A community doesn’t just spring up out of nowhere. Most communities are the result of a carefully directed process. In this post I’ll take you through the thirteen steps from idea to successful community.
I grew up in the Achterhoek (cultural region in the Eastern Netherlands), as the daughter of an entrepreneur with his own chocolate shop business and the youngest of four children. Taking responsibility and being proactive are the core values that I have been taught by my parents. From an early age we helped in my dad’s chocolate shop, and I gathered friends to help during the busy December month. I already understood that everyone wants to help in a chocolate shop in exchange for some chocolate 😉
From the age of 16 I worked in a bar for over 13 years. Here I’ve learned how to use hospitality to let people share their stories. And how we somehow feel connected to stories and which leads to connection.
During my Tourism Bachelor I did a Minor Anthropology for Tourism in Kuala Lumpur. This is where my interest in people’s behavior started. And here again I saw how people are always looking for connection through storytelling and how the right conditions unconsciously activate this, for example: cooking together in a hostel or a travel blog that can be shared with friends and family.
After my studies I started working as a community manager at Impact Hub Amsterdam. A worldwide community of social entrepreneurs with the same goal: influencing social issues through entrepreneurial action. Here I really learned how to work with communities on a professional level and it became clear to me that I was always subconsciously busy with connecting people unconsciously all my life but could never put words to it.
Authentic connection cannot be forced but emerges from putting into place enabling conditions. Especialy in today’s individualistic world where people are more used to work in a transactional way than in a collaborative way. To be able to build an engaging community is important to understand how to create the right preconditions. And this is exactly what I love most about my work, both online and offline!
Two basic principles I learned in community building and always remember:
I can’t wait to add an extra paragraph to this story with new lessons, insights and connections through Bind.
Hopefully see you soon and Let’s connect!
The summer holiday season is starting here in Europe, if you’re a community manager you might feel it’s time for a break to recharge your batteries. Especially as it’s likely you’re burning out. That’s at least according to the Community Roundtable state of Community Management report:
“A full 50% of community professionals experienced a high degree of burnout over the past 12 months.”
The community management community is fortunate that every year Rachel Happe and the Community Roundtable Team produce the state of community management report. An insight to world of community management, highlighting progress and challenges.
The main headline from the 2019 report is communities empower people, they transform organisations but unfortunately community leadership is still often disconnected from key decision making and operational stakeholders.
Are you using Microsoft Teams (MS Teams) in your organisation? How are you using them and, should you be using them for communities of practice? That’s something I’ll look at in this post. Please let me know your thoughts below.
If there is one theme which came out of the Congres Intranet & Digital Workplace 2019 in Utrecht, organised by Entopic, it’s this. People are central to a Digital Workplace. James Robertson, StepTwo (Australia) and Sam Marshall, Clearbox Consulting (UK) both focused their keynotes on the topic of (Digital) Employee Experience and Engagement. It was a theme which seemed to appear throughout the event.
A former colleague recently asked me about online communities at work, their value in supporting strategic activities and how to make the most of them. Kirsten Wagenaar and I discussed this and I decided to write a blog as a summary of that discussion.
On the 26th and 27th of February 2019 the digital workplace group presented DW24, a 24 hour webinar which looks at key topics and themes relating to digital workplaces. This provides a fascinating insight for digital workplace practitioners. Allowing them to take a behind the scenes look at what their peers in other organisations are doing with their digital workplace programmes.
Here are some of my observations I’ve noticed this year, reflecting back on previous years and events.
The community of practice (CoP) is perhaps the most common type of (online) community. In a CoP colleagues come together to share best practices with each other. Medieval guilds, professional associations and in some instances, school classes are examples of communities of practice.
I recently joined Bind as a Community Management Consultant, but what does that mean? What is Community Management?
If communities are people who share a common focus, then Community Management is the proactive design, development, activation and ongoing cultivation of the community. It’s a professional approach, backed up by relevant data, to connect people around a common goal. It’s about building bridges and creating value.