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Building a Thriving Community Around Your Software with Ale Murray
698 Plays1 year ago
Are you trying to build the community around your software? And what does “building a community” really mean? What are we building communities for?
Join us on Developer Voices as host Kris Jenkins sits down with Ale Murray, a seasoned community manager with nearly a decade of experience, to discuss her tips for building a thriving tech community.
Ale shares her insights on why community building is essential, how to identify your target audience, and how to approach community building with the right mindset. She also offers practical advice on how to handle challenging situations, such as dealing with negative feedback and managing conflicts within the community.
Whether you're just starting out or looking to improve your existing community, this conversation offers valuable insights and actionable tips to help you succeed.
Ale on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ale_amurray
Kris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/krisajenkins
Kris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins
Kris on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@krisajenkins
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Transcript
The Importance of Community in Software Projects
00:00:00
Speaker
If you're building software at any kind of scale beyond personal projects, then there's something else you end up needing to build too, and that's a community. I mean, at the very least, you've got a group of users who you should be talking to.
00:00:15
Speaker
But these days, it's often a mix of users and other developers, contributors, potential contributors, people who would like to be users if they could just understand what they're doing, so on and so on. There are a lot of people to consider on the other side of the code you're building.
00:00:33
Speaker
And I think that's great. I think it's one of the joys of programming to see other people using the things you've built and then collaborating with other developers to build bigger and better things. It's great. Community is essential. And I'm glad it is.
00:00:48
Speaker
The problem is that while I think software people are generally a warm, friendly, affable bunch on the whole, if you ask the average coder, how do you build a community? I think we're largely stumped on that question. It's an important question, but I don't think the answer comes naturally to programming types.
Meet Ali Murray: Community Management Expert
00:01:10
Speaker
So I thought we'd bring in an expert and listen to them, just to give us some ideas and some guidance on how you build better communities, why you want strong communities. What's it all for? How do we go about it? And this week's guest is Ali Murray. She's been a community manager in the tech world for coming onto a decade now.
00:01:30
Speaker
I've worked with her. She is a joy to work with, and she's also very good at her job. Most importantly, she's very practical at her job. She's got solid advice, and it's a pleasure to hear her impart it. So let's do just that. I'm your host, Chris Jenkins. This is Developer Voices, and today's voice is Ali Murray.
00:02:05
Speaker
Joining me today, it's Ali Murray. Ali, how are you over there? I'm great. I'm really excited to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
00:02:12
Speaker
Oh, it's a pleasure to have you here. I've been looking for an excuse to talk to you on the podcast for a while. I'm glad you found it. Absolutely. Yes. So you are a community manager professionally for many years. And we're going to get into what that actually means and how we can learn to build better communities. But how did you get into that? What took your career in that direction?
00:02:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's a funny one because I started about nine years ago. So this was not very popular when I started. And I started because I interviewed for a company called Datastax.
00:02:54
Speaker
to work with Apache Cassandra. And when I interviewed, I actually interviewed for the role of event manager for marketing. But as I interviewed the person who eventually hired me,
00:03:09
Speaker
said, well, actually, we have two roles open, and we would like you to choose which one you would like to go to. This one is events and this one is community. So when he explained to me about the community, I say to listen, I mean, it sounds lovely, but I have no idea what you're talking about. And I have been doing events for ages for many years by then. So when he say that, I just was very honest, I said, I have no idea what this is about.
00:03:37
Speaker
And his response was, no one knows how to do this. I can just promise you that I'm going to help you on the way to learn and we can learn together. So I asked him, you know, what's your recommendation? If you were me, what would you do? Because you know the rules and you know me now that you've interviewed me. So what would you do?
00:04:03
Speaker
And his response was something that definitely changed my life, which was you can always go back to events because it's always going to be there. But if you specialize in community, I can envision that it's going to be something very valuable five years from now. And if you really get very
00:04:27
Speaker
deep into that topic, I think you're going to end up finding that it's a very valuable experience for you and for your career and your growth. So I just thought, yeah, why not? I can always go back to events. So that changed my life. Nine years later, I'm still in community and I really am very appreciative and thankful to him. His name is Christian Husker and he was my mentor for a long time and we learned how to do community together.
00:04:53
Speaker
And it was, yeah, the best choice. I love it and I still love it and I'm using and I'm just totally, totally in love with the community work and everything that has to do with it, which we're going to talk about. Yeah, you've always seemed like a complete natural for just reaching out to people and community building type stuff. Oh, thank you. I really enjoy that. I think that's part of why it looks natural.
00:05:21
Speaker
comes across. So maybe we should start with how you found your feet in that role. I mean, from scratch, what were the first things you had to learn? Yeah, it was Karthik, that's what I think that it was. But
00:05:39
Speaker
at the beginning because obviously we didn't know what we were doing. We just tried, it was trial and error really. So we just tried a few things, failed at a few things, and then we identify the ones that we really succeeded at, and then we started to go from there.
Organic Community Building vs. Marketing Strategies
00:06:00
Speaker
Some of the things that we failed at was to treat it as a marketing opportunity,
00:06:08
Speaker
but with the community target audience. And that totally failed. We learned very quickly that that was not the approach. So that's one of the things that definitely we steered away from. And some of the examples of things that
00:06:27
Speaker
worked with was to really focus on community for community building and not for marketing purposes. With that prevailing on our strategy,
00:06:41
Speaker
everything else fell into place. So it could be that we were doing events that looked very similar to the ones that marketing were doing, which we ended up calling meetups, which, you know, realizing that they were meetups. But they looked a bit similar to what marketing was doing. And we realized that the overall difference to that was the
00:07:09
Speaker
the approach from a marketing perspective rather than from a teaching perspective and an educational perspective and a community building perspective. So I don't think that we build community. I think that we build platforms that encourage the community to build itself.
00:07:31
Speaker
And those were some of the platforms that helped. So makeups, Slack, channels, and all these blogs and all these things that we ended up doing, we just had that core information in them and that helped it to succeed. That's really interesting that you think
00:07:55
Speaker
Do you think it's a bit like farming in that sense? Like you're not really you're not building a community, you're not constructing, you're not dragging people into it. You are trying to build a pasture in which these things will naturally organically grow themselves. That's absolutely it. I think it's it's very difficult to force it. It's completely impossible to fake it. It's very transparent. You people see through it through it.
00:08:24
Speaker
you know, it's it's completely transparent. So I think that to be preppotent, to think that you're building something and building a community is completely useless. I think you realize that you're actually just giving the tools for people to build a community themselves, then
00:08:43
Speaker
that becomes much easier on your strategy building, on the way that you see the job as well, but also on the transparency that comes across from the community team to the community itself. So yeah, I like that analogy. I think it's definitely like that. You're not growing the fridge yourself. You're just making sure the environment is right.
00:09:09
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It sounds like trying to do it as a marketing play early and failing badly was actually very educational. That's true. That's true. I'm really glad that we failed a lot and we were running really fast. And I'm really glad that we discovered that very early on because it definitely allowed us to test everything else from a more
00:09:34
Speaker
pure perspective. And with that, other problems arise, arose. I don't know how to say that. But basically, problems like making sure the company was happy with the results and the measures and all that stuff. It came, you know, because if you are tied to marketing, then it's much easier to make sure that you can justify
00:10:03
Speaker
the work with numbers. And when you're not doing it, it's much more difficult, but the results are long term and they are completely different. And that's what you need to understand as a community manager is you cannot compare yourself with marketing and you cannot measure yourself in the same way.
The Long-term Benefits of Community Building
00:10:23
Speaker
And if you understand that they're completely different
00:10:28
Speaker
topics, it's much easier to come to terms with that. But what's difficult is to make everyone else in the company know that. Yeah, I can totally believe. Maybe we should step back and look at that then. If a community isn't a marketing strategy, and I completely agree with you, it's not. What's it for? What do you put all that effort in for? Well, that's a great question. And I think it's for everyone.
00:10:57
Speaker
It's for the company, it's for the people, it's for the project. I think everyone benefits from the work of the community building itself. The people benefit themselves because they
00:11:13
Speaker
find a group of like-minded people that support them into whatever they're building or learning how to build whatever they're building. They support them on not being alone in that road that is so lonely sometimes when you're learning those new
00:11:33
Speaker
skills and the ways that you need to figure out your projects by yourself. You're not by yourself anymore. It benefits the project because not only projects die all the time because of the lack of activity, but it just helps it thrive. It helps it make sure that it's healthy, that the smartest people in the room are
00:12:02
Speaker
collaborating and contributing to it so the project grows and evolves and matures and it's very good for the project and it's really good for the company because they end up you know what you want as a company is for people to use the technology that you want them to use for whatever reason and every company has a different reason for that but if
00:12:27
Speaker
you see a lot of people using that technology that you really wanted. Well, of course, it's beneficial for the company. So, I think it's for everyone. I think everyone that's involved benefits from it as long as it's pure and respected.
00:12:45
Speaker
Yeah, so we'll get into when it goes wrong. Yeah. But let's save that for a second. There is a need because of those three groups, right, the people who come along to the community, the project and the company, it feels like the company is the only one that's worried about measuring.
00:13:08
Speaker
Yeah, naturally because it has a business behind it and I feel that the stress of a company to just show results all the time is just behind that. I have been very lucky to land in a company where that hasn't been the stress because the founders have been really
00:13:30
Speaker
part of the community from the beginning, and they've understood that, so they've allowed us to have that freedom of not having that stress. But it hasn't always been like that. I have been in other companies where there is that stress. And I think that if the measuring comes to play, the purity of the work of the community manager, it's affected.
00:14:00
Speaker
And that doesn't allow you to work very well or pure or how it should be done, in my opinion. And that ends up contaminating the results as well, which ends up working, you know, affecting the company on the first place. So I think if you as a company have that long term vision of understanding that these results are not going to be
00:14:27
Speaker
like you're used to, or like your other business reports and your other business measurements, and you give it a little bit of space and a little bit of freedom, they will find that the results down the way are going to be more impactful than you thought, and you're just going to look back and go, oh, okay, this is what happens when I let this happen, when I'm not in that stress business moment.
00:14:53
Speaker
Okay, so persuade I'm just thinking if I if I'm a company, I'm sitting there and seeing there are 20 people on our slack channel. Right. And I've just hired the amazing Ali Murray to help build our community.
Focusing on Quality Over Quantity in Community Growth
00:15:07
Speaker
Am I not going to want to like 10X that number 20 or something? I mean, instinctively, that's what I want to do. Yeah. Put me on the right track. That will happen. But if you just start putting the pressure off, we have to just literally get people in here. I don't care how we get people in here. We have to double, triple, you know, whatever this number is amount of time.
00:15:34
Speaker
then the pressure becomes, oh, no, I need the numbers. So let me just find random people to join the community. And then just get it. But if what you really want is the people and the quality, it takes time, it will it will not happen in a month or in six months like you are used to in your business. But it will happen over time. And the quality of the people that you'll find in there, you'll be
00:16:01
Speaker
a much better measurement for a result than the number in X amount of time. So what I always say to the managers is that if you give it
00:16:16
Speaker
the benefit of the doubt that it will get there eventually just not in the same pace that you're used to but it will end up with better results because it will be it'll be a more active and more engaging a more dynamic and a more um a safer community then
00:16:35
Speaker
you'll look back and you'll realize that what you wanted was not those numbers. What you wanted was those numbers with the quality that comes with that. And to get there, it takes time. But if you're just focused only on the results and the numbers, it just doesn't work. And what I say to people that ask me for advice on that regard is then just do marketing, because that's what's going to help drive those numbers. And then the company is not prepared in a
00:17:03
Speaker
in the maturity stage to put everything to the community efforts. Fundamentally, it's one of those plays where you've got to believe in the value of the thing for and of itself, rather than as a funnel to other departments.
00:17:22
Speaker
Though having said that, and I'm going to challenge you one more time on this. Okay, so here I am running my, I'm convinced that my Slack channel with 20 people will grow organically and happily. But I look at this and I think there are 20 really good people on my Slack channel having good conversations. And surely there's another 200 out there who would be very happy here if only they'd heard of me.
00:17:50
Speaker
Just finding the people who naturally want to grow in your garden, is that a job for marketing or is that something that you were also doing? No, that's a job for community for sure because that's a different problem. The first problem that you challenged me with was the numbers and the results, right? So how do we multiply? This one is how do I actually get the people that are interested in what is happening here
00:18:15
Speaker
And this can be valued for them. And that's where I come from. Or that's where I come to, really. I'm not selling them anything. I am providing them with the right environment for them to prove and to
00:18:33
Speaker
to help themselves really. So that's definitely a job for community and that allows me to find those right 200 people and not the random 200 people down the street. So your Slack channel becomes active, it becomes valuable and you feel that you are giving value to people which is what I think ultimately is the goal for the community department is to make sure that you're giving people value because if you're not then it is another marketing effort.
00:19:03
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I think maybe that's really the hits the nail on the head. It's not that you're, you're not measuring a community by the number by the numbers that you've got, but actually by how much value you're giving away, in a sense. Absolutely. And the way to do that is yeah, you you
00:19:23
Speaker
build a strategy, which we're going to talk about
Diverse Platforms for Community Engagement
00:19:25
Speaker
later. And with the strategy, that's how you start bringing people towards your efforts, towards your environment. And that environment can live in many, in many places, right? We're talking about Slack as an example, but it could be many places, it could be meetups, it could be your stack overflow, you're ready, I don't know, whatever you have, everyone, every company and every project and every person has a different
00:19:47
Speaker
set of environments that the community lives at. And I think that's very important to distinguish and also to distinguish that your community is not your Slack channel, your community is not yours.org law, is everywhere people live at and everywhere that people that are interested about your technology are hanging out. And that's a tool.
00:20:13
Speaker
but your community is the actual people that are there and that's what you need to create value for.
00:20:23
Speaker
when I look out into the world, and I realize scales fall from my eyes, and I realize it's not just slack, there are people talking about it on Stack Overflow and other places, where should I be looking? And then are there different strategies for making those places more valuable to people? Depending on the medium? Yeah, absolutely. You should be looking everywhere, because that's where you find them. So
00:20:45
Speaker
you know, your community is not slack is who lives in slack, but they don't only live in slack, they live in many other places. So you should always be looking everywhere. The challenge comes to when it's time to work on those other places. I think the first thing to do is to step back and then just have a look at all these places and decide which one brings the most value to your community.
00:21:12
Speaker
and to yourself, and where do you want to actually drive the efforts to? So then maybe you say, I don't need a space actually, because people are already living very happily in my Reddit group, let's say. So why am I going to create something else to drive them away from that? But then if you start becoming a little bit more interested in bringing them value, then you go, well, actually, if I move them from Reddit to Slack, and I try to
00:21:42
Speaker
to guide them towards the slack, then we can have more valuable conversations on threads that they won't get lost and people can find the topics easier. So you focus on, okay, what do I want to give them as value? Then you can decide where to put your efforts and every community is different. So I cannot tell you, you know, it's a rule for everyone because I don't think it is.
00:22:07
Speaker
different communities to live in different places, this court twitch discourse everywhere. And they find themselves in many other places. But in this particular case, let's say that you decided that actually slack was the best place for them to go. And then with the strategy, just start making that the priority towards the environment that you're building and and preparing for them to leave in a more in a healthier way.
00:22:35
Speaker
So your focus will be on this like a channel, so it's like a space. So in that way, you know that all the efforts that you're going to make on your strategy that will waterfall to waterfall your goals to, then it's all focused on that slack. It depends on as well how many people you have working for your team, you know, if you're a team of one person, which is a lot of the times, then you need to focus on
00:23:04
Speaker
one effort at a time or two efforts at a time maximum. Then if your team starts growing, then you can start looking at more places. So then suddenly you say, I don't actually need to slack only. I can make slack and stack overflow really healthy places for people to leave in both of them. And I'll be happy with that. So then if you have more team members, then you can just start increasing your school
00:23:30
Speaker
regarding the environments that you're targeting. So it depends. But if in an ideal world, if I had 50 people in my community, I would be targeting all of them because I don't think one is better than the other. And I think you should just go where the community leads. You should meet them where they are.
00:23:46
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So yeah, you definitely need to go where they are and but also think where they could be offered more value. And I guess that's what you're saying. If you're one community manager, you get to pick those two targets, right? The one where they currently are and the one potentially different one where you think it could be most improved. You got it.
00:24:07
Speaker
Okay. Oh, I'm learning. I'm learning a lot here. Okay. So, but do you think within that, I mean, we know all the usual roll call of places you'll find the community like Slack, Twitch, Reddit, so on. Do you think each one has a different character? Has a different particular set of values it offers people? I do because the people that hang out in them are a bit different. So you don't find the same craze on Slack and on Reddit and on Slack overflow.
00:24:34
Speaker
And if it was, I think that the channels are what the community makes them be. So the crease that brings a lot of value on Slack won't have time to bring the same value to Stack Overflow. So then an alley raises there to make that
00:24:54
Speaker
a different space. And I do believe that the influencers of the channels are the people who are the most active in them, and they are the ones who set the tone for the health of the channel itself. So, not all channels are the same, but it doesn't mean that all Reddit groups are the same. So, I'm not saying that, you know, for Project A, B, and C, all the Reddit
00:25:20
Speaker
are the same. I just think that they are all very different according to the people that live in them. Yeah. So, you're saying go and find the tone and learn from it in that particular place. In that case, let's get onto this topic, which is a thorny one.
Transforming Troubled Communities
00:25:37
Speaker
What if you come in as a new community manager to a new job, and you find that most of the conversation is on, let's pick Reddit, and it's kind of a sour conversation?
00:25:49
Speaker
As happens, there are toxic places on the internet that you could inherit, find yourself serving. What do you do when things go wrong, Ali? Yeah, well, that's really the most difficult issue to face when you're working with communities. And I think it's important to try your best to not let it get to that point if you can. If you are already, like you say, coming into it, I think that there's a few things that you can do.
00:26:19
Speaker
I think setting an example is the best thing you can do in this case. And the people who set the example are various people. So one of them is yourself and your community team, whether that's you alone or anyone else.
00:26:33
Speaker
It's anyone who's close to your community team that your developer advocates, your integration architects, you're everyone that's close to it that has interactions in this channel that are part of the company. The leaders of the company that pop in here and there, whether that is the founders or people who are very influential in the community from an engineering standpoint that join into the channels, they are very influential.
00:27:03
Speaker
And another group of influencers is the people who are the community influencers. So they are not part of your company, but they are very huge in the project, whether that is because they use it or they just are fans or they are committees or contributors or anything that they are. There's some very strong voices. And I think those are the people
00:27:29
Speaker
that you can target because you cannot target a group of 30,000 people, right? It's very completely impossible. So what I think is if you work really closely with that group of people, which could be five or 20, but is much more manageable than 30,000, you can
00:27:50
Speaker
help them be the good influence in the community, in this space. So, for example, if I see that one of these people are not using the great tone that I wanted or they are not very kind to someone or
00:28:09
Speaker
then I just have a word with them and then just just talk and then explain to them that they are very visible, because people are not aware of the huge influence they have most of the times. And so I make them aware that you are an example. And thanks to
00:28:27
Speaker
whatever you say, that's how the community is going to behave, then people normally will go, oh, actually, I didn't realize that. Thanks for telling me I'll change my tone from now on. And that's it. And it's worked 99.9% of the times. And the same goes for when a random community member comes and then just becomes really
00:28:46
Speaker
rude or anything sour, as you say, in the community. I think the best approach that has worked for me is to just go on a direct message or on a phone call or however the environment allows, DM on Slack or however the environment allows, and say the same, hey, there's another human being on the other side of the computer and
00:29:16
Speaker
they might not speak the same language that you speak and you are, um, you know, becoming a little bit worked up because of that. And maybe it just is lost in translation or, uh, you don't know the, the, the set of stress that this person is on there right now. Maybe that'd be a little bit kinder. And I always try to remind them of the human side of it. And they all every single time or 99.9% of the times go, ah,
00:29:45
Speaker
you're very right. I'm sorry, I won't do it again. And they don't. And I think that's that's key. And I'm very proud to say that in six years, I've had to block maximum five people from our slack. Everyone else gets it. And I always also believe in second chances. I'll also always believe in
00:30:04
Speaker
let's not do it again. But if you do, I'm going to have to block you because it's not the example that we want to set for our community. Only a handful of times I've had to do it again. So it does work and people do realize that it is human and that it is a core of the community to treat each other with respect and to not become sour. So I do think that if you treat people like people and not like
00:30:34
Speaker
bots or not like trolls, but like people, then you give them the outfit of the crowd and most of them do come around. Yeah, I can believe that. That's roughly been my experience. You know, there are a few bad actors in the world, but most people
00:30:54
Speaker
are just not aware of the whole perspective of their actions, right? But they want to be, they want to be good. But this sounds very moral. But they want the best of the community, but maybe don't see all the angles for their behavior. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And once you point it out to them, and they step back, and they see it again, oh, okay, yeah, I can see it. And, and maybe they're a bit more aware the next time. So yeah, I think it does work.
00:31:21
Speaker
Yeah, I can believe that. That raises the question of, as a community manager, let's say you're dealing with 30,000 people, as you said, what is your job actually involve?
Role of Community Managers and Influencers
00:31:34
Speaker
I mean, are you broadcasting to 30,000 people? Are you contacting individuals? How do you, Ali Murray, interact with a large community?
00:31:43
Speaker
Yeah, it depends on the strategy and on the status of the strategy at that time, because the strategy changes over time. My strategy right now six years into Confluent is not the same one that I year in or then when I first started. So it just depends on the strategy. So my interactions change with that maturity of the strategy and the change of the strategy. So at the very beginning, it was way more one on one and I knew everyone.
00:32:12
Speaker
And, you know, it was only 50 of us or 100 of us in the community. And we all knew each other and I knew everyone. And it was a matter of building that very core group of people that would just then expand. But right now with the
00:32:29
Speaker
30,000 people in drag and 200,000 people on meetups. It just becomes a completely different way of approaching. So, the way we do that is now with the different groups that really come down from the strategy. For example, one of the groups that we have are the influencers, which are the MVPs.
00:32:55
Speaker
Another group we have is the speakers. Another group we have is the hosts. Another group we have is the... So we have MVPs and we have influencers. There are two different ones. So we do have these different groups of people that we interact with. So that's what becomes... My interactions become tied to those groups of people depending on
00:33:19
Speaker
where the strategy is at the moment and how big the community is because obviously I cannot be pretending to know 30,000 people or to talk to all of them. So the efforts are focused on those groups of people who are then going to influence the rest of the community, right?
00:33:36
Speaker
So your speakers, they influence everyone else. Your influencers, your MVPs, your hosts, they all influence everyone else. So they become an extension of you. So those are the people I interact with the most. But obviously, sometimes it becomes the broadcasting messages because we want people to know about something. So yeah, we definitely broadcast something. Or we want to include someone in one of the components, everyone in one of the components that might be a game.
00:34:05
Speaker
at summit, I don't know. So then we include everyone and that becomes more like a broadcast message. But it's mostly depending on these waves. There's times where you are talking to everyone and, you know, the strategy just points you that way. And then there's times where it's more quiet and it allows you to more
00:34:29
Speaker
the administrative work. But yeah, that's basically, did that answer your question? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just, it makes me wonder, right? So, you have these MVPs, ambassadors, right? I was talking to someone last week who said,
00:34:46
Speaker
What they really want for their community was that wonderful viral effect when you get people that don't work for your company talking about what you're doing and spreading it. And I can see why a company wants that, but there's also a risk of abusing that to make the MVPs in your community basically be free dev rel. How do you tread that fine line?
00:35:17
Speaker
I think it's not as complicated as it might sound, in my opinion. I think that you need to provide them with the value that they want. And everyone is driven by different things. So I think it's a matter of learning what drives them, what makes them tick, you know, and help them with that. So help them achieve that. So if one person from your influencers, for example, what really they really want is to become well-known,
00:35:47
Speaker
and to make sure that they are a good presence in the community, then you work with them to help them be their face on a lot of talks, become very important at the rollout summits or things like that. And you help them become more active in the Slack channels by maybe
00:36:16
Speaker
making sure that you point topics that you know, they are very good at to them and stuff like that. So one of the things we do, for example, is we ask all of our MVPs what they're experts on and what they want. So what do you want from this? So some of them, they say, oh, I just want to be recognized by my skills. Some of them want to be recognized by their
00:36:44
Speaker
the way they present and the way they speak. Some of them want to just build CV by naming there that they were MVPs. So depending on what drives them, I think that's where you need to meet them. I found more difficult to actually get the help from them that I need rather than abuse them from my side. So rather than just
00:37:13
Speaker
make sure that they are not, you know, get overwhelmed by what I'm asking. I think it's better to just make sure that
00:37:28
Speaker
that they are comfortable and that they are not doing too much for us. But I found that it's definitely more difficult to get them to do stuff for the company rather than the other way around. But yeah, I think that's worked very well. It's what makes them
00:37:47
Speaker
makes them happy at the moment. And it's different as well every year. So we've had some MVPs, for example, that in one year, they really want to work on their speaking skills, and we help them be at many meetups and conferences and whatever. And then maybe that same person next year becomes an MVP again. But what they want to do is to just be really into the
00:38:11
Speaker
the code or into the technology itself. So then we make sure that they are more, they're tagged more on the Slack conversations that include those topics and stuff like that. And I think that's the best way of getting the best from people to help them achieve what they want.
00:38:31
Speaker
So again, it's the same strategy at the individual level. What you're doing is stopping thinking what you can get from them and how can you support the people who are already doing actually quite useful stuff for the community. How can you support them? Absolutely. And I think that's the key to it is just to know that they're not working for you. No one is the community is not working for you. You're working for them.
00:38:53
Speaker
Yeah, you could almost flip the arrow from what a company would expect they're building community for. Yeah, literally. The word that keeps coming to my mind is nurturing. What kind of personality makes a good community manager?
Traits of Successful Community Managers
00:39:13
Speaker
I think people that care about people and that understand that people are people and they're not lovers and they're good, you know,
00:39:24
Speaker
faces to be sold to and someone that understands that. I think diplomacy is a big one. Particularly to deal with the summer conversations on Slack and stuff like that. It really definitely takes someone with a diploma mindset to talk to people that are not
00:39:49
Speaker
in seeing the things like you're seeing them. But I also think that definitely someone that's organized and that knows what they're doing, because this is very chaotic. A lot of things happen at the same time, and it's really difficult to keep track of that. And it's really difficult to keep track of all the people that you're talking to at once. So someone that's very organized needs to be that person. So organized, diplomatic, and the most important one
00:40:20
Speaker
to care about people. I genuinely care about people. I genuinely care when someone is successful with their projects. But before that, it's just I genuinely care because I've seen their path to get to there. And it's just fascinating to be able to
00:40:41
Speaker
to see that and to be part of that in a certain way, in a very small way, but it's just great to witness that. Yeah, yeah. I think that came across from the very first day I met you, actually. I've seen the natural for that. It was great to hear. I have to ask, because you've done this entirely for technical communities, right?
00:41:06
Speaker
But I don't think, I think I'm right in saying you don't really have any technical skills, you don't have background in programming. Do you think that's held you back? Does it not matter?
00:41:18
Speaker
So I think that a lot of the times when you're too immersed in the same topic that everyone else is, it's like a relationship, right? If my husband and I work at the same company, we either get along really well, and it's just really great, or we get fed up with the conversation. So I think you really have to be very lucky to find that person who
00:41:43
Speaker
talks to exactly your same language and just walk the path with you. And I think it's the same with this. I see things in a different way and in a different perspective. I think that having the technical knowledge would probably
00:41:59
Speaker
I know myself and in my own case, I'm too much of a perfectionist. I would probably just focus a lot on the technical side part to be good. There's a lot of people in the community that already do that. The fact that I focus on the people being good and being well, I think that has helped me a lot. If I take the technical eye out of it and just focus on the person behind it,
00:42:27
Speaker
I'm able to do my job better and that's me. It's not the same for everyone or for every community manager. A lot of people do prefer having a technical eye, which I totally respect. They can know what
00:42:41
Speaker
the best response is to a certain question and stuff like that. I'm not technical, so I do rely a lot on the technical people that work next to me. I really like that. I really like being able to connect those dots and being the bridge, and I do feel like a bridge. I feel that a lot of the times when people
00:43:04
Speaker
all think the same, it's difficult to find that bridge, that person that bridges them. And so I really like being that. I think it hasn't helped me back. Yeah, yeah, I think there's definitely a reputation among programmers as not having those people skills first. And maybe that is a large hole in the market where we need people like you, Ellie. Maybe, thank you, I hope so. Definitely.
00:43:32
Speaker
You know, one thing I wanted to ask you as well on top of this was like, if put it this way, if you had to jump into a brand new community, if you were looking for a new job as a community manager, would you rather start with an existing community or try and build one from scratch?
00:43:52
Speaker
That's a very good question because I think it also depends on where that existing community is. I have friends in the community management industry as well that start from fully scratch and it's great, but some of them start with an unhealthy community or a community that has been neglected or just not worked with in the way that
00:44:22
Speaker
that I would like to do it. So if that's the case, I would definitely rather start from scratch and just being able to feel something healthy from the beginning. I do think both of them have their challenges. I think it's very hard to try to steer something that's already
00:44:42
Speaker
going in an direction. I think that's very hard. I also think it's very hard to start something from nothing. So both have their challenges. I think it depends on the strength of the challenge in each one. It'll be very much easier to build something from scratch that is already like, that is a very good topic. And that's a very good technology versus something that's just not really that great of a technology or that is
00:45:12
Speaker
maybe an old topic and something like that. And the same for something that's already existing. If it's already existing and it's just starting and it's just going on the right direction, it's much easier to just jump in and then just keep steering it than if it's something that started a couple of years ago and it's actually just going
00:45:34
Speaker
in a direction that you don't want to steer it back. If I had to choose, I think I would probably rather do it from very early days. So I've really enjoyed doing it from early days in the places that I've worked at. And I think that allows you to build that health in the community that I was talking about, with setting the example of how you want people to talk. When something is already sour,
00:46:03
Speaker
changing that is really more difficult. Yeah. Yeah. Plus I would have thought there's a risk that in that situation, you're going to come in and look like an outsider. Yes, exactly. So trying to change the way things have always been done. Yes, I totally what's this person doing? Yeah, that's a little bit more difficult. It is not impossible. And a lot of people react very well to it, but there's always a bigger risk in my opinion.
00:46:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny. As a programmer, you face exactly the same shape of problem coming into a code base that's unfamiliar. And like, it's easier to go in and work with a code base that's already well refactored and neat and runs well than to try and correct the ship, especially if there's a big team there that you're trying to think about programming in different ways. It's exactly the same shape of problem.
00:46:58
Speaker
That's true, yeah, absolutely. And the same, if you're going to start from scratch, it has its challenges, because how do you even begin? Then once you start, it becomes better. But if you're going to start with something that's already a bit broken, then it's very chaotic as well. So yeah, it's the exact same. Yeah, it really is. So that kind of leads into the
00:47:21
Speaker
And I'm afraid I'm not hiring, but this is going to sound like a job interview at the moment. When, if hypothetically, you were looking to get a new community job manager job, or let's put it this way, someone listening to you is thinking of becoming a community manager. What are you going to be looking for in the existing community? As green or red flags? What what conversation you're going to want to have with the management hiring you?
00:47:50
Speaker
about their thoughts about community. That's really interesting. So that's actually the first thing that I advise people to do when they start a community role is sit down with your management and define what community is for them because it's defined differently for everyone. And I think agreeing on that very basic definition is the start to everything.
00:48:19
Speaker
total green red flag for me is an opportunity to market or monetizing the community red flag for me. Some other community managers are very into that, which I totally respect and it's a completely different approach. It's just two different ways, not one of them better than the other, just two different ways. For me, I am the not monetizing way. Secretly, you think those other people are going to fail, don't you?
00:48:48
Speaker
Well, not really, but it's just not community for me. Okay. You're far too diplomatic to say that. I told you. To me, I think total red flag. If you are going to start in a company and you come and tell me, hey, I'm going to become a community manager at this company, but they really want me to show them how much money we're going to bring from the community in a year. I would go, hmm,
00:49:18
Speaker
I wouldn't advise you to get into that role because I think your life is going to be incredibly difficult because you cannot do the two of them together in a healthy way, in my opinion. Either one of them is going to get hurt, either the business side or the community side, but one of them is going to get hurt and you're going to be in the middle of it. So that would be really hard for me. I think another red flag would be if the community is, as you say, somewhere, it is already unhealthy.
00:49:48
Speaker
and they come to you and they say, hey, Chris, this is your job now and you need to fix this. It's just really bad at the moment. I would really, I mean, a lot of them are very possibly, it's salvable, but a lot of them are just
00:50:10
Speaker
doomed. And I would just make sure that you're not getting into a doomed one. And that way to know that is very easily just going in there and then just making sure if you if you would feel comfortable becoming into like coming into a community and as another community member and just hanging out there, would you feel comfortable? Would you feel accepted and welcomed and respected? And if you're not, I would really say
00:50:39
Speaker
this has maybe gone too far on the sour side. It's just very difficult to steer that ship. So that's another red flag. And I think that's the two main ones. Everything else, I think it's very workable. It might be more difficult, but it's workable. But those two things are definitely no-no's to me. Yeah, yeah. I guess you've got to go into it with the mindset of you're about to spend the next few years of your working life in this community. How does that sound?
00:51:08
Speaker
Exactly. Exactly. And a few years ago, I actually got approached by a job that I looked into, and it was a very, very nice job. And I just looked into the community. And I thought, I don't want to be working with these people all the time. It's just definitely not what I want to do in, you know, my everyday life, too. Yeah.
00:51:34
Speaker
literally deal with fires all the time. This is not something I would say now. I'm not going to ask you which company, but what sector was it? No, I cannot say. You're not even going to say the sector. OK, fair enough. I cannot say. OK, so then in that case, to wrap this up, we've got a sense of what some of your answers are going to be roughly on this. But at the end of the day, what do you personally get from it?
00:52:08
Speaker
I get the feeling of being able to help people who are able to change the world.
00:52:18
Speaker
I am not capable of doing that myself. I love being able to work with such smart people that I can help them find an environment that will help them change the world. And I think that's great. I love that. But I also, I really enjoy it. I love people and I love being able to just be that bridge. I love it. I mean, it's a personality type.
00:52:43
Speaker
So, I get a lot of satisfaction from that. I'm also really attached to the communities that I've built and I see them as my babies and I still, you know, go into the previous communities I worked into and just see how they are and if they're thriving, I really feel amazing about it. I wish I could do something about it. They're my babies.
00:53:08
Speaker
I love it and I really get very attached to it. So everything that has to do with that is what I get from it. So that's not this fashion of it thriving and that's a distraction of people being able to find each other in the Iran being that bridge. I really like it. It's just it's just great for me. That is a beautiful note to end on. And may I say that we're very lucky to have people like you in our tech communities building those bridges.
00:53:36
Speaker
Thank you, Chris. I really appreciate that. And likewise, we're very lucky to have you with you. And after we find all the messages that you are, it's just really amazing. Well, on that wonderful note, Ali Murray, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you, Chris. I really appreciate you.
00:53:54
Speaker
Ali, thank you very much. There's a lot to think about there. Regardless of what kind or size of project you're working on, whether it's a small open source thing or a company that's trying to grow, you need to understand your community and serve them to help it grow. It's actually something I need to start thinking about myself, this podcast, because it's all about listening to the people who are trying to move the industry forward, talking to them.
00:54:20
Speaker
In due course, it would be nice to have a place where we can all have that conversation together. And when that moment arrives, I'll come looking for you. I'll find you. Not in a Liam Neeson way. I will find you in an Allie Murray way. I promise.
00:54:35
Speaker
In the meantime, please don't make yourself hard to find. If you want to get in touch for any reason, my contact details are in the show notes, as always. Let me know what topics you'd find most valuable to hear about. I am currently researching new guests, so that will help feed into the pipeline. I look forward to hearing from you, and until then, and until next time, I've been your host, Chris Jenkins. This has been Developer Voices with Ali Murray. Thanks for listening.