Category Archives: community

Peak Experience

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I just came down from the mountain. An 82 hour life-changing gathering of an amazing community of entrepreneurs, storytellers, and world changers called Summit Series.

A number of friends have been asking about it. I am happy to have that conversation, but it should be in person and over a good meal. So, hit me up to plan that meal.

However, I do want to pass on to you a few ideas I wrote down to remind myself how to live the summit experience every week of the year:

  • Actually talk to the person beside you. You never know who they are.
  • Be willing to be inspired by something you don’t understand.
  • Always think positive thoughts, you never know who is reading your mind. =)
  • Eat every meal with lots of people, even people you don’t know.
  • Stretch. Grow. Drink lots of water. And breathe.
  • Dance every day. And dance like you mean it. Till you sweat.

Summitseries

What qualities make someone a good community manager?

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Got a great question today in my inbox, “what qualities make someone a good community manager?“

First, I can not promote the title community manager, because I do not believe the role is to manage the community. I don’t think the title is fair to the professional or to the community.

So, I can only promote titles like,

Community Architect A product centric person who designs and creates the spaces for communities to gather in and go about their life and work together

Community Curator A content centric person who is a good story teller, and can draw out great stories and examples from the community to reflect back to itself.

Community Cultivator A person who cares about rules and procedures and knows when to break them… the person who plants questions and content, moderates conversations, and mediates relationships.

Some of the qualities necessary for these roles are:

  • Compassion – you must love people in all their shapes and cultures and proclivities
  • Empathy – able to step in the shoes and head of anyone within the community, or outside the community
  • Strong Character – able to roll with the punches, dodge attacks, and defend community guidelines
  • Decider – gotta just make decisions quickly, communicate clearly, and keep moving

I probably need to add a hundred more, but these keep floating to the top.

Never Say Thanks

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A friend in the community space asked me a great question this morning, and I realized I have never written about this.

Why do you say, “A community manager should never use the word, ‘thanks’”?

In my experience, when someone reaches out to a company, they are most often already in a place where they feel unheard or misunderstood. So, when they read your text based reply (where it is very difficult to express tone and emotion), their baseline assumption is that you will be dismissive or annoyed. So, in that context, it is almost impossible not to hear ‘thanks’ as “ugh, yeah, thanks a lot, whatever” but it is much harder to hear ‘thank you’ as anything but “I thank you for your question/idea/input”.

It might just be stupid semantics. But, it is one of those little rules I live by for the sake of the other.

Do you have any little rules like that?

Epidemiology – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Note to self: explore Bradford-Hill criteria (Epidemiology) as model for exploring ‘spreadability’ of an idea.

Warning: remember, epidemics are bad, so what would make this more like a movement than an epidemic?

  • Strength: A small association does not mean that there is not a causal effect, though the larger the association, the more likely that it is causal.
  • Consistency: Consistent findings observed by different persons in different places with different samples strengthens the likelihood of an effect.
  • Specificity: Causation is likely if a very specific population at a specific site and disease with no other likely explanation. The more specific an association between a factor and an effect is, the bigger the probability of a causal relationship.
  • Temporality: The effect has to occur after the cause (and if there is an expected delay between the cause and expected effect, then the effect must occur after that delay).
  • Biological gradient: Greater exposure should generally lead to greater incidence of the effect. However, in some cases, the mere presence of the factor can trigger the effect. In other cases, an inverse proportion is observed: greater exposure leads to lower incidence.
  • Plausibility: A plausible mechanism between cause and effect is helpful (but Hill noted that knowledge of the mechanism is limited by current knowledge).
  • Coherence: Coherence between epidemiological and laboratory findings increases the likelihood of an effect. However, Hill noted that “… lack of such [laboratory] evidence cannot nullify the epidemiological effect on associations” .
  • Experiment: “Occasionally it is possible to appeal to experimental evidence”.
  • Analogy: The effect of similar factors may be considered.

[ via Epidemiology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ]

Community College

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I had a thought the other day:

“I wonder how many college students are looking for #cmtymgmt #octribe internships? Thinking about creating “community college” =)”

I have not nailed down all the details yet, but I’m trying to live my life as a draft, so I’m thinking out loud here.

Essentially, I’m trying to collect a group of folks interested in community cultivation, but who might not have quite the amount of experience many companies are looking for. We would talk shop about community cultivation, and I would be available as a resource to both the company and the intern, but the intern would get a TON of hands on experience.

be part of folk’s lives in a meaniful way

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“Ok, but, enough about me…. lets talk about what you think about me.”

Every time I hear a company, agency, or “social media guru” talk about getting something to go viral, I puke in my mouth. Just a little bit. (I won’t even get into the downside of being a virus right now.) I just wish more of these folks would use their energy and creativity to focus on being meaningful in the lives of the people they want to reach, by providing value to them.

“If there’s a formula, then you’re doing it wrong,” Glover says. “It really is a social dynamic, being part of folks’ lives in a meaningful way.”

[ via Funny or Die Relies on Social Networks and Wit in Winging Its Success | Fast Company ]

Bonus thought: The easiest way to get someone to like you, is to be interested in them.