success stories

Community on the horizon

• Looking for the seamless experience and reward users to make everything a holistic experience and a hub (but not the only one).

3 tips of advice

1. Listen to and lean on your users
2. Gamify wisely and make it fun
   • there’s a dark side to gamification of customers who don’t like the fun parts and just want to do their job
3. Internally tell your story and connect those dots
   • Never shut up about it. Have data and fun examples of the data (quotes, pictures, etc.) to resonate and make it memorable – the data and the human element of it.