Meet Our 2024 Swarm Speaker: Evan Hamilton
Meet Evan Hamilton, Director of Community and Hubspot.
We’re so excited to have Evan Hamilton appear as part of our Swarm 2024 lineup. He’s been one of our most requested return Swarm speakers, and is a valued part of the Swarm community.
At Swarm this year, Evan will deliver one of our webinars on 30 August, with a presentation titled “Maintaining Quality Communities at Scale: Lessons from Reddit and HubSpot”.
Tickets are on sale now – grab yours!
We recently interviewed Evan to provide you with more insight into our San Franciso-based speaker and how he sees the world.
(Before you read further, we’ll remind everyone Evan is American, and we’ve quoted him verbatim. American spelling and all.)
Tell me about yourself and your community management history:
I stumbled into community through a Craigslist post about a MySpace page (just to date myself) and discovered that I had been waiting my whole life for such a role. I’m an introvert who loves understanding people, bringing them together, and creating joyful experiences for them. I was hooked, and I’ve been building communities professionally for the 15+ years since then.
What has been your favourite role/community?
I’m not sure I can pick a favorite role because they’re all amazing and hard in different ways. Leading community at Reddit was an incredible experience that I’m so grateful for (though it was also incredibly exhausting).
What’s unique about working on your current community?
HubSpot has always been on the cutting edge of SaaS and, unsurprisingly, is on the cutting edge of community. It’s really fun and exciting to try really different things but within the support and confines of a very big company. The work is definitely on multi-year horizons, but I’m really excited about where it’s going. If we pull this off, community will be a central component of most of our public-facing efforts.
What community platforms do you personally hang out on? (either socially or professionally)
I’ve loved Reddit since before I worked there and still hang out there quite a bit.
I’m enjoying Threads, though I miss Twitter (but I don’t miss supporting a terrible person).
I’m a part of a lot of small slacks and text threads that feel probably the most intimate and valuable to me.
What is your favourite aspect about your community (either on you manage or one you’re a part of)?
I love that HubSpot fans are so passionate and so smart. A big chunk of my job is just figuring out how we can get out of the way and let them cook, because when we do they create amazing outcomes like events spread across the globe, thousands of excellent answers in our success community, and amazing content on social.
How are you tackling the constantly changing social media space (i.e. The Twitter to X rebrand, Meta’s changing rules re: journalism, owned platforms vs social based communities)?
First, I try to build a core audience via email. I have an email newsletter called Community Manager Breakfast that goes out once a week and features 3 curated links about community building. Having that direct access every week is really important.
Second, I try new platforms all the time. I don’t invest deeply unless it’s a fit, but I want to be aware of what’s out there and move when I see an opportunity.
Lastly, always focus on quality. I’ve skipped weeks of my newsletter because I didn’t feel the quality was high enough. I might post 8 times in one week and then 2 the next week because I just don’t have anything of value to provide. Although the algorithm likes volume and consistency, I’ve found that PEOPLE want quality.
What are you reading/watching/listening to right now that all community professionals should read/watch/listen to?
The best things I find go into Community Manager Breakfast so you should definitely subscribe to that. 😉
That said, I’ve been really impressed with the insights on the Beginner Maps podcast and I will basically read anything written by Tiffany Oda, Brian Oblinger, Richard Millington, or Carrie Melissa Jones.
What do you love most about Swarm?
The people who attend Swarm are SO smart and thoughtful and passionate. I’ve had some of the most intriguing conversations of any conference at Swarm!
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See all our speakers here!
Meet Victoria Cumberbatch, Founder & Principal of adventuresOFcommunity and community manager extraordinaire.
Victoria is a transformation leadership coach in Denver, USA. She helps people move from states of tension to states of intention. Her neuro-friendly and trauma-informed lens supports people through coaching, breathwork, and communal events.
At Swarm this year, Victoria will deliver one of our webinars on 14 August, with a presentation titled “Becoming an Authentic Leader at Home & at the Workplace”.
Tickets are on sale now – grab yours!
We recently interviewed Victoria to provide you with more insight into our Denver-based speaker and what makes her tick as a community manager.
Tell me about yourself and your community management history:
Within the past full year, I’ve pivoted from over a decade of serving in community building to coaching and facilitation. It took me nearly that entire decade to discern the golden thread that my form of contribution is through the lens of community building, management and design. I hadn’t realized that that was what I’d been ‘doing’ until the covid moment, where the community industry seemed to explode.
I got into community many moons ago, after graduating with a government degree and no job. I chose to do long term substitute teaching followed by long term backpacking, as a rotation, for many years in my 20s. When I would travel, I would typically do work exchanges, home stays or work at hostels and these environments are really where I began to gather people intentionally. Then with full time work, the titles morphed to ‘program coordinator’ or ‘program leader’ to inevitably, community manager or something more aligned with what I was actually doing.
My favorite role, albeit the most challenging as well, was leading a community of digital nomads around the world for a year with a co lead. We oversaw the experience and well being of about 50 adults for 12 months solid, including a few months of shadowing. Here’s what it was like!
What’s unique about working on your current community?
Currently, I am slowly building an in person community in Denver, where I now live, based around somatic work. I delved into embodiment work in the past few years of living here and became a breathwork facilitator, so I offer community breath experiences around town and I’m starting to attract regulars!
What community platforms do you personally hang out on? (either socially or professionally)
Very few, to be frank with you. Primarily, Slack, Heartbeat and Facebook Groups!
What is your favourite aspect about your community (either on you manage or one you’re a part of)?
One of the best aspects of a former community I managed was the permission to be creative with intrinsic level ‘perks.’ This allowed me to go wild with things like themed months, month long bingo activities, experimenting with different virtual ‘tea times’ and getting deep into discussion on dicier topics. That was fun to me and kept me motivated to keep envisioning new innovative ideas to keep people connected and returning.
How are you tackling the constantly changing social media space (i.e. The Twitter to X rebrand, Meta’s changing rules re: journalism, owned platforms vs social based communities)?
I’m not! With ADHD and working for myself, I truly can not handle the rate of change. So, I’ve decided to simply hang up perfectionism and do what I can when I have the energy for it. It’s something I preach heartily about now as well.
What are you reading/watching/listening to right now that all community professionals should read/watch/listen to?
I love to read April MacLean’s newsletters and body double with either of these apps: Groove or FLOWN.
What do you love most about Swarm?
I love how intentional Swarm is, whether it be with content, outreach, recognition of the land any team member might currently be on and so much more. This sort of thing, intentionality, gives me the perception that the people at Swarm care more about being in integrity than straight up capitalism.
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See all our speakers here!
Meet Selva Ganapathy, Social and Community Support Manager for MYOB.
Selva is passionate about people and the planet. Both revolve around and are anchored to the community. Community building comes naturally to him and he has built communities for over 20 years.
He started building a community of volunteers for a non-profit and learned several skills through that. The desire to be with people and make the world a better place wants him to be in this space.
He transitioned from building communities for non-profit to for-profit in 2018. He also runs a community consultancy called ‘Community Simplified’ to help businesses build communities.
At Swarm this year, Selva will be talking us through how to reengage a support community.
Tickets are on sale now – grab yours!
What’s unique about working on your community?
The unique thing about working with my community is that I am totally new to support community and I am totally new to MYOB products. Before joining MYOB, I had never used MYOB products or services. In fact, that is the beauty of the community space.
What’s your favourite community right now and why?
Canva. I have always been a fan of Canva, their mission and vision and how they help people. My values align very much with Canva’s and their community’s values. I love this space 😃
What do you consider the most exciting thing about the community management space today?
You get to work with people across the globe. You understand, empathise, learn and share. I think globally the community industry is growing and businesses are sensing the need of being and staying closer to the community. Instead of building for them, the future is going to be built with them and I am excited for this to grow further.
What do you consider the most challenging thing about the community management space today?
One is the lack of understanding. Also, businesses don’t invest much into the community building space. They always see short term ROIs and fail to provide adequate support and resources to those who build communities within the business. It is also equally challenging to put definitive metrics across all communities that can give you a specific ROI value.
What are you reading/watching/listening to right now that all community professionals should read/watch/listen to?
I read Evan Hamilton’s, Threado’s and the Community Collective’s newsletters without fail.
I am not too much into watching and listening though 😃.
I am also planning to produce a podcast through ‘Community Simplified’ where we want to break down community building into simple tasks. Watch out for that.
Why should community peeps come to Swarm?
A community that comes together to learn and share would grow and I find that Swarm is a great place for it 😃.
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See all our speakers here!
Meet Annie Pistikakis, Director Customer Community for Who Gives A Crap / Good Time.
Hitting the stage at the young age of 4, performing in theatre shows, TV and playing team sports have all shaped who Annie is today.
Having worked in the community space for over a decade now, Annie believes it’s truly fascinating seeing it evolve so much. She has had the opportunity to work for some incredible organisations that include Breast Cancer Network Australia, Lululemon, Officeworks, Les Mills, Quiip, CPA Australia and now settling in at Who Gives A Crap, you can say that being involved in community in some way, shape or form is something she was meant to do.
She loves bringing people together, creating experiences that last forever and leaving a little sprinkle of Annie wherever she goes. She has had a great deal of experience in both IRL communities, online forums and now customer communities and she is thrilled to be a part of Swarm 2023.
At Swarm this year, Annie will be take the stage as our MC for the event, bringing her charisma and charm to our stage.
Tickets are on sale now – grab yours!
What’s unique about working on your community?
We don’t have the traditional community, the one place where people gather, yet! Instead we have a very special customer community. It’s spread across our social channels, our blog, hand written letters and email.
What’s your favourite community right now and why?
I’m a strengths based coach with Gallup and really love the coaching community I’m part of on FB.
There’s lots engagement from coaches asking questions, to new coaches just starting and I love how the members of this community are so willing to share resources. It’s fantastic.
What do you consider the most exciting thing about the community management space today?
So many things have changed in the community management space over the last 10 years. It’s crazy to think how far we have come and where we currently find ourselves in the social media world. What I love the most is that brands and businesses are now really leaning into community and making it a focus. It feels like this space is no longer taking a back sit in the bus and more attention is being given to “community”.
What do you consider the most challenging thing about the community management space today?
On the flip side to that, community is all of a sudden everything and everywhere. This can put a lot of expectations onto the community management space. There is that fast pace pressure to keep up and stay on top of everything and that in itself is challenging.
What are you reading/watching/listening to right now that all community professionals should read/watch/listen to?
I find lots of information coming out of LinkedIn and really enjoy my daily check online to see what my favourite community people are sharing.
Why should community peeps come to Swarm?
Well this is your community, your people coming together. It’s a chance to be amongst peers, to learn, to grow and to have some fun. You will have serious FOMO (do people still say that?) if you miss it!
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See all our speakers here!
Meet Jess Erhart, Community Manager APAC for Asana.
Jess has worked as a community manager for 12+ years with a focus on building brand communities in the tech industry. Her experience is mixed across in-person and virtual community management, and always working to find the sweet spot between community needs and organisational goals.
Currently at Asana, she manages the Asana Together Ambassador program for members across the Asia-Pacific region, hosting events and training programs for Asana’s biggest fans – passionate about productivity, efficiency and collaboration.
Previously, she spent over 6 years at Microsoft leading community and philanthropy programs in Australia, established Virgin Australia’s social media customer service program and managed social communities for Microsoft’s European HQ.
At Swarm this year, Jess will be talking us through Building a thriving global community: working cross-culturally and thinking globally.
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What’s unique about working on your community?
The volume of different touchpoints combined with the global reach Asana Together is pretty special; encompassing a forum, program of events and a membership program.
What’s your favourite community right now and why?
I love STEMMinist Bookclub set up by Dr Caroline Ford at the University of New South Wales. What started as a goal to read more in the new year has evolved into a wonderful online and offline community, with participants interested in STEM, feminism and reading – with meetups happening all around the world. Check them out on Twitter!
What do you consider the most exciting thing about the community management space today?
I’m most excited by communities that drive real impact and change – be it commercial, social or both. In the past, stories of impact have often been the driver – but I love that the community industry as a whole now has a greater set of tools to analyse and showcase the impact of community programs.
What do you consider the most challenging thing about the community management space today?
From my experience of building community in larger software companies – finding the right internal collaborators. Not everyone ‘gets’ the importance of a strong community, and it can take time to build a network of engaged internal stakeholders and collaborators.
What are you reading/watching/listening to right now that all community professionals should read/watch/listen to?
I love to read so have many book recommendations.
For community – I have a much-highlighted copy, frequently referenced copy of ‘Building Brand Communities’ by Carrie Melissa Jones and Charles Vogl.
For leadership and management – I often refer back to ‘Followership’ by Barbara Kellerman.
For building tech literacy – I’ve been recommending ‘The Atlas of AI’ by Kate Crawford to everyone.
Why should community peeps come to Swarm?
Our industry shifts so quickly; adapting to changes of both the interests of organisations we represent and the communities we build and advocate for – conferences like Swarm are uniquely placed to offer a ‘finger on the pulse’ of our industry!
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See all our speakers here!
Meet Jordan Guiao, Director of the Centre for Responsible Technology.
Community management was his first full-time job!
Before he even knew what it was – he was managing an online community for a youth media company. “I got a taste of the power of online communities and connections, and I was hooked.”
Since then his role has morphed into more general management and looking after digital properties, but online communities started it all off.
At Swarm this year, Jordan will be talking us through Community and Connection in the age of automation.
Tickets are on sale now – grab yours!
What’s unique about working on your community?
I’m involved in a number of different online communities and it’s always interesting to see the great diversity across each of them – I feel like each community is unique in its own way.
What’s your favourite community right now and why?
I’m in a number of geeky gamer Discords that never fails to put a smile to my face.
What do you consider the most exciting thing about the community management space today?
The scale and diversity of being online is still unmatched, despite a lot of problems.
What do you consider the most challenging thing about the community management space today?
Automation! Like I will go into during my presentation!
What are you reading/watching/listening to right now that all community professionals should read/watch/listen to?
Shameless plug – my book Disconnect: Why we get pushed to extremes online and how to stop it – looks at how online spaces can warp us and tries to give people ways to navigate out of this.
Another great book I’m reading is ‘Power and Progress’ by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, which charts our history with technology and how it’s very much driven by specific political and social forces (e.g. humans) and we should never forget that our online spaces and our technology is not a given – they are always decided through public forces that we can and should influence.
Why should community peeps come to Swarm?
Because we should get off our screens and meet in person from time to time – nothing will ever replace the physical experience of connecting with your peers in person!
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See all our speakers here!
Meet Margareth Egbuchulam, Community Manager for Talentpoel.
Margareth is a product community manager who has been building and leading communities for over 2 years. She is known for boosting engagement using community strategy and genuine human connection. Margareth is enthusiastic about people management, event management and community operations.
In addition to being a community manager, Margareth is also passionate about travelling and discovering new cultures through books, movies, art and music. Margareth finds that learning about the culture from its true source is the best way to fully understand a people.
The world is a global village and it’s Margareth’s pleasure to help connect people to each other via the community.
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What’s unique about working on your community?
The engagement is being done on a personal level. This allows members to feel safe and open to sharing their thoughts with me.
What’s your favourite community right now and why?
The K-drama Chingus community. It is a small and intimate community for K-drama lovers to discuss trending K-dramas and all of our favourite oppas and eonnies.
What do you consider the most exciting thing about the community management space today?
Getting to meet new people every day I show up!
What do you consider the most challenging thing about the community management space today?
Landing remote roles outside of my geographical location.
What are you reading/watching/listening to right now that all community professionals should read/watch/listen to?
I am watching See you in my 19th life and listening to Alan Walker’s playlist. His songs keep me focused while working.
Why should community peeps come to Swarm?
I am watching See you in my 19th life and listening to Alan Walker’s playlist. His songs keep me focused while working.
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See all our speakers here!
Meet Francesca Funayama, Community Manager for International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children Australia (ICMEC Australia).
Fran has been been a community manager for almost 10 years. She studied neuroscience and music at uni with the intention of becoming an academic. She finished her Grad Dip in Science (basically, Honours) and decided to not
pursue research. Fran got into community management simply by asking to: “I was already working part-time as a content moderator at a local startup. When I heard my manager was leaving, I asked if I could have her job (Content and Community Manager) and they said yes.”
She has built up her skills and knowledge from saying yes to the right opportunities, diving into the deep end and just doing the work. Some of the things she has subsequently said yes to over her career: tech startups, agencies, not-for-profits, gaming and fintech.
At Swarm this year Fran will talk us through her learnings from from creating a private B2B community of practice for the Australian child sexual exploitation (CSE) response ecosystem.
Tickets are on sale now – grab yours!
What’s unique about working on your community?
I’m currently working for a non-profit organisation with a mission to enhance the detection, reporting and prosecution of child sexual exploitation (CSE) facilitated online. We support financial crimes teams, law enforcement, regulators, child protection NGOs and tech platforms in their fight against this crime.
The ICMEC Australia Member Portal is unique because there is no other Australian-based community of its kind focused on bringing together stakeholders from multiple sectors to tackle CSE. The Portal is purpose-built and is restricted to invite-only screened membership to ensure that we are only engaging with people who are working to fight this crime.
What’s one important lesson you have for community managers working with sensitive topics?
One of the most valuable lessons for me since I started working in this space is that it’s so important to invest in trauma-informed awareness training. I’m very grateful to ICMEC Australia for organising a training workshop earlier this year as I didn’t know what the concept was prior. It has changed the way I interact with anyone, even outside of my community management work.
What’s your favourite community right now and why?
Sickick’s fan community across YouTube and Discord. It’s the only “sanctuary” community that I regularly escape to for a solid experience of good music and good vibes.
It’s easy to become jaded with the crap you run into on the internet so it’s important for me to remind myself that there are pockets of positivity.
What do you consider the most exciting thing about the community management space today?
I think the most exciting and simultaneously scary thing is AI. There’s so much potential for it to be used maliciously but at the same time, I can’t even begin to imagine how we can use it to improve our effectiveness as community managers.
What do you consider the most challenging thing about the community management space today?
I think the lack of recognition of the profession continues to be an ongoing challenge, even today. Community management is not a new profession compared to social media management or content creation. Not many people are aware of its history or its why.
In saying that, one of the few industries where this is less of a challenge is the gaming industry. Gaming companies and streamers alike understand the necessity and value of community management.
What are you reading/watching/listening to right now that all community professionals should read/watch/listen to?
I’m a long-term subscriber of James Clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter. It isn’t specific to community management, but I find myself regularly recommending it to everyone. It’s a great weekly newsletter for self-reflection and self-improvement. The points in it can be applied to any area of life but they work well in a community management context as well.
Why should community peeps come to Swarm?
It can be isolating being the sole community person in an organisation, even in cases where you’ve got wide buy-in. There are so many nuances to our profession that only another community professional will get. So, people should come to Swarm to be with their peeps ✌🏼
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See all our speakers here!
Meet Lisa Wong, General Manager for Kinora.
Lisa has been a “pink” on eBay’s very active online community while working there, and helped to run several community based support workshops. The eBay seller community was very strong globally and in Australia Lisa built relationships with that community, sponsored and attended meet-ups and seller events – which eventually became an annual conference. She was at eBay when the seller community took eBay to court for a feature that they said was anti-competitive. They won.
Lisa truly believes in the power and purpose of communities: “Communities are life-giving, passionate, connected and give people sometimes mission and purpose. This is why when the opportunity to build Kinora – post Covid for the population of vulnerable peoples – it became clear that an online community would need to be at the centre of it.”
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What’s unique about working on your community?
There are several unique things about Kinora.
Kinora is a safe and moderated online community for those living with disability, their families and carers to get the most out of their NDIS situation.
The community is central to Kinora, but it is supplemented by an engaging editorial calendar and a service provider marketplace.
The editorial calendar gives us to opportunity to present different perspectives and options on how to use an NDIS Budget. The biggest ‘customer’ problem/challenge is that the NDIS is hard to understand and navigate and very few people end up using all the funds allocated to them.
We realised early on that part of being able to present NDIS options and even solutions, it needed to come from service providers. However, there has always been an imbalance of power between those living with disability and service providers – especially now with the NDIS and the sector being seen as a growth area. There is the sense of a money grab from service providers with low government regulations and checks on actual service quality and value for money.
We have allowed service providers to join the community, but we have clear and enforced guidelines on rules of engagement. We acknowledge that service providers are ultimately motivated by their livelihood, so we give them the outlet to advertise themselves through the marketplace but ask them to engage on the community as experts and add value by answering questions and offering solutions.
What’s one important lesson you have for community managers working with sensitive topics?
See above about Kinora!
What’s your favourite community right now and why?
I have noticed that Quora has updated their primary customer journey to start with a FB-like feed with FB-like advertising. I’m just observing now if it’s lost its power as a place to crowdsource answers and insights.
What do you consider the most exciting thing about the community management space today?
It’s old news, but I’m still very excited to see how community forums, instant messaging, and social media are co-existing as integrated experiences. No one is doing this especially well right now but it is evolving.
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Meet Chris Catania, Head of Community at Esri.
Chris currently lives in Southern California but spent most of his life in Chicago. He loves cooking and eating great food and never passes up the chance to eat a good Chicago-style deep dish pizza, Italian beef sandwich or hotdog. Those Chicago dishes are hard to find in Southern California but he has his ways of finding the delicious food that’s around hime.
He loves live music, trail running, playing baseball, climbing mountains, cooking and spending time with his wife and kids. He learns a lot about life, leadership and community building in all those passions and activities.
His community management journey began in 2005; he was a music journalist and decided to start his first community, a concert fan community called Live Fix Podcast, a podcast that explores the power and purpose of the live music experience. It’s a concert fan community that’s always his living laboratory for testing, learning and growing his enterprise community building work.
Since 2005 (so more than 18 years), he has helped leaders build community-driven organisations that leverage the power of community and collaboration to deepen trust, increase loyalty, build better products, drive engagement, save millions and grow top-line revenue. He also loves speaking, coaching and consulting and leading workshops to empower leaders to leverage community as a strategic asset in the workplace and a competitive advantage in the marketplace. You can find more about his work at chiscatania.co and follow him on LinkedIn.
At Swarm this year Chris will talk us through How To Transform Stakeholder Skeptics Into Community Champions
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What’s unique about working on your community?
In my work at Esri I help lead the efforts to manage and grow the Esri Community. Esri is the market leader in GIS (Geographic Information System) software and our community brings together more than 340,000 members worldwide, with more than 50,000 active monthly.
It is one of the largest gatherings of GIS professionals on the internet. Geospatial thinking has been around for decades but it has now begun to be used at scale across organizations.
GIS professionals are some of the most creative, smart and inspiring people in the world and it’s been a joy to create a community for them to find solutions, share product ideas and grow their career.
Their work has a massive impact globally and it’s an honor to help create a community that helps our customers make the world a better place with the power of GIS.
What’s your favourite community right now and why?
Oh, man! That’s a tough one to answer. I have so many to share! I’ll go with the communities that have recently helped me grow as a community building professional and give back to the community professional.
Last year, I started Community Pros of LA with Jenny Weigel and Nicole Niss. When I moved to LA from Chicago there wasn’t a community of community building professionals in LA and I wanted to connect with more of us in Southern California. So we started the community and it’s been awesome getting together to co-work, network and support each other in our work. We invite anyone local in LA or visiting to join us!
My other favorite communities are ones that have been helping me grow in my career and help give back to new community professionals. Dinner5 with Jake McKee, The Community Community hosted by Nikki Thibodeau, and Community Hacked. I’ve found value in all of those communities because they have been great places for senior level community pros to connect and get support for leading teams and engaging the C-suite.
The Community Roundtable is always on my go-to list for research and insights and I love how those communities also bring together new and experienced community pros so we can help each other. I’ve really enjoyed being a part of those communities because they are aligned with my mission to engage leadership and help grow and mentor other community professionals.
I believe an emerging trend and the future of community in general is in the power of private niche communities that help professionals and add value to organizations and the customer experience. I’ve experienced this trend personally and I see it happening more and more in my enterprise building work too.
What do you consider the most exciting thing about the community management space today?
What’s most exciting is also what’s most challenging. I get excited about opportunities to make things better and I see tons of opportunities to help more leaders outside the community industry see the value and potential of a community-driven company. We need to get out of the community management echo chamber, learn the language of other business areas and show the value of community on their terms in their language.
What is also exciting is the emergence and development of two trends: AI and geospatial thinking. There’s no doubt that AI is going to change the future of community. Because of this, community professionals need to study AI and get very familiar with the impact and potential of it within the community management space. Leaders are going to be asking about it more and more (if they aren’t already) and we need to be able to guide and consult on the best use case for AI and Community. Embrace AI and don’t fear it. Play with it and understand all the use cases so we can help leaders understand how to use community and AI together.
Second, geospatial thinking is very underrated in business overall, and this is especially true with community management and geospatial thinking. We value the who (people), the what (content/contributions), the when (time), but we don’t value the WHERE enough. There’s so much location-rich and community-centric shared value and insights are left on the table without looking and analyzing community building through a geospatial lens. We need to start thinking more geospatially when it comes to our enterprise community building strategies. I believe community-first companies think geospatially when leveraging the power and competitive advantage of community.
What do you consider the most challenging thing about the community management space today?
The most challenging aspect in community management is two-fold:
- Getting leadership engaged and bought in, and
- Helping community professionals build up their business acumen so they can clearly communicate the value of community to all the key leaders across the business in CX, sales, support, customer success and product development.
I’ve been in the community industry for a long time and I love helping leaders understand what a community is and how it can transform their company. I’m also passionate about working to bridge the gap between community skeptics/community-curious leaders and community builders. I’ve seen many leaders go from skeptic to champion and I want to help further that mission and create more community-driven companies and leaders. I hope five or ten years from now we can look back and say we have closed that gap.
What are you reading/watching/listening to right now that all community professionals should read/watch/listen to?
Great question! I love watching movies and documentaries, reading books and listening to podcasts. The thoughts and experience of others inspires me and fills me up. I learn a ton about leadership lessons, storytelling and community management insight you might not think of. I watch cooking shows and shows that dramatize cooking. I watch MMA (mixed martial arts), boxing and baseball games. I love the determination, community and strategy required to be elite in those sports and use what I learn to navigate business situations and develop strategy.
Cooking gives me great insight and allows me be process my thoughts and get inspiration for community. The connection between preparing a meal and building community is strong and I’m always looking for metaphors and pulling example from sports, cooking and podcasts to use in my talks, presentations and conversations with leaders.
Right now I’m hooked on and love watching The Bear, Beef, and Marvel’s “What If?”. Gary Vaynerchuk’s latest book “12 and a Half” is great and full of community parallels. I also learned a lot about having vision, developing as a leader and creating a culture of collaboration reading Chicago Cubs former manager Joe Madden’s book “The Book of Joe”.
I’ve really enjoyed Yurii Lazaruk’s Community Life Show Podcast because his interview style gives a beautifully personal touch and he opens up a welcomed view into the life of community builders. You can check out my episode here.
Why should community people come to Swarm?
Throughout my career I’ve always been a huge fan of Swarm Conference. I’ve loved the talks and people who share their work. I’m honored to be a part of the experience this year. I’ve used the insights from previous Swarms in my presentations and conversations with skeptical leaders. And those insights have helped me transform skeptics into champions. I would tell anybody to attend because you’re going to hear from some of the best practitioners in the business. You’ll get insights, ideas and best practices and make new connections that will make you a better, more strategic and more equipped community builder.
Tickets are on sale now – grab yours!
See all our speakers here!
Meet Chinwendu Nwazojie, Chapter lead from Open Source Community Africa.
Chinwendu (ch-when-do) has managed multiple students communities. The communities were focused on helping newbies advance their career in tech and also organising activities that will foster team bonding and resource sharing.
At Swarm this year Chinwendu will talk us through open source communities and how to make them secure.
Tickets are on sale now – grab yours!
What’s unique about working on your community?
The unique thing about working in my community is that in my community everybody feels safe to talk about their challenges while contributing to open source.
What’s one universal Community Management or moderation tip you have for our Swarm attendees?
As we drive for an active community let us also focus on the community’s health.
What’s your favourite community right now and why?
Community Collective. It is filled with people that I share similar goals with.
What do you consider the most exciting thing about the community management space today?
I find it exciting that despite our diversity we can still come together and achieve a common goal.
What do you consider the most challenging thing about the community management space today?
Achieving success in a community, it takes time and consistent effort.
What are you reading/watching/listening to right now that all community professionals should read/watch/listen to?
I am reading a book ‘The Business of Belonging: How to Make Community your Competitive Advantage by David Spinks.’
Why should community people come to Swarm?
They should come to swarm so we can share ideas and solutions to the problems we are facing as a community managers.
Tickets are on sale now – grab yours!
See all our speakers here!
Meet Noel Aruliah, Founder and CEO of CurryTraits and GrowingOC.
Noel’s story starts with his parents coming to Australia in the mid 90’s & shortly after he was born. He grew up Aussie, was immersed in the culture & had a thick Aussie accent yet had this south Asian façade & felt misplaced. He realised growing up there were many like him & in 2018 to celebrate that unique culture he started this online community called Subtle Curry Traits.
What started as a joke has now become one of the largest private Facebook groups on the planet with over 1.1 million members & an Instagram of 100K strong. He has worked with some of the biggest brands in the world including Meta & notable celebrities like Hassan Minhaj. This opened his eyes to the world of Online Community & he hasn’t looked back since!
But, more than owning a media brand, his experience includes starting an Online Community Consultancy helping brands thrive in the online space as they deserve to from my experience in the industry.
At Swarm this year Noel will talk us through Unity = Virality using Subtle Curry Traits as his case study.
Tickets are on sale now – grab yours!
What’s unique about working on your community?
South Asian’s typically don’t get along. There is a lot of tension between Indian, Pakistani & Bangladeshi people groups. Our community’s mission is to ‘Heal with Humor’ & through our community we’ve united these people groups together in new ways never seen before.
What’s your favourite community right now and why?
The Zorali Outdoor community group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/zorali
One of the best online communities created by a brand where customers are engaged and posting around the brand’s mission, which is getting people outdoors. The brand has created an incredible place where:
- Fans of the brand organically engage and share their adventures. This sparked conversations between customers around the brand;
- User generated content was posted saving Zorali the time & money on photoshoots. (The photo in the bottom left was taken by a customer and posted in the group);
- Real customer feedback was obtained through polls to help improve and implement current/future products and services from the brand.
What do you consider the most exciting thing about the community management space today?
The Internet. Community has been an age-old need for humans, however, being online with the internet changes the game & creates an infinite amount of ways we can meet whilst smashing the barriers of entry to meet others across the globe.
What do you consider the most challenging thing about the community management space today?
Lack of commitment. In today’s day and age people have infinite choices on which communities to join and be involved in. Often people are spread across a large quantity of communities and often miss out on investing deeply in a handful of spaces to see meaningful growth. In the 21st century we must rediscover the meaning of being planted and how pouring into a community in the good, bad and different times is what translates to growth.
What are you reading/watching/listening to right now that all community professionals should read/watch/listen to?
Learning from industry leaders like Jason T Smith. His weekly video updates of 2 minute convictions provide vital principles with how we run community. https://www.youtube.com/@jasontsmithAUS/videos
Watching my local council meetings. Your local council where you live is by default a community you are part of. Today most councils have their monthly meetings online & other meetings you can attend. Observe these meetings and ask yourself as someone with skin in the game, what do they do well, what can they do better & how can I apply this to the community I run?
Why should community people come to Swarm?
As humans we are built to do life together. Community is not a nice to have, it’s a necessity for humans to survive and the lack of this commodity is why we see incredible dissatisfaction in our world. Learn from the leaders of the industry and apply principles to transform your everyday.
Tickets are on sale now – grab yours!
See all our speakers here!
