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Nuke Your Community, And Make It Flourish

Job
June 07, 2015

Nuke Your Community, And Make It Flourish

Sometimes building a community proves to be a lot harder than you hoped. Even when you’re following the golden rules of community building, sometimes it just doesn’t work.

In his talk, I illustrate how community building does not merely depend on using the right tactics, but also on understanding your community’s culture and preferences and being ready to adjust your plans to serve it. This might imply letting go of approaches you are very attached to in order to find better solutions for building the best community.

Once you know the general principles:
1) Validate existing platforms
2) Improve good methods
3) Explore new pathways

4) ... and nuke what doesn't work

At WooThemes we had a bit of tunnel vision in which we saw the "community forum" and our "community" as synonyms. When we realized a forum was only a tool and that we could get rid of if, because our community was no longer there. Doing this opened resources and left a better impression with our users. We now focus on building community through our better website, Facebook, Reddit, GitHub, WordPress.org, meetups, WooConf, and so on.

If you think that your community equals a tool you use, then you're getting too emotionally attached and you should learn to take distance in case it works no longer and you have to nuke it.

Job

June 07, 2015
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Transcript

  1. Nuke Your Community
    And Make It Flourish

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  3. Stellenbosch

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  4. Stellenbosch

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  5. Stellenbosch
    Cape Town

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  6. Problem:
    Supporting OSS
    600,000+ active users
    55 team members
    Solution:
    Building Community

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  7. Sacha Greif, 

    Brick by Brick
    www.communitybuildingguide.com

    www.sachagreif.com | @SachaGreif

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  8. Community Building
    Audience Seeding
    Engagement Promotion
    Moderation Value
    Community
    Forum

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  9. Stellenbosch
    Cape Town

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  10. Stellenbosch
    Cape Town

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  11. Results at First

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  12. Results Recently

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  13. Community
    Forum

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  14. http://www.digibuzzme.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/
    reddit2.jpg
    Community
    Forum

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  15. Validating Existing Platforms

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  16. Validating Existing Platforms

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  17. Improving Good Methods

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  18. Improving Good Methods

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  19. Improving Good Methods

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  20. Exploring New Pathways

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  21. Exploring New Pathways

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  22. Community
    Forum

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  23. Building Community
    • Validate existing platforms
    • Improve good methods
    • Explore new pathways
    • … and nuke what doesn’t work

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  24. That’s All Folks!
    @jobtex

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