• Promoting & Sustaining the Value of Community Across the Organization (Community Value Part 4)

    Note: this is the fourth and final post in a series about community value. If you missed “A Perspective on Community Value“, “Understanding the Community Opportunity“, or “Developing Community Strategy, Goals & Measurements“ I’d recommend starting there. In many organizations, community’s territory is often limited to an ill-defined middle ground between support and marketing functions. This…

  • Developing Community Strategy, Goals & Measurements (Community Value Part 3)

    Note: this is the third in a series of posts about community value. If you missed “A Perspective on Community Value“ or “Understanding the Community Opportunity“, I’d recommend starting there. Co-Author: Brian Pagels This post (part 3 of a 4 part series) builds on the concepts outlined in “A Perspective on Community Value“ and “Understanding the…

  • METAVERSE METAVERSE METAVERSE (plus a great cyberpunk reading list)

    We’ve been hearing a lot about the “Metaverse” in the last few months, and the conversation has reached somewhat of a fever pitch this week with Facebook announcing an upcoming rebrand to position the company as a “metaverse company”. The concept of a fully-immersive digital reality isn’t new. This has been a staple of speculative…

  • Understanding the Community Opportunity (Community Value Part 2)

    Note: this is the second in a series of posts about community value. If you missed “A Perspective on Community Value”, I’d recommend starting there. In the last decade, many companies have come to understand how valuable (and critical) their direct relationships with customers are. The most strategic organizations understand that these relationships are part…

  • Resources from “Adventures in Collaboration” Hybrid @ MURAL Session

    HELLO! This is a follow up post for those that participated in the Adventures in Collaboration session for MURAL’s Hybrid series. First off – thanks for attending! Secondly – the screen resolution shared through Zoom isn’t as good as having access to the actual material, so I’ve included screenshots and the MURALs below for both…

  • A Perspective on Community Value (Part 1 of a Series)

    This is the first of a four-part series on the topic of community value. The series is based in large part, on the output of a series of small-group working sessions and primary research that began in 2018, as well as learnings and observations from my career. A Personal Perspective I’ve worked with some form…

  • Exiting the Social Boom and the Entering the Era of Transformational Communities

    I feel very fortunate to have established a career developing communities (both on and offline) over the last 20+ years. During this time, I’ve seen a steady series of boom and bust cycles for “community” – large waves of investment and development followed by retreat and divestment. During the transition times between the cycles, one…

  • The Cohere Podcast – Season 2 Update

    The Cohere podcast is in its second season. In season 1 covered a range of important topics related to communities and networks, including creating connection during the COVID-19 pandemic, the impact of the next 3 billion people coming online and how to create a collaborative online future with AI. We’re well underway with Season 2,…

  • Community & Re-emergence

    It’s March (again). Congratulations on what is likely your pandemic lockdown anniversary month. Humanity’s re-emergence into whatever new normal awaits us has been on my mind for the last few weeks. Looking back on the last year, the closest analogy I can come up with is the concept of a singularity — the hypothetical point…

  • Visual highlights from SWARM 2020 – Australia’s largest community conference

    SWARM is one of my favorite community conferences. Lead organizer Venessa Paech does an amazing job of curating a timely and diverse set of topics and speakers year over year. COVID19 necessitated a shift to an online-only conference this year, which allowed Venessa and team to design a program that spanned 9 days and 30+…