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

Abstract

Build alignment and gaining buy-in with product leadership. – Build a reasonable & scalable process from the start with product leadership & ops – Gain respect and being transparent with your community about product co-innovation – Make product managers heroes in your community – Change the dynamic at an organization to value co-innovation with community – Erica Kuhl, CEO & Founder, Erica Kuhl Consulting and Stephanie Grice, Head of Global Community and Customer Advocacy, Atlassian

Notes

2 methods to get product feedback

• Structured – Have a dedicated place for all the “stuff” to go to the product organization
• Unstructured – PMs going to events, having office hours, going to community for AMAs. No specific destination

5 things you need to focus on doing

1. Have product management and leadership commitment (executive buy-in)
   • Top down: ask leadership to ask PMs to participate more (buy-in at the top)
   • Bottoms up: start with one PM and expand – hard to gain traction by going one person at a time.
   • Community manager – build the process so that it works
2. Define roles and responsibilities
   • PMs don’t talk to customers as much as community managers do. They build products that the customers may use. They may not know how to engage with customers. Community manager should define what they should do – “respond to posts with x number of feedback”. Community manager: “I will protect you if a customer is spicy with you, I will help you create content, etc.”
     • This is your role, this is my role.
     • Be very specific about what their role and responsibilities are
     • Put your feet in the shoes of the PM
   • Set expectations with community members
     • Be clear about what customers should expect from PMs
   • Hold everyone accountable
3. Infrastructure
   • Synthesize conversations – 1/month, share what posts had the most positive/negative engagement, asked for feedback, etc.
   • Set expectations where the feedback is and make sure that it’s structured and there is a dashboard (one location)
4. Feedback comes in many shapes and sizes
   • Many signals – e.g. attended an event and had conversations there. People engaging or NOT engagement is a feedback signal
   • What’s this action (or lack of action) telling me?
   • Sometimes the squeaky wheels are overpowering other voices
   • Share the process of what it takes to build the product with customers so that they understand that you can’t just update something quickly.
5. Evolving processes over time. Don’t just set it and forget it
   • Don’t give a feature and then take it away. If the budget goes away, will you still have it? etc. Don’t just forget about it.
   • Think about it first and how you would evolve your processes

Just do it. It’s going to be done somewhere else.

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

Abstract

Serendipity is unplanned. Engineering is planned. How do you plan the unplannable? Join this interactive session and find out. – David Spinks, Co-founder, CMX

Notes

Can you engineer serendipity?

We only realize something is serendipitous by looking back

The Serendipity Process

1. Trigger – a cue that sparks an experience of serendipity
2. Connection – the recognition of a potential valuable outcome
3. Follow-up: An action taken to obtain the valuable outcome
4. Valuable outcome: the positive result of the serendipitous experience
5. An unexpected thread – the feeling that the experience was “surprising, random, or unusual”

As community managers, we facilitate. But if it’s unexpected, the more they will have a feeling of serendipity.

Perception of Serendipity (A Serendiptitous Environment)

For Serendipity to occur, people need to

• not be busy
• have lots of energy
• share common interests
• similar personalities
• are in unfamiliar places
• are with unfamiliar people (“never expected”)
• high willingness to socialize
• are comfortable in social interactions

The Five Levers of Serendipity

1. Immersion – a conference, a class (active participation and interactions vs. passive in Slack, chats) will run into the same people over and over again. Lots of triggers into one immersive experience.
2. Variation – People to come across different people, topics and experiences. (What area are you from? What platform do you use?). People to find shared interests – discussion tables, birds of a feather.
3. Facilitation – Example of fertilizing a plant, researching to grow. Create opportunities for people to meet and facilitate for people to make those serendipitous connections
4. Pollination – A lot of serendipity happens outside of community – forums, Slack channels, etc. Serendipity feels the biggest when you see someone you don’t expect. Increase the likelihood to connect and meet. E.g. Swag communicates that people are of the same group of people.
5. Repetition – See someone at the library, park, etc. More likely to take that follow-up (“Didn’t i see you at the ballpark?”). Need the frequent repetition to increase the odds that they will connect
   • Example: One community asks ” What did you do yesterday? What will you do today? ” awarding community with more community

Three Commitments

1. I will talk to strangers
2. I will lead with curiosity (ask questions)
3. I will follow up

Practice

1. Prime your mind
2. Find an “unfamiliar person”
3. Say “Tell me about yourself”

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

Abstract:

Learn how to show up and build a community from the ground up when your personal life has hit the fan. This talk will apply specifically to earlier-stage start-ups and communities. Hear what to keep, what to drop, what to share, and how to get through each day. – Evelyn Wiseman, Head of Community, Youshd

Notes:

Community at an early-stage startup

• Wear a lot of hats, but what should you take on?
  • You should do all of the community things as well as the things that you’re good at and can do quickly.
• What can you take on?
  • Whatever they ask you to do within reason.
• What can you firmly say no to?
  • Avoid anything that will take a long time to do.
  • Don’t say yes to sales (avoid lead gen). Once you do well, they will give you more to do which will take you off your focus.

Definitions save lives, data doesn’t.

• At an early-stage startup, there’s not much data yet. You are a data point.
• Choose a north start metric (at least 2). Ensure that you and your CEO and head of product know the definition of “engagement” and “active member”. It will allows you to be more persuasive and get things where you need to go.

Grief happens. Smile! You’re in Community

• Stop, drop, and figure it out.
• Don’t be afraid of human resources
• If you happen to move to a new company after your time of grief, you will be a different person and have different boundaries.
• When something bad happens, who cares about work. It can be stressful, but it doesn’t matter as much as your mental health does.

At an early-stage startup, define the context

• Define what is community?
• Ask the same questions:
  • What do you want to take on
  • What can you take on
  • What can you firmly say no to
  • What do you need to share and with whom?
• When something horrible happens, you re-evaluate your time.
  • Stick to what you’re good at and what you like.
  • Setup your boundaries and be consistent with them. People will pick up on your patterns.
• Communicate and ask for what you need and advocate for yourself.
  • There’s no such thing as a community emergency, but there is about a human emergency

How to manager others through grief

• Ask questions and listen (empathize)
  • How are you doing?
  • Do you need more time?
  • Can I help you with anything?
• If things are hitting the fan, wait 24 hours.
• Save conversations in real-moments (not in Slack, email, etc.) but see their eyes

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

Abstract:

My session will cover the variety of tactics I’ve learned as Director of Community at Morning Brew ideating, launching, and scaling Morning Brew Learning’s Digital Community of 3,000+ professionals. I’ll share how to think about community as you’re building a V1 of a product, how to nurture that community as you release the product, how to get feedback from your community to iterate on future products, and when/how to infuse community into different product offerings. The talk will be extremely tactical, giving you frameworks you can immediately apply to your own digital communities and businesses. – Kyle Hagge, Director of Community, Morning Brew

Notes:

• Variety of different interests and background experience allows community managers to better relate to different people
• Think about personal monopoly – build your stack 3 things that you’re passionate about and eventually you’ll be the primary person that organizations will look to.
• Morning Brew learning transitioned from Audience (newsletter) vs. Community (Education Courses). Are you building for an audience-based or a community-based product?
  • Audience = one to many (not in contact with each other – only with Morning Brew)
  • Community – many to many (experiencing product with others who are experiencing it as well)
• Why do community? Yes, you’ll make more money. Need to make money to display impact for an organization. Generating revenue.
  • Generates revenue: newsletter was ad-based
  • Creates brand evangelists: are they falling in love with the product to refer peers?
  • Find pain points: nice, but find content gaps (typos, missing information)
  • Increase LTV of customer: visitors paid how much to take classes (generating revenue). go deeper, charge more.
  • Displays social proof: post courses on linkedin, telling friends, “cool company, great experience”
  • Makes product feel more human: meet readers in person and makes both sides feel more human – knowing the faces behind the product and care about successes and career
• Tactics from building morning brew learning
• Don’t just gather – but help solve a problem
• Community is more of a slack chnnel of your existing audience. It’s not just bringing people together anymore – help them solve a problem
  • What “persona” are we serving with our existing product/service?
  • What problem does this persona face? Want to grow in career, become better at their job to become a better manager, etc.
  • How could a community help solve those problems? Build more skills to teach personas
  • What experiences will we have that allows us to achieve the community goals?
• Tech is on the margins – focus on the quality of experience. No need to use the latest product. Need to focus on the customer experience; keep it simple and basic so that they can focus on the event and the speaker vs. where they are, how to use the tech. Sometimes the lamest platforms are the best (ubiquitous to solve the problem)
• Community managers are architects (builders) not stars – focus on the community design and experience. Where to comnnect with people, where to find answers, etc.
  • Onboarding
  • Engagement
  • Subgroups – as community scales, easy to feel like you can’t meet everyone. Build deep connection with smaller group. Focus on niches – focus on a member meeting 5 people to form deep relationship
  • Feedback
• Friction is good – don’t automate the humanity out of your community. That’s why people are coming to community form. Safeguard from automation.
  • Personal – he made a personal video for every new member (!), but it made a difference that it seem like he cared. “Put in time before I gave a single dollar.”
  • Intentional
  • Relational – Always respond and follow-up to automated messages. More likely to come back – white glove treatment.
• Tactics for Events
  • Create rituals – habits to familiarize with space (use the same song to start an event, play the same song) and it’s a trigger for them to know what to expect. Start by have people go to the chat to warm it up (introduces people to know where the chat is…energizing and fun) and speakers like an engaged chat
  • Expectations – be clear about how you want people to act in your events.
• Clarity if kindness
  • For audience Q&A – attendees confused about what to do. “Going to Q&A and here’s how you do it” – tell them what the expectation is. They will be more likely to participate.
• Throw an after-party (breakout room)
  • Give people a roadmap on how to have conversations with other attendees so that they get to know each other.
• Tactics for creating connection
  • Coffee chats live pairing two attendees together. What are you hoping to get out of this? Manually pairing, but it was powerful in helping them meet the people they want to meet. Help them connect the dots to deliver value to customers
• Focus groups. on demand – feedback is incredibly powerful, show that it’s valued
  • Always give feedback to a survey to show that you actually read it. They feel heard.
• Some things won’t scale, but it’s essential to. do- taking time to respond to surveys, etc.
• Ask for advice, get money twice
  • Go to existing audience. and understand what you want us to build for you.

Steps to Build community

1. Analyze existing audience/customer base
2. What problems are they facing or subgroups is your audience facing
3. why do people like your product?
4. Design community
5. integrate community into existing company ecosystem