E L S U A ~ A KM Blog Thinking Outside The Inbox by Luis Suarez

Community Managers and the Art of Facilitating Communities Effectively

Continuing further on the topic of online communities and community building, and just as my last blog post touched based on how to build an engaging community, today I thought I would go ahead and talk a little bit more about one of the most relevant and important community roles out there, which, in most cases, is a big unknown for most knowledge workers out there, specially seeing how that role seems to have morphed into something completely different than what it was first envisioned for back in the day. Of course, I am talking about the role of the Community Manager, or Community Facilitator, which has been my preferred term from the beginning. Who else out there nowadays doesn’t consider themselves a community manager, right?

The truth is that everyone is, indeed, a community facilitator / manager nowadays, as you saw in a recent blog entry where I referenced Gautam’s comments along these very same lines. So I thought I would develop further on this topic, specially since, earlier on today, I bumped into a couple of rather relevant and interesting links very much connected to this topic that I am sure you would enjoy quite a bit. The first one is coming from my good friend, Gautam Ghosh, once again, who earlier on tweeted a link to a blog post that he put together in September 2010 and which, despite the months gone by already, it’s just as valid today, if not more!, than ever before. Have a look into “5 Skills for Online Community Managers” and find out what some of the community facilitator traits would be like, according to him…

As a teaser, here you have got the listing of the five of them, next to a couple of quick comments from my side, based on my own experience as a community facilitator, and from where I will prompt you to go and check out his blog entry to read the full description of what each trait would mean eventually:

1. Depth of knowledge in the subject of the community: That’s right! Very very helpful, although I don’t consider it really an essential trait to have (I was once involved with an internal community building program for nearly three years where I was not very much familiar with the subject matter of the communities, but I surely knew the people behind it!). Either way, the more familiar the community facilitator is with the subject matter that drives the community, the better! And if that community facilitator knows the organisation, business, corporate culture, etc. that supports and sponsors that community, or communities, all the better!
2. Passion about sharing knowledge: There is very little that I can probably add about this one. Have you ever seen a community facilitator that’s not passionate about the subject matter of the community? About the people belonging to the community? I am sure you haven’t, and if you have, that community is probably on its way to go rather dormant or die altogether! Passion drives everything, even community facilitators! Without it you are getting half the value!
3. Comfort with asking for help: This, to me, is one of the most important traits from every single community facilitator out there, what Harvard Business Review’s Management Tip of the Day calls “Admitting when you don’t know“; basically, admitting, not just to yourself, but to everyone out there!, that you do not know everything, nor are you expected to, and that it’s ok to go out there, even outside of the community and ask for help, whenever you can’t help answer a particular question. HBR’s Management Tips couldn’t have put it better in these few words: “Acknowledge your own limitations so others can do the same. And when you need it, ask for help and be open to learning“.

4. Comfort with Technologies: Another important trait, for sure, one that I have always called being capable of “walking the talk“; indeed, if you, as a community facilitator, would want your community members to get the most out of their community tooling, they are going to need a leading example; someone who can show them, who can educate them, who can explain what are the options and how to make the best choices within that community tooling. And that someone is going to be you, walking the talk. 
5. The ability to showcase results and tell the story: This one is probably one the toughest traits to achieve and one that community facilitators tend to master over time with practice and lots of learning from the community. But perhaps the most important aspect from this one is to work effectively with their own communities in showcasing those results and share that anecdotal evidence, versus trying to figure it all out by themselves …

Pretty tough job that one of the community facilitator / manager, don’t you think? Well, thank goodness we have got a whole bunch of different, relevant and rather helpful resources out to there to make the job a bit easier on us all. Let’s go with the second resource then that I think you would find also a pretty good, and entertaining!, read. It was shared yesterday through a tweet by my good friend Cordelia Krooss and while reading through it, I just couldn’t help thinking how scarily accurate it was describing the various characteristics from internal community facilitators coming up with “The 13 hats of an internal community manager“. This fine article was put together by Steve Radick, Lead Associate with Booz Allen Hamilton, and if you are an internal community facilitator, or if you are heavily involved with internal community building programs, it’s one of those reads I would strongly encourage you all, community leaders, to read through and then confirm back in the comments how each and everyone of those 13 hats would eventually describe you and your role pretty accurately. Perhaps even too accurately.

I found out for myself how each and everyone of them are rather descriptive of my day to day workload as an internal community builder and I am certain they would be for you, too! If not, take a look at this teaser, where I have taken the liberty of quoting over here each and everyone of them, but read their full description over at Steve’s piece; it will be worth every word! His sense of humour, permeating throughout the article itself as well, would make you smile, if not laugh altogether big time! Here we go with the list of 13 hats:

1. “Referee
2. Ombudsman
3. Party promoter
4. Comedian
5. Teacher
6. Inspirational leader
7. Help desk
8. Psychiatrist
9. Troublemaker
10. Cheerleader
11. Project Manager
12. Writer
13. Janitor“

I am not going to describe all of those traits myself over here, since Steve has done a fabulous job altogether at it, but I can imagine how by going through that list you can sense what each of them would be about and, most importantly, how you can relate to each and everyone of them more in detail. I surely couldn’t single out any of them at this point that I wouldn’t relate to it, confirming, once again, how the job of community facilitators is not as easy as some people think it is by posting something on Facebook, or send the odd tweet, or sending across the odd friending request, or share whatever the internal status update . That’s probably just the tip of the iceberg in constant movement throughout the organisation extending not just internally, but also externally.

My dear friend Claire Flanagan comes to confirm that very same thing with one of the most interesting reads to date on the topic of community building and community facilitators, not only because of her wonderful insights, as usual, but also because of the good amount of rather helpful, essential, if you ask me, resources that she has linked to, including the fantastic reads put together, back in the day, by the one and only, Dion Hinchicliffe, under “The Next Generation Enterprise: An Emerging Focus on Social Business Processes and Relationships” or the fabulous  ”Community management: The ‘essential’ capability of successful Enterprise 2.0 efforts” (With the rather well know jack of all trades), along with the Communities Manifesto by Stan Garfield (Which I still consider an essential reading for everyone heavily involved, or rather interested, in community building, in general), amongst several other resources worth while reading, including the Community Roundtable group that I have talked about over here a couple of times already …

All of those, along with the indispensable “Online Community Toolkit” that Nancy White has put together over the course of the years will surely become our new bible for all of those community facilitators, whether seasoned or just getting started, who are getting more and more involved with their communities as time goes by. As you can see from this article, and the various resources I have linked to throughout, the role of a community facilitator, manager, leader, whatever term you would want to use, is not an easy job. Back in the day it didn’t have perhaps the right level of attention, nor involvement from the business side. Hopefully, that’s all changing for the better, re-gaining back that respected reputation it once had and as more and more helpful resources emerge on this very same topic we can all make it much easier upon ourselves (Remember, we are all community builders) and realise how the role of community manager is much more of a full time job than whatever we may have realised in the past.

The good thing is that we are not alone. Our various communities fully understand that, and, much more importantly, our businesses, too, which is why both their leadership and sponsorship on nurturing such roles will be a key, huge success factor for the well being, maturity and sustainability of a community. Any community. And that’s about time, too.

Building an Engaging Community By Gautam Ghosh

A few days back Spike Jones put together one of those wonderfully provocative blog posts on the topic of Online Communities that would surely make more than one person feel rather uncomfortable, specially, if they have got an online space and they call it a “community” , when it isn’t. Indeed, take a look into “The Fallacy of Community” and be prepared to read further on what has been one of my pet peeves from over the last 11 years and counting … “Just because a bunch of people are in the same place (online or off) doesn’t mean you have a community“. Exactly! So, what is eventually a community, then, you may be wondering, right?, if we have been abusing that concept for a long while now, and not just with the emergence of social computing tools as of late…

To me, a community, whether online or offline, is just basically defined as a group of people, who share a common interest on a particular topic, or set of topics, and who, as a result of that, would want to connect, build and share some common knowledge amongst themselves related to that very same topic. Or, as Spike mentions himself in that entry, “Community has context. Community has meaning. Community has deep, meaningful interactions [amongst community members]“.

So how do you get to build and facilitate healthy (online) communities? For sure, it’s not an easy job; it’s more than anything else an art, because, as we all know, you can’t manage a community; it’s just like you can’t manage knowledge either; the very same thing. The only activity that you could probably do is to help facilitate that conversations and interactions take place amongst community members under a specific context and with a certain purpose. And from there onwards that’s probably the $1 million question that everyone keeps wondering about. And that’s a good thing, because I don’t think that anyone has got the right answer either. There are no best practices on that oxymoron that some people know already as community management. More than anything else, because what may well work for one specific community, may not work rather well with another, since they don’t share the same context, the same membership, the same interest area, the same goals, etc. etc.

However, there are plenty of really good, and equally helpful!, resources to help you build and facilitate (online) communities in a more or less effective manner. One of my favourites that I bumped into not long ago was a Slideshare presentation that my good friend, HR and KM blogger extraordinaire, now Product Evangelist with Social Business Software firm Qontext, Inc, Gautam Ghosh, just shared over at this blog post under the title “My Talk on Building and Facilitating Communities“.

It’s a rather short presentation he recently did at triggr, but very helpful in setting the stage of what defines a community, and, most importantly, what not, and from there move on to sharing a bunch of tips on how to help sustain those engaging communities. Of particular interest would be slide #11, where he shares a rather nice graphic of how community builders / facilitators need to design for both community and content in a rather balanced manner. Another interesting couple of slides would be slides #14 and #15 where he sets the stage of who should be a community facilitator and some of the various different community member roles. Lots of rather interesting insights I wish we would have available as well through audio / video, so that we could learn plenty more from Gautam on what has worked for him over the course of the years and what not.

Perhaps it will become available at some point, but for now I would want to leave you with the embedded code of his presentation, so that you can have a look into some of the other relevant ideas that he shared during that event:

As time goes by I will keep sharing over here a bunch of other relevant and worth sharing resources around community building and online facilitation that I am sure you would find helpful as well. Because, after all, like Spike concludes on the article that started this entry:

“You can’t create a community – because you can’t build people. You can only construct the buildings. Community isn’t apps and tweets and status updates. Community is shared passion. Community comes from the heart and soul and sweat and blood and love inside people. And they decide and where and when and how it happens. Not you or your website or your program“

Couldn’t have said it any better myself. Communities have always existed out there, for hundreds of years!, interactions and conversations amongst community members have always taken place out there as well; it’s just that new community tooling, i.e. social software tools, is making that job much much easier to achieve now, that one of connecting, collaborating and sharing your knowledge across with people who share your same common passion on a specific subject matter, but, as usual, that community tooling is just a means, not the final destination. They are not a community. People sharing and learning about a common interest are. They are your final destination.

Your ultimate goal is to “be a part of the community in the full sense“. And participate actively in the conversations…

The Power and the Beauty of Connectedness

There are plenty of times when the whole world goes on to a complete standstill, where everything we know of just simply stops, when one bumps into one of those rather inspiring video clips that you know is going to change the way you view, see and experience things. One of those videos that changes plenty of the perspectives we have lived by over the course of decades, not just in a working environment, but also us all as a society. Specially, when it deals with one of my favourite topics from all along: Learning, that I don’t seem to be talking much about lately, and is probably something I need to start fixing as well! Anyway, I am not sure whether you folks had a chance to look into Debbie Kroeker‘s video “Thoughts on Connectivism“, but if you haven’t, please do take a little bit less than 3 minutes to watch it and be ready to be wowed right and left. Because you will

That’s right, in a rather interesting blog post put together by Debbie, she gets to mention the video itself, but I eventually found out about it through Nancy White, when she shared it over at her own blog under “Debbie Kroeker’s Thoughts on Connectivism“, thanks to a hat tip from another one of my favourite Learning 2.0 folks, Stephen Downes, at OLDaily, who references the always insightful George Siemens (Another good friend as well I am surely looking forward to meeting up in the carbon for the first time, after all of these years interacting online, in Milán, Italy in June 2011) with one of his very thought-provking ideas: “Have you ever thought about how completely irrelevant structured learning is?“. Ha! Talking about connectedness… with a purpose!

Not to worry, I will be coming back to this idea in a couple of minutes, so you will see what I mean, but for now, and like I have mentioned above, I would certainly like to encourage you all to have a look into Debbie’s video, which lasts for nearly three minutes, and which contains inspirational, learned quotes like this one:

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read or write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn” by Alvin Toffler

There is very little more that I would be able to add in that regard that I couldn’t have agreed more with by a long mile, so I better cut through the chase and embed the video clip over here, so you can start watching it and be prepared to be blown away, big time!:

Thoughts on Connectivism from Debbie Kroeker on Vimeo.

Pretty amazing, don’t you think? I told you!

Well, what about my point on Connectedness, (Yes, with a capital “C”), right? Let’s see… For a long while, I have always wanted to find an excuse to be able to inject in a blog post one of my favourite YouTube videos ever and connect it with the kind of work I do as a social networking evangelist. And lo and behold Debbie just gave me such lovely opportunity. In her blog entry she references the absolutely delightful piece of work by Eric Whitacre has been working on “A virtual choir 2,000 voices strong“, whose end-result is this mind-blowing Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir 2.0, “Sleep”, and which she used as background music for the clip.

Have you actually taken a look into Eric’s 14 minute long TED Talk on how that experiment came about in the first place and the discussion on the final outcome coming from v1.0? Goodness, if you haven’t checked it out just yet, I would encourage you all to have a look at your earliest convenience! It’s one of those rather inspiring pieces of art, creativity and poetry put together by our unique humanity that surely helps us understand a whole new world under Connectedness and how technology is helping make it a reality for us all today. And I am not exaggerating it a single bit there! Eric’s account of the project he’s been working on for a while is not only rather stunning, but also incredibly moving, as he gets to share some wonderful insights from those folks participating in the choir long the way sharing their own story. Total strangers, with a purpose for doing good, delivering big time and making us all experience shivers running up through our spines with goosebumps galore all the way through.

That, folks, is what connectedness is all about; that’s what social networking out there on the Social Web is all about. That’s why I am really excited to finally find the chance to connect one of my favourite videos with the whole concept of (social) networks describing how they operate, whether business related, or not. Because, that, folks, is no longer what we do, or how we behave in a business context, or elsewhere; it’s, actually, who we are, as human beings, and the kind of impact technology is having nowadays in all of us in helping shape up that own perception of ourselves for the better!

Thus, allow me for a minute to share with you all, over here, what I mean in a more visual, graphical way. Go and grab a cup of coffee, or tea, sit back, relax and press the play button on this video:

Then, when you are done, go and grab another cup of coffee, or tea, and watch version 1.0; the one that sparked the whole thing; the one that shows why there is no way back, why instead of neglecting it all, we may as well continue to embrace it and help prepare for the change that’s coming. The one that’s already here! … Go out and Connect!