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I'd say, while to an extent the community team is the earpiece of the company to the community - I'd say that a key task, in a broad sense would be still to rebuild the links between the community and the organisation that were broken.

(As an aside - I hope/suspect a good many of these things are already on the pipeline - so with that awkwardness out of the way, on with the post.)

Most practically?

In the past year, or maybe two, the community team went from the functional equivalent of being
"in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.", or perhaps in the equivalent of a Dank Basement or Little Room under the Stairs. Now there's an actual team I guess there's two things worth considering. We've a bunch of folks 'generally' familiar with community management in a professional, non SE sense. We also have a small core of CMs hired from the community, and at least one person who's both familiar with SE (as a moderator) and community management elsewhere.

On that vein - and aside from best practices from 'outside' the network - it feels like a crucial thing is to get to know, and well, be embedded with the broader communities. While I realise resources are limited - It's something that's been neglected over the past few years, and with the loss of a lot of institutional knowledge, kind of essential for understanding the culture, issues and 'rules' of communities first hand.

Slightly less practically?

Historically a lot of early regulars drifted away. Some of it was natural attrition. Some of it was interpersonal conflict. I'd say one of the more difficult things that needs to be done is balancing giving sites the attention they need with respecting their autonomy. It's not always gone perfectly, but I'd love to see folks from say Server Fault (which was my second site) return. It's probably a 'hard' if not impossible thing, but in addition to growth (new users), retention of current users, it would be nice to investigate (gently!) getting legacy users back.

I'd also say a slow and steady continuation of building up and maintaining a CM team. We're early days yet - and I don't know what sort of staffing levels y'all can get away with, but I'd love to see the team at worst stay at current levels, and at best keep growing slowly.

"I want a pony?"

A little selfish, but a little more geographic diversity in CM hires. Quite a few users and folks in the community are on the other side of the world ;)

While to an extent the community team is the earpiece of the company to the community a key task broadly would be still to rebuild the links between the community and the organisation that were broken.

(As an aside - I hope/suspect a good many of these things are already on the pipeline - so with that awkwardness out of the way, on with the post.)

Most practically?

In the past year, or maybe two, the community team went from the functional equivalent of being
"in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.", or perhaps in the equivalent of a Dank Basement or Little Room under the Stairs. Now there's an actual team I guess there's two things worth considering. We've a bunch of folks 'generally' familiar with community management in a professional, non SE sense. We also have a small core of CMs hired from the community, and at least one person who's both familiar with SE (as a moderator) and community management elsewhere.

On that vein - and aside from best practices from 'outside' the network - it feels like a crucial thing is to get to know, and well, be embedded with the broader communities. While I realise resources are limited - It's something that's been neglected over the past few years, and with the loss of a lot of institutional knowledge, kind of essential for understanding the culture, issues and 'rules' of communities first hand.

Fundamentally - as much as training folks to be Community Managers, its useful for folks outside special events, to train themselves to be community and pick up skills, contacts and the presence needed for effective communications across the network

Slightly less practically?

Historically a lot of early regulars drifted away. Some of it was natural attrition. Some of it was interpersonal conflict. I'd say one of the more difficult things that needs to be done is balancing giving sites the attention they need with respecting their autonomy. It's not always gone perfectly, but I'd love to see folks from say Server Fault (which was my second site) return. It's probably a 'hard' if not impossible thing, but in addition to growth (new users), retention of current users, it would be nice to investigate (gently!) getting legacy users back.

I'd also say a slow and steady continuation of building up and maintaining a CM team. We're early days yet - and I don't know what sort of staffing levels y'all can get away with, but I'd love to see the team at worst stay at current levels, and at best keep growing slowly.

"I want a pony?"

A little selfish, but a little more geographic diversity in CM hires. Quite a few users and folks in the community are on the other side of the world ;)

I'd say, while to an extent the community team is the earpiece of the company to the community - I'd say that a key task, in a broad sense would be still to rebuild the links between the community and the organisation that were broken.

(As an aside - I hope/suspect a good many of these things are already on the pipeline - so with that awkwardness out of the way, on with the post)

Most practically?

In the past year, or maybe two, the community team went from the functional equivalent of being
"in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”", or perhaps in the equivalent of a Dank Basement or Little Room under the Stairs. Now there's an actual team I guess there's two things worth considering. We've a bunch of folks 'generally' familiar with community management in a professional, non SE sense. We also have a small core of CMs hired from the community, and at least one person who's both familiar with SE (as a moderator) and community management elsewhere.

On that vein - and aside from best practices from 'outside' the network - it feels like a crucial thing is to get to know, and well, be embedded with the broader communities. While I realise resources are limited - Its something that's been neglected over the past few years, and with the loss of a lot of institutional knowledge, kind of essential for understanding the culture, issues and 'rules' of communities first hand.

Slightly less practically?

Historically a lot of early regulars drifted away. Some of it was natural attrition. Some of it was interpersonal conflict. I'd say one of the more difficult things that needs to be done is balancing giving sites the attention they need with respecting their autonomy. Its not always gone perfectly, but I'd love to see folks from say Server Fault (which was my second site) return. Its probably a 'hard' if not impossible thing, but in addition to growth (new users), retention of current users, it would be nice to investigate (gently!) getting legacy users back.

I'd also say a slow and steady continuation of building up and maintaining a CM team. We're early days yet - and I don't know what sort of staffing levels y'all can get away with, but I'd love to see the team at worst stay at current levels, and at best keep growing slowly

"I want a pony?"

A little selfish, but a little more geographic diversity in CM hires. Quite a few users and folks in the community are on the other side of the world ;)

I'd say, while to an extent the community team is the earpiece of the company to the community - I'd say that a key task, in a broad sense would be still to rebuild the links between the community and the organisation that were broken.

(As an aside - I hope/suspect a good many of these things are already on the pipeline - so with that awkwardness out of the way, on with the post.)

Most practically?

In the past year, or maybe two, the community team went from the functional equivalent of being
"in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.", or perhaps in the equivalent of a Dank Basement or Little Room under the Stairs. Now there's an actual team I guess there's two things worth considering. We've a bunch of folks 'generally' familiar with community management in a professional, non SE sense. We also have a small core of CMs hired from the community, and at least one person who's both familiar with SE (as a moderator) and community management elsewhere.

On that vein - and aside from best practices from 'outside' the network - it feels like a crucial thing is to get to know, and well, be embedded with the broader communities. While I realise resources are limited - It's something that's been neglected over the past few years, and with the loss of a lot of institutional knowledge, kind of essential for understanding the culture, issues and 'rules' of communities first hand.

Slightly less practically?

Historically a lot of early regulars drifted away. Some of it was natural attrition. Some of it was interpersonal conflict. I'd say one of the more difficult things that needs to be done is balancing giving sites the attention they need with respecting their autonomy. It's not always gone perfectly, but I'd love to see folks from say Server Fault (which was my second site) return. It's probably a 'hard' if not impossible thing, but in addition to growth (new users), retention of current users, it would be nice to investigate (gently!) getting legacy users back.

I'd also say a slow and steady continuation of building up and maintaining a CM team. We're early days yet - and I don't know what sort of staffing levels y'all can get away with, but I'd love to see the team at worst stay at current levels, and at best keep growing slowly.

"I want a pony?"

A little selfish, but a little more geographic diversity in CM hires. Quite a few users and folks in the community are on the other side of the world ;)

I'd say, while to an extent the community team is the earpiece of the company to the community - I'd say that a key task, in a broad sense would be still to rebuild the links between the community and the organisation that were broken.

(As an aside - I hope/suspect a good many of these things are already on the pipeline - so with that awkwardness out of the way, on with the post)

Most practically?

In the past year, or maybe two, the community team went from the functional equivalent of being
"in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”", or perhaps in the equivalent of a Dank Basement or Little Room under the Stairs. Now there's an actual team I guess there's two things worth considering. We've a bunch of folks 'generally' familiar with community management in a professional, non SE sense. We also have a small core of CMs hired from the community, and at least one person who's both familiar with SE (as a moderator) and community management elsewhere.

On that vein - and aside from best practices from 'outside' the network - it feels like a crucial thing is to get to know, and well, be embedded with the broader communities. While I realise resources are limited - Its something that's been neglected over the past few years, and with the loss of a lot of institutional knowledge, kind of essential for understanding the culture, issues and 'rules' of communities first hand.

Slightly less practically?

Historically a lot of early regulars drifted away. Some of it was natural attrition. Some of it was interpersonal conflict. (tbc)

I'd say, while to an extent the community team is the earpiece of the company to the community - I'd say that a key task, in a broad sense would be still to rebuild the links between the community and the organisation that were broken.

(As an aside - I hope/suspect a good many of these things are already on the pipeline - so with that awkwardness out of the way, on with the post)

Most practically?

In the past year, or maybe two, the community team went from the functional equivalent of being
"in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”", or perhaps in the equivalent of a Dank Basement or Little Room under the Stairs. Now there's an actual team I guess there's two things worth considering. We've a bunch of folks 'generally' familiar with community management in a professional, non SE sense. We also have a small core of CMs hired from the community, and at least one person who's both familiar with SE (as a moderator) and community management elsewhere.

On that vein - and aside from best practices from 'outside' the network - it feels like a crucial thing is to get to know, and well, be embedded with the broader communities. While I realise resources are limited - Its something that's been neglected over the past few years, and with the loss of a lot of institutional knowledge, kind of essential for understanding the culture, issues and 'rules' of communities first hand.

Slightly less practically?

Historically a lot of early regulars drifted away. Some of it was natural attrition. Some of it was interpersonal conflict. I'd say one of the more difficult things that needs to be done is balancing giving sites the attention they need with respecting their autonomy. Its not always gone perfectly, but I'd love to see folks from say Server Fault (which was my second site) return. Its probably a 'hard' if not impossible thing, but in addition to growth (new users), retention of current users, it would be nice to investigate (gently!) getting legacy users back.

I'd also say a slow and steady continuation of building up and maintaining a CM team. We're early days yet - and I don't know what sort of staffing levels y'all can get away with, but I'd love to see the team at worst stay at current levels, and at best keep growing slowly

"I want a pony?"

A little selfish, but a little more geographic diversity in CM hires. Quite a few users and folks in the community are on the other side of the world ;)