The Community Corner with Beth McIntyre

Today we’re joined by Stephen van der Heijden, VP of Growth at OfferZen. On the show today, Stephen shares the nuances he faces whilst building a community for developers, how he proves that value of this community and who in the world of community he would love to take for lunch. Stephen also shares how the OfferZen community helps them build trust with external parties, putting developers (their community members) first and why we’ve lost our ability to have horizontal, peer to peer conversations.

Today we’re joined by Victoria Cumberbatch, Community Manager at Osmosis.org. On the show today, Victoria shares how she is currently managing her community of students, the metrics monitored and how community churn is managed. Victoria also shares the difference between micro and high-growth communities, the power of delegation to community members and why she doesn’t take meetings on Wednesday’s. Finally, Victoria shares how she incorporates balance into her life to avoid burnout.

Today we’re joined by Matt Lawson, an experienced Online Community Manager. On the show today, Matt shares his journey to become an online community manager and the skills and experience he built to get to where he is today. Matt then shares how to recruit and stand out as an applicant for a community manager role and his thoughts on the emerging role of the Chief Community Officer. Matt is of the opinion that if a business generates revenue directly from their community, then they should have a CCO, but for a SaaS business? Matt says, “maybe not”. Finally, Matt shares who in the world of community he would most like to take for lunch…

Today we’re joined by Erin Halper, CEO of The Upside: a community for consultants. On the show today, Erin shares with us the origin story of The Upside, how she was able to build a business from this community and what to focus on in order to scale. Erin left the 9 to 5 when she was around 30 years old and practiced as a consultant for seven years. Erin noticed an increasing number of professionals also leaving their corporate jobs. She decided to build a community to support these people and turned that into The Upside!

Viki Cumberbatch is our guest today, she is the Community Manager at Osmosis. On today’s episode, we will cover how she runs a community of medical professionals and the changes she’s had to make during COVID, protecting your mental health as a community manager and how they found events their community loved and scaled them virtually while still keeping a very personal touch.

Today we have someone working on one of, if not the largest, B2B community in the world. Our guest is Tiffany Oda who is Senior Program Manager at Salesforce. Tiffany specializes in community infrastructure, processes, automation, and operations, and she is super passionate about it. In this episode, she talks about how operations fit into a community strategy, how to balance manual work with automation, and shares her advice for Community Professionals who are just beginning their automation journey.

Celina Zamora is our guest on this episode, she is the Senior Program Manager, Developer Community at MongoDB. Celina works with the MongoDB User Groups, and was tasked with relaunching the program during the pandemic. Today, she shares how she broke down silos to build a global program, and how she and her team are measuring their success.

Kelsey Bourque is the senior customer marketing manager at Adobe and runs their user group programs. Kelsey began working at Marketo, which was acquired by Adobe in 2018. In this episode, she talks about how the acquisition affected her community programs, how they continue to drive positive impact and share some of the metrics she's tracking to prove the value of her community.

Jana Boruta who is the Director of Experiential Marketing at HashiCorp joins us on this episode. Jana has been working with the community at HashiCorp for six years, and has helped build, run, and scale many of their community programs. Today, she talks about the challenges and successes her team had while pivoting their in-person events program to be virtual in 2020, and shares her advice for companies doing the same.

Mike Jewett is our guest on today’s episode, he is Director of Community at Codecademy. The Codecademy Community is super ingrained with the product, and Mike works closely with the product team to integrate ideas, make changes, and build a better space. Today, he shares how the community operates within the org, how he proves the value of the community, and how they successfully launched an events program in the middle of a pandemic.