An Asynchronous Book Club for Community Professionals
The Community Reading Guild is a private, asynchronous book club for community professionals. Find out more and apply to join here.
Running Team Meetings Across Time Zones
This post outlines two methods I have developed and found effective for running team meetings across disparate time zones.
Building a Well-Rounded Community Team
If money was no object, what roles would you hire into your community team? This post looks at how I view community team roles and how those play into team structure.
The Five Principles: Shared Responsibility
The last of the five principles for creating community connections at scale is shared responsibility. This principle underpins all of the others and, while we’ve spoken a lot about growing community using these principles, without this final one tying them all together then we’ve essentially built a house of cards that will always be ready to collapse and isn’t going to create those long-lasting community connections at any scale.
The Five Principles: Social Learning
The fourth of the five principles for creating community connections at scale is social learning. This is a huge topic that folks far smarter than me have written about, so I’m going to pick out some of the core principles of social learning here and look at how they can be applied to community building.
The Five Principles: Shared Experiences
We all understand that meeting together is a great way to form connections and build rapport with each other. With that in mind, what I’m going to talk about in this post isn’t so much why we meet but rather how we think about and plan these shared experiences for our communities. It is only by being honest about how we bring people together that we can begin to see tangible results.
The Five Principles: Support
Support may seem like a fairly basic thing to focus on, but it’s far more nuanced than you might initially expect. You need to ask yourself – what do my community’s members need? How can I support them as they become more active in the community? How can I support them in their endeavours outside of the community?
The Five Principles: Safety
Safety may feel like a relatively basic thing to ensure, but it’s surprisingly easy to overlook, especially when you, as the community manager, don’t struggle with the same safety issues as members of your community. You need to ask yourself – what potential dangers can members of my community face, and what can I do to mitigate those factors? What can I do to make sure my community members feel safe?
The Five Principles of Creating Community Connections at Scale
I have previously written about how you can set the stage for people in your community to create connections between each other. While that post outlines a starting point – a way to initiate your community platform and get people talking – what happens down the line? As a community grows, new challenges are discovered and new solutions are needed. These five principles will set you in good stead for meeting those challenges.
Reactions vs Responses
Reaction or response – how can you encourage better community interactions?
The Only Problem-Solving Technique You’ll Ever Need
This technique will help you solve almost any problem you have – in work or in life. This was originally presented as a technique for debugging code, but I’ve found it to be exceptionally effective in all areas.
What Makes a Good Community Leader?
Strong community leadership is important to ongoing growth. This post outlines the core principles that I believe apply to all communities and their leaders.
Creating Equitable Hybrid Communities
We’re heading deeper into a hybrid future – usually envisioned as in-person events with an online component included. While this is certainly a great way to allow for events to accommodate people who cannot attend in person, what if we could do more? What if we could build an entire community that brings people together in multi-faceted and impactful ways, regardless of where they are in the world?
The Three S’s of Creating Community Connections
I believe there are three things you can provide that will pave the way to natural, organic, and authentic connections between members of any community. So let me introduce you to the three s’s of curating community connections.
Pilot Holes and Countersinks
Who are the pilot holes and countersinks in your community? Find them, nurture them, and empower them to do more.
What Roger Wilco Taught Me About Problem Solving
Roger Wilco – space janitor extraordinaire and the everyman hero of the Space Quest adventure game series – has a lot to teach us about problem solving.