Category: Community Management

  • The Future of Online Communities – Insights from the Online Community Unconference 2025

    The Future of Online Communities – Insights from the Online Community Unconference 2025

    The Online Community Unconference 2025 made one thing clear: the need for meaningful connection has never been greater, but the challenges of fostering it have never been more complex. This post explores the key insights from the event—where community leadership is evolving, where it’s stuck, and what we must do next.

  • Online Community Unconference 2025

    Online Community Unconference 2025

    The Online Community Unconference (OCU) is returning to San Francisco on January 8th. Join me, Carrie Melissa Jones, and Susan Tenby for a full day of in-person collaboration with 100 experienced and engaged community leaders. At the Online Community Unconference you will: All while having a great time experiencing the in-person community of community leaders.…

  • A Human-Centered Approach to Digital Leadership with Lauren Vargas, PhD

    A Human-Centered Approach to Digital Leadership with Lauren Vargas, PhD

    Too often the deployment of digital strategies and tools begins humans conforming to technology limitations instead of technology being deployed intentionally in the service of human needs and opportunities – a human-centered approach. Dr. Lauren Vargas joins me on the Cohere podcast to discuss bringing humans back into the center of the “digital transformation” conversation…

  • Expert Interviews From the Customer Community 1.0 Era (’07-’09)

    It’s clear that the Corvid-19 Pandemic will drive the global economy into a recession. Periods of economic turbulence tend to have a catalytic effect on the role of online communities and related social and network-based experiences. In particular, it seems public participation increases, followed by corporate investment. We saw this play out with the investment…

  • Customer Communities Are Critical For Business Transformation

    The last few years have seen big brands make extraordinary investments in developing massive “digital transformation” and social media programs. On one hand, these programs have yielded moments of customer connection, advocacy and insight. Unfortunately, for the majority of programs reliant on mass social platforms like Facebook and Twitter, organic reach has dropped effectively to 0 and companies are now forced to…

  • Aligning Your Enterprise Community Strategy With Your Customer’s Career Journey

    Aligning Your Enterprise Community Strategy With Your Customer’s Career Journey

    Use these three contexts to help create a bigger and better future for your company’s community.

  • AI Use Cases For Communities & Networks

    AI Use Cases For Communities & Networks

    For business leaders shaping online community strategy, AI holds promise to help solve two of the biggest challenges with online communities: 1) Quantifying the value of community investment and delivering timely and actionable insight and 2) Managing large networks of relationships at scale.  

  • Building Modern Communities #SwarmConf

    I was honored to be asked to keynote the SWARM Community Managers Conference in Sydney this week, hosted by conference Co-Founders Alison Michalk and Venessa Paech. The conference featured a range of topics and an impressive group of expert practitioners sharing their views on Community building. My keynote focused on the need for a modern…

  • The Customer Community

    Image © Leigh Prather The last few years have seen big brands make extraordinary investments in developing massive “digital transformation” and social media programs. On one hand, these programs have yielded moments of customer connection, advocacy and insight. Unfortunately, for the majority of programs reliant on mass social platforms like facebook and twitter, organic reach has dropped effectively to 0 and companies…

  • How AI Can Help Solve The Biggest Problem With Crowdsourcing

    The concept of engaging “the Crowd” through digital platforms has been around for some time. Howard Rheingold coined the term “Smart Mob” in 2002 to describe the phenomenon of people acting in concert “because they carry devices that possess both communication and computing capabilities”. The concept was carried forward in 2005 by the editors of…