Brian and special guest host Holly Firestone celebrate Erica’s birthday by heaping praise, talking about what she’s taught us, and telling embarrassing stories.

• HAPPY BIRTHDAY ERICA KUHL!!!
  • Holly Firestone
  • The Craziest 18 Days of My Career by Holly Firestone
  • Erica’s keynote at CMX Summit 2014
  • ericakuhl.com
• Top 10 things we’ve learned from Erica:
  • Pickup the phone and call people
  • Grow your business acumen to succeed in community
  • Chill out, be Kuhl
  • Wackadoo, cuckoo, and bonkers are professional terms
  • Get out of your bubble. Never stop learning
  • Perfect is the enemy of done
  • Lead with value. Give more than you take
  • No one has to lose for you to win
  • Don’t be afraid to build your personal brand
  • Being on time is important
• Help Erica give back:
  • Bike MS - Make a donation in Erica’s name!

Should you host your community on Slack, Discord, or a purpose-built community platform?

• Community Industry News:
  • Jenny Weigle launched her community consulting business
  • Taylor Harrington joined Groove as Head of Community
  • Jocelyn Hsu was promoted to Senior Manager, Creator Community at PicsArt
  • Shaveta Sharma was promoted to Deliver Manager Online Communities at Grazitti
• Slack vs. Community Platforms
  • Forums are over!
  • “But one of the things that I think it takes people a while to wrap their heads around is Slack is specifically designed for some group of people who are aligned around the accomplishment of some goal or set of goals, as opposed to we’re all interested in Star Wars or something like that. It’s a lousy social network in the broad, generic sense. It’s a lousy replacement for a bulletin board or discussion. Reddit is better at being Reddit than Slack.” - Stewart Butterfield (CEO Slack), Stratechery July 2020
• Sponsored By:
  • The CX Confessions podcast from Khoros connects you to voices from the C-suite to share their secrets for creating sensational customer experiences.
  • Commsor integrates with all the tools you already use, tying your community data together and enabling you to unlock insights, measure impact, and build a community-led company.

How to choose a name for your community. It’s more complicated than you think.

• Community Industry News:
  • The State of Community Management 2021 Report
  • Alexis Luscutoff joined Miro as User Community Lead
  • Lou Adducci joined Tiltify as Director of Community Experience
  • Francesca Cricchio joined AppZen as Community Manager
  • Emily Lakin joined Patreon as Head of Community Programs 
  • Krystal Wu joined Shopify as Community Manager
  • Ines Batata joined Pipedrive as Senior Community Manager
  • Cat Martinez joined Thoughtspot as Sr. Manager, Community Programs
  • Ben O’Hanlon was promoted to Head of Community, Insights, and Engagement at Input Output
  • Phoebe Shin Venkat joined TripActions as Director of Community
• Naming:
  • Pragmatic Names - right to the point
  • Modern Names - fresh and unique
  • Emotional Names - good for connection
  • Clever Names -  fun and playful
  • Classic Names - timeless and brand
• Sponsored By:
  • Commsor has acquired Meetsy, a platform built specifically for creating introductions, connections, and the secret sauce of serendipity within your community.
  • Khoros software and services help you win, serve, and grow customers across social marketing, digital care, and branded communities.

Soft Launch — the who, what, when, where, and why. Erica and Brian talk through how you can use it to set your new community up for success.

• Community Industry News:
  • Orbit raised a $15m Series A
  • StackOverflow Sold for $1.8B
  • Commsor announced 5 new integrations
  • Celina Zamora joined Makerpad as Head of Community
  • Willa Tellekson-Flash was promoted to Director of Community at Public.com
  • Austin Grimes joined Flexera as Senior Digital Community Manager
  • Bailey Richardson joined Substack as Head of Community
  • Ryan Sloane joined Facebook as Community Programs Manager
  • Joe Miller joined Incorta as Sr. Director, Community & Customer Enablement
  • Shannon Emery joined Alteryx as Manager, Community Recognition 
  • Kristie Preston joined Inherit Learning Company as Digital Community Manager
  • Piper Wilson joined Grazitti as a Community Manager
• Soft Launch:
  • Community Launch Guide: Soft Launch
  • Bar Rescue
• Sponsored By:
  • Higher Logic partnered with Community Roundtable on this year's State of Community Management report. Go download the report today!
  • Commsor knows that no two communities look the same, function in the same way, or have the same needs. Which is why they announced new integrations to enable Community Managers to bring all their members together in a single dashboard — no matter which platform those members engage on — and connect the dots between them.

How to successfully (and unsuccessfully) migrate your community to a new platform.

• Community Industry News:
  • Mary Yakuri Hodges was promoted to Community Manager at Workato
  • Paul Bradley joined Agorapulse as Head of Global Community
  • Marissa Dimino Burns joined Salesforce as Senior Community Manager
  • Tiffany Oda joined Venafi as Director, Community Operations
  • Stephanie Nakano joined Coda as Community Manager
  • Brian joined Commsor as an Advisor
• Migrations:
  • Community Launch Guide: Migrations
  • Sample Platform Migration Announcement
• Aftershow:
  • Oops.
• Sponsored By:
  • Commsor integrates with all the tools you already use, tying your community data together and enabling you to unlock insights, measure impact, and build a community-led company.
  • Higher Logic Acquires Vanilla: Better Together - Combining two, industry-leading platforms to bring human-focused engagement to more people than ever before.

How Customer Success and Community can partner to ignite education, adoption, satisfaction, upsells, renewals, retention, and advocacy.

• Brian Rights A Wrong:
  • Molli Aronce
• Community Industry News:
  • Higher Logic Acquired Vanilla
  • Mighty Networks raised $50M in a Series B
  • Nisha Baxi joined Gong as Head of Community
  • Sharath joined Product Hunt as Community Programs Manager
  • Mark Finnern joined Outschool as Head of Community 
  • Becky Scott joined JumpCloud as Sr. Mgr, Technical Community
  • Janice James joined AuditBoard as Head of Community
  • Monica Sibisteanu was promoted to Head of Content & Community at Monese
  • Iryna Charkashyna was promoted to Manager, Front End Development, Community Platforms at Palo Alto Networks
  • Ashley Dodge was promoted to Senior Director, Community at Copado
  • Chris Shernaman joined Netskope as Online Community Manager
• Customer Success
  • Alteryx Use Case Stories
• Sponsored by:
  • Higher Logic Acquires Vanilla: Better Together - Combining two, industry-leading platforms to bring human-focused engagement to more people than ever before.
  • C School delivers hands-on education, mentorship, and independent practice so that you can land a full-time job in community. They are now accepting rolling applications for Existing CMs and Job Seekers.

How to drive product enhancements and innovation through crowdsourced ideation programs with your community.

• Community Industry News
  • Erin O’Neill joined Funnel IQ as Community Manager
  • Diana Morgan joined Copy.ai as Head of Community
  • Lauren Lee joined Puppetize as Community Director
  • Molli Aronce joined Facebook Reality Labs as Community Manager
  • Kristina Prickett joined Moxie as Senior Community Strategist 
  • Eric Steig joined Zilliz as Director of Open Source Communities
  • Pattie Kettle joined Xactly Corp as Community Manager
  • Luiza Drachicean was promoted to Global Advocacy Community Manager at UIPath
  • David Sciuto joined Graylog as Senior Principal Community Manager
  • Isaiah Brown joined Houzz as Pro Community Marketing Manager
• Ideation:
  • Jamf implements community ideas in every release
  • Dell Ideastorm
  • Starbucks Ideas
  • Shawna Wolverton
  • Purple Pony
• Aftershow:
  • Tim Tams
• Sponsored by:
  • The 2021 Community Club Summit is the virtual event for builders and leaders in community-led companies. Join for free on May 11-13 for three days.
  • Higher Logic’s new community for products will help B2B companies improve customer experience and success, tailor marketing efforts, build brand advocates, and scale support efforts.

Working with Product and Engineering to gather customer feedback, increase feature adoption, and build better products with communities.

• Community Industry News:
  • Common Room raised $32.3 Million in a Series B
  • Higher Logic launches new product packaging
  • Philippe Beaudette joined StackOverflow as Community Manager (Trust & Safety)
  • Or Manor joined ThinkUp Global as Community Manager
  • Jillian Bejtlich joined Zapier as Director of Community
  • Allison Able joined Sisense as Sr. Manager of Community
  • Jacob Gross joined Alignable as Community Manager
  • Amanda Peterson joined MURAL as Community Manager
  • Gabby McCone was promoted to Program Manager, Business Community at Pinterest
  • Francisco Fonseca is Creator at the Journey Endurance Club
  • Katherine Morillo was promoted to Community Manager at Airbnb
• Working with Product and Engineering:
  • Brian’s Blog Post on Building Product Communities
  • “Engineers are not good at dealing with customers!”
• Sponsored by:
  • Higher Logic’s new options for community for customer communities will help B2B companies improve customer experience and success, tailor marketing efforts, build brand advocates, and scale support efforts.
  • The 2021 Community Club Summit is the virtual event for builders and leaders in community-led companies. Join for free on May 11-13 for three days of content, thousands of attendees, and over 25 speaker sessions.

Preparing for crises in your community before they happen, acting (or not) in the moment, and recalling some of our most painful/hilarious brushes with drama.

• Community Industry News:
  • David Spinks' new book: The Business of Belonging: How to Make Community Your Competitive Advantage
  • Bevy raised Series C $40m from black and women investors
  • Atlassian Community 2020 Year In Review
  • Joceyln Hsu promoted to Sr. Manager, Community Engagement at PicsArt
  • MarLiz De Leon joined QuickPro Professional Training Academy as Community Manager
  • Olivier Le Pord joined PTC as Director of Online Community
  • Laura Nestler joined Reddit as VP of Community
  • Daniele Bozzi joined Personio as Community Manager
  • Tuvy Le joined GitHub as Community Manager
  • Job: Director of Community at TripActions
  • Job: Community Operations at Zendesk
  • Job: Community Marketing Manager at Zendesk
  • Job: Head of Community at AuditBoard
  • Job: Customer Community Manager at ServiceTitan
  • Job: User Community Lead at Neo4j
• Dealing with Crisis in Your Community:
  • Episode 15: Steer, edit, lock, remove, ban
  • Episode 28: Keeping you out of prison
  • Holly Firestone
  • Joe Cothrel
  • Slashdot.org
  • withoutbullshit.com
• Sponsored by:
  • Join the Community Club! Whether you're an experienced community manager, just starting out, a founder building a community-driven business, or just community curious, the club has something for you. Experience the power of community.
  • Hivebrite is an all-in-one community management platform that empowers organizations of all sizes and sectors to launch, manage, and grow fully branded private communities. Check out their blog on Guiding your business through a pandemic with the help of an online community

How Community and Marketing teams can partner together to attract new prospects, convert them into paying customers, and educate them about new product offerings to drive shared value.

• Community Industry News:
• • Tesla shutting down their forum in favor of “social hub”
  • CMX Community Apprenticeship 
  • Rosie Sherry joins Orbit as their first community hire
  • Amanda Boyle joins Github as Community Strategy Sr. Mgr 
  • Paola Johnson promoted to Head of Community & Customer Advocacy at Thoughtspot
  • Kerri Williams joins Workday as Manager, Community Experience
  • Job: Community Engagement Manager at Workday
  • Rachel Makool promoted to Director, Community Experience at GoDaddy
  • Ed Giansante joins Wix as Head of Community
  • Leah Knowles promoted to Sr. Manager of Community Management &  Programs at Alteryx
  • Chris Shernaman promoted to Community Manager at Alteryx
  • Trey Waddell promoted to Sr. Manager of Community Development & Operations at Alteryx
  • Job: Program Manager, Community Recognition Programs at Alteryx
  • Community Club Jobs Board 

• Partnering with Marketing
• • Hivebrite Guest Blog: 5 Tips for Collaborating with Marketing to Drive Value with Engaging Communities
  • “Elephant in the Room”
  • Alteryx S-1
• Aftershow: 
• • Denver/Boulder Snowstorm
• Sponsored by:
• • Hivebrite is an all-in-one community management platform that empowers organizations of all sizes and sectors to launch, manage, and grow fully branded private communities.
  • Commsor integrates with all the tools you already use, tying your community data together and enabling you to unlock insights, measure impact, and build a community-led company.