GitHub GitHub Presents • Passion Projects LIVE (Full Length Talks), 11 Mar 2014

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From YouTube: Passion Projects (Live) 11: Laura Gluhanich (Building Online Communities)

Description

The 11th episode of the Passion Projects Live series, featuring Laura Gluhanich. Laura has designed, built and shipped community, support and content strategies at companies like about.me and Ning. She recently co-founded SignalCamp, where she manages strategic marketing and community programs for tech startups of all ages and sizes. Her expertise ranges from product launches to copywriting and content calendars to scaling a team supporting 30 million users. You can find Laura on Twitter.

SignalCamp (http://signalcamp.com)
Laura on Twitter (https://twitter.com/LauraGlu)

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A

Passion projects- laura gluhanich, hey guys!, ♪, (jazzy, piano), ♪ okay!. Thank you so much for joining us for the eleventh edition of passion projects with laura gluhanich. right?.

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Did I do it? okay. cool.

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Awesome., I have a really hard time pronouncing people's names.

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turns out. The internet doesn't tell you how to do that,, so...

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Thank you guys so much!, I'm julie., I'm a designer here at github,.

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But I'm also the creator-- thank you! thanks!.

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(Cheers and applause from audience).

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This talk series is about all of you in this room,.

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It's not about me.. I am the creator and host of passion, projects,.

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And I'm super psyched to have you all here., thanks for coming! and without further ado, laura!, (cheers and applause).

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Hello! hi. thank you!.

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(Laughs), that's it! no...

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Thank you for coming,, thanks to github, for hosting this amazing series,.

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And to julianne for shepherding it to where it is today.

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Thank you to bobi cespedes,, who will be performing later.

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Please stick around and get another drink. we're going to have a dance, party., woo!, yeah! side bar,, if you haven't yet,, definitely head to youtube after this.

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And check out some of the other speakers and some of the other talks. they're amazing. there's a great amount of variety.

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And I've seen them all, at least once.

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So hi, I am laura glu, laura gluhanich as mentioned.

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A lot of you probably didn't know. My last name is gluhanich before today,.

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Because you see me on the internet as lauraglu.

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So, I had a few goals: tonight. first of all,, how many people.

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Work online with users?.

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Most people in this room, probably. and some people online.

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Hopefully, what I share today will appeal and apply.

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To something that you do with your users: online.

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basically,, I'm just going to talk a little bit about how I got to where I am today in the community. Online,.

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And some lessons learned along the way.

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So, 1986 is when I found out that our family got our first computer.

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I didn't remember because I was 6 years old,, but I definitely was using it to play around with the file system.

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I remember playing games like qix and montezuma's revenge,.

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If anyone... was playing..., yeah! commodore 64.

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writing terrible journal entries. As I got older than six, probably.

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But we first got online in 1994.. Thank you. Aol! yeah!.

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I was lglu at aol,, I don't know if we chatted ever... maybe?.

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Which I'm still pretty proud, of, that short moniker.

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That was really my first exposure to community online,.

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And again, was in the chat rooms with a lot with my friends.

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And was also involved with a lot of different music communities. Online,.

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So if you were in the 90's a fan of the dave, matthews band,.

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Yeah. right?, if you're a true fan, you called him dave. that was me.

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The first lessons I learned were really from these communities: online.

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One thing that I wanted to talk about: first, yeah!.

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And actually,, a few of us have talked about this recently,.

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And it's interesting because anonymity is seen as something sort of new and hot,.

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But it's been around like forever online., I feel like in the 90's. Nobody really knew who you were online,.

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And that new yorker cartoon, where it's "no one knows you're a dog", is actually from 1993,, which is pretty crazy.

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But,, what you did,, you would ask everyone: what their age,, sex and location was.

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For those of you who might not be old enough to remember.

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The sort of interesting thing was,, you could say whatever you wanted in response to that., so you could be whomever you wanted on the other side.

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Aol always knew who you were,, but the person on the other side of that conversation, didn't.

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And I think that was a really interesting and cool feature,.

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Because I know I was able to express different parts of my personality,.

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Different facets of my personality, and like how I might want.

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To participate online doing that, and it was pretty safe.

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Like it wasn't connected to me as a real-life person,,.

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So that sort of got away from us in the past few years.

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Everything became interconnected and you needed to be the same person everywhere,.

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Almost to a detriment,, so people may be afraid to share things,.

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Or they may not participate in places where they didn't feel safe.

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I think there's some negativity to anonymity online..

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I think it's really important that there are safety checks someplace, and that potentially, companies actually have insight into who's. Doing what,.

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But I think considering anonymity and learning about it early on.

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Is something important that I've kind of taken along the way.

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Something associated with anonymity is structure.

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Next show of hands, how many people here are belle and sebastian fans?.

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Yeah!, that's not surprising. yep. okay.

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We're a quiet, bunch. but we're very... delicate.

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So I don't know if any of you were on the sinister mailing list,.

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Which was the fan mailing list for belle and sebastian based in scotland.

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Run by a woman who went by honey., she was a list mum.

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The thing that was really interesting about this mailing list is that there was a fairly, well, it was simple.

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But it was a time consuming on-boarding process..

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So when you first joined, you were in the nursery.

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So,, when you were in the nursery, it was read: only.

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you couldn't actually participate in the community..

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You got to see the guidelines,. You got to see the personalities that were engaging, and you got to see what the norms were.

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After any number of weeks,, whenever honey, determined,.

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You could then enter the community and fully participate as a member.

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This is something that has stood out to me from those early days.

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As a great tool to use for community.

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And I think, there's other ways that this is done.

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You can gate your community with-- by money,.

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Making people pay to participate, and that's certainly keeps up quality. it makes people opt into it..

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You can also do gating where people need to accomplish tasks to access certain parts of your community, or access certain features., but I think, as you're approaching how your user base engages each other, and with you,.

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It's good to be thoughtful about how their first few days, are,.

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And how you can introduce them to the community, and introduce the community to them.

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I wasn't just online in the 90's.. I also worked full time.. I worked while I was in school,.

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And after school in restaurants,, so I spent just over 10 years in every level of restaurant management..

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Dishwashing, hostessing.

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Managing an online community is pretty much a straight corollary to managing a restaurant, oddly enough.

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What I saw as my job being a restaurant manager.

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Is making sure everyone was happy.

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and that's definitely what I do today as well.

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sort of like this flip side of that,, my real job was getting yelled at.

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It was getting yelled at by customers,, it was getting yelled at by the back of the house,. It was getting yelled at by suppliers and by my bosses.

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That also translates to online community,.

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But the important thing was basically that I had to remove myself as an individual from most situations that came up, and really focus on who I was dealing with,.

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And how to make them happy, and how to resolve whatever issues might have come up. and the thing with restaurants,. You have to resolve those things immediately and they're pretty, they can get pretty heated.

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like people can get pretty fired up about the food they're eating..

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It taught me early sort of how to defuse situations,.

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How to fix them, and also importantly, how to fix it in a way that keeps your customer coming back.

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Because it's a lot more expensive to get a restaurant customer.

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Than it is to get a customer online, or a user.

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So it was really important to mitigate as much as possible,.

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And to defuse things by keeping people happy.

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The best way to defuse situations was to build relationships with everyone.

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Really, to best solve problems both in real world and online.

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Is to build relationships with everyone, involved,.

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Back of house, front of house, neighbors, community members., you never know who you may need to borrow food from..

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You never know which partner may be able to help you out with whatever you're trying to achieve with your user base.

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Yes. all right., so that was offline..

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I got out of restaurants and moved to the bay area in 2006,.

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And my first job online was at a company called ning.

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Anyone here familiar with ning?

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well, yeah., you are now.

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Ning was an amazing platform.. It's still around today.. It started early in 2005.

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But when I was there in 2007,, its goal was to be a platform.

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Where anyone could create a social network around anything,, which sounds a bit terrifying, but is actually a really great way.

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For people to express themselves and participate in different types.

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Of organizations and different communities online.

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So this was pretty much the best way to get a look at all shapes and sizes of community from every perspective.

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Our team was responsible for keeping as many users happy as possible,.

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Which? Is, as we all know, challenging.,.

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The most interesting sort of thing that I took from this harbor.

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Was a/b testing community, and I don't think that really there's too many places where this isn't an opportunity that you get,.

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And I don't even mean our user base community., I mean the ning community that we managed as community managers.

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So if you owned a network on ning, or if you created one,, then you could participate in the network.. The ning network creators' community on ning.

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That was basically, originally created as a conduit for these network creators to us at the company..

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When we started it,, we were so excited,.

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And we were very responsive, and we replied to every post, very quickly,.

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And we didn't set up guidelines, and we posted all the time,.

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And we were available 24/7.

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and it turns out that that was not scalable.

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After a certain amount of activity,, the shift in the community.

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Actually turned pretty negative because they didn't see us,, because we could not be everywhere all the time,.

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They kind of turned against us.

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There were also just some other problems. because of the lack of guidelines,. There wasn't really any sort of structure,.

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How people were supposed to act,? So there was a lot of self-promotion.

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There was a lot of spam.

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it just sort of got to the point where we couldn't manage it in a good way anymore,. So we made the decision to shut it. Down.

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And that was really hard,, because the company.

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Is based on community,, and it was really hard for our team at that time, to sort of figure that out and figure out how to communicate. It.

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In the long run, it was the right idea,, but at the time most of us were not happy about it.

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However, less than a year later,, we decided that this was still.

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A really important channel,, so we decided to re-create the community from scratch, from zero,.

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And that became my job..

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That was an amazing experience, because what I decided to do.

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Was to co-create the community with the network creators.

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So we renamed it creators.ning.com, big change.,.

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But every step of the way we had involvement from our users.

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We drafted up guidelines and got their feedback..

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We picked which features we were going to have and how much they would be available with their feedback.

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We set up guidelines around what your profile could look. Like,.

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So you had to use a real name.. It didn't necessarily have to be your name on your birth certificate,, but you couldn't use your network name as your name..

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You couldn't use it as self-promotion, basically.

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We also worked with them, so all of the initial content.

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Was seeded from users and not--? We had one post with the guidelines,, but everything else came from our initial bunch of creators.

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The way we picked that initial group was from our previous group,.

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But it was basically everyone that we trusted as great citizens.

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Of our previous network., that didn't mean that they were our biggest promoters:.

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That meant that they treated the other network creators really well.

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They were very helpful., they were resources., they were generally positive about the platform..

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They were obviously passionate about it,.

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But they did criticize, and when they did, it was constructive.

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It was for the greater good.

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So all of those individuals, there were probably eight or ten of them total in the first group,.

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They were right by our side when we launched this next community.

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We also decided to sort of roll it out slowly.

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To make sure that these initial stages were really setting.

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The seed and the stage of how we wanted it to grow,.

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And how we wanted people to participate., so we invited those ten people and they all brought in content,.

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And then we invited another, I think one or two hundred,.

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With the idea of "here is what this is looking like",.

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"Here is the content that we're looking for", and they all started posting content as well.

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Then we started opening it up bit by bit, and within three months we had 30,000 users,, which was really good,, because they were all high quality,.

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They were all participating and at least to a certain extent,.

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They had to get through that profile creation of required information that, you know, was meaningful.

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That's something that basically, I strongly believe..

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I know that a lot of other people and the community space believe as well.

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But it's something that fiona and I have talked to our clients about a lot.

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Where you-- (laughs) there's a pom pom.

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You have to get feedback from your users early and often,.

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And you have to use them to help, determine.

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What kind of community you want to grow.

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Okay, I was going to do the bongos in between each side,.

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But it was too much. (laughter).

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So after ning, I moved on to about.me. yeah luke!.

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And about.me was a very different community experience.

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I was the only person., I was the community manager team., it was me.. I was also the support team, and the marketing team,.

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And the communication team,, which is pretty typical for startups.

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So I know a lot of you guys out here are familiar with that.

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A big lesson that I took from about.me was, as your community changes,, you have to change as well.

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You have to evolve your product,. You have to evolve your communication strategy,.

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And that sounds like high-falutin',, but it's really just. How do you talk about your product,?

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Where do you talk about it,? How do you explain it,?

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How do you explain the value,? How do you explain the features?.

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And specifically for about.me,, it started out as a very targeted launch.

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Towards a lot of people in the room,, like influencers,, technically savvy people, design, savvy people, people who are early adopters.

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The people that joined the platform initially got it.

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They got their product,, they understood it., they created beautiful pages, and you know,.

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There was this great beautiful user base!, as the user base grew and spread,.

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It became clear that that initial experience.

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Wasn't for everyone.

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the quality sort of dropped and people weren't really sure of what they were doing.

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There was a lot of confusion..

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This became pretty clear to the entire team,.

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All fifteen of us,, that's the entire company.

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So, as a team,, we determined what can be done.

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To address this new group of users who want to get value from this.

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We changed the on-boarding process,, we changed the language.

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We changed how we were talking to people, how much email we were sending.. We actually increased it., because people like email,, who don't get it all the time.

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Like we do. (laughs), so the idea of being very holistic in your approach.

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And making sure that sort of an entire product and the entire team is on board with changes, is something that I took away from that, and I think it's something that is good to check in on on your products,.

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And on your user base. is that demographic changing?.

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Where is it changing to?? How should your product change?.

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And obviously, you're not changing the core value,.

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But how are you communicating that?, how are you showing it to them?.

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Tada! signal camp.

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(cheering from audience).

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So,, I don't even know how long it's been.

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I feel like it's been too short.

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signal camp. Is the next stop in my community management, journey,.

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And as you may have learned,, my co-founder is up here.

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With the pom-pom. fiona,, which is awesome.

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Here are a few of our clients in the past,, a few who are present.

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and we basically have taken both of our experiences.

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From community, and especially that holistic approach, and apply it to products and to companies., so what we're really passionate about,, I call it user engagement,, because it's every time your users interact with your product, or your brand, or your company,.

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We care about that. to a little bit of an obsessive detail.

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We want to make sure that your error messages match your voice.

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We want to make sure that the way your team members are talking about your company.

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Is sort of consistent.

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Because your community is everywhere, and they should have a similar experience.

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Or a similar take on your company outside of the product.

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That you're actually providing them..

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I think it's really important it's something that I especially think is important, early on, and actually very manageable. Early on.

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My like,, we have a few points,, including error, messages,.

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But my thing is no no-reply email, addresses,.

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And no text only emails. those are like the little things.

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But we basically just look at every piece of content and everything that you're doing, and making sure that you're communicating it with your user base well.

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and the way that we do, that is by talking to your users and getting their feedback, and co-creating, again,. What that voice is going to look like.

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What resonates with them., what makes sense.

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So the other thing that we do at signal camp.

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That is important and good is that we focus on a work-life, balance.

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There's been a lot written about either following your passion.

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Or work-life balance,, and how work-life balance can benefit you,, but I think work-life balance actually benefits your company and your product and your team.

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For community managers or anyone who's dealing with the user base.

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It's good to participate in communities elsewhere,, so the communities I participate in are the online music fan. Communities.

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I moved on from dave, matthews. sorry dave.

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Really? okay. all right.

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The climbing community,, the library volunteer, community,.

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The lady-preneur community. yeah!.

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Both the greater community and the group set I meet with on the regular.

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I pull learnings-- learnings?, that's not a word...

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I pull what I learn (laughing) from all of those places and take it back with me.

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To the companies that I work with and to the products that I work on, and I think that the important thing about work-life balance is doing that.. You can't just use your product..

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You can't just participate in your own community,, because you're just getting that one perspective, and you need to bring in the perspective as a community member,, as maybe a community leader who is not organizing,.

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As a community member, just joining, or leaving,.

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And how is that process for you,, and how can you translate that.

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To the work that you're doing with your user base.

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So, in summary: consider your on-boarding.. How are you bringing people into your community?, be nice and build relationships with everyone.

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Co-Create, your community. make sure that your users are involved.

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Evolve: your community with your user base, and participate elsewhere to bring it back.

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A

B

(Whispers), what do I do? Now? (audience laughs) (whispering)? Was I really-- oh.. Do we do q&a now?? That was really quick, right?.

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No, that wasn't very quick. okay.

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I might have to just talk into your microphone., get real close up, here. okay,, so that was awesome!. Can we get another round of applause, for--, (cheering and applause) more pom-poms!? I love those pom-poms. ♪ (jazzy music) ♪.

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So I hope you all brought lots of questions.

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I get to ask mine first.

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I like to feel the advantage of doing all the work I do for this,.

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I just get to ask my own questions.

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Testing... testing... testing one two three... testing...

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Everyone's having way too much fun. stop having fun. this isn't about fun, you guys.

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I like to see the drinking.

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Or not drinking, if you're not into it,, that's cool. no,! I have a really strong mocktail game,.

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And I think you all should too.

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not a euphemism. thank you.

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I also like it. okay, I'll, stop boring you.. Let's get to it.

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Okay. I'll talk, more., drink more.

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So, I've evolved, my process., have you ever been to a passion projects show before?, I usually have index cards, and there has not been a single time when I haven't gotten up and just dropped. The cards everywhere, so...

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I'm learning., so you all know.

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I'd like to refer to you as a professional human., I think you're really good at being personable, and like a really good human, and every time that I've met someone,.

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First of all,, everyone loves laura.. I don't think if-- like if you've ever met someone that has worked with laura,.

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They're like, "she's just the best human".

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and I'm like, "okay...". So one of the things that I've asked laura how to do, thanks mom and dad! they're watching, right?.

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So I,, like sidebar,, my mom, sent me an email, today,.

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Which is great, and said: like, "break, a leg!

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you're speaking tonight, right?" and I replied, "yeah,, here's the link., you can stream it!" and she wrote back, "do. I have to stream it while you're speaking?" and I was like, "yeah!".

B

So hopefully they are, and I love you!.

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And if not, it'll be on youtube. yeah., it will be. all of these.

A

Are on youtube, by the way.

A

so,, you talked a little bit about your service background.

A

And having to deal with people., I mean, is that, where you get your ability to be a great communicator.

A

And deal with high pressure situations like community people end up having to deal with?.

B

Yeah. yeah. kind of as I touched on, once you dealt with people.

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In real life yelling at you, because.

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"They didn't know: there's olive oil in their pasta",.

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It correlates pretty well to someone getting mad.

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At your free service for something.

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That's really flippant,, because the other thing is just when you're dealing with people face to face.

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You learn a lot more about what they're bringing to the table and what they are bringing just to that day.

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When I was talking about the front of the house and the back of the house,, it's like,, there are people that might have just had a bad day,.

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Or they have like real shit going on that you need to sort of be aware. Of.

B

It puts it in perspective in a lot of ways.

A

Totally. I'd like to say that behind every troll is pain.

A

Let's hope so. lot of pain and hurt., so I feel for you, all.

A

So you just started your own company.

A

Why did you decide after about.me to just start your own thing?.

B

This is interesting. actually,. It was fiona's idea to start this company.

B

Shout out to fiona. she's, also wonderful.

B

fiona, pom-pom time. grab you time.

B

She approached me about it and I was flattered,.

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First of all, that she would want or consider me to start a company with her, and also she hit me at just the right. Time.

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It was fall of 2011,.

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And I had just finished up three or four weeks straight.

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Of coffees with entrepreneurs, and coffees with founders,.

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And coffees with community people, and we're there like,.

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"Hey,, let me pick your brain", and I'm totally into that,.

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I still do that all the time,, but I was just kind of getting.

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A little sad,- or I felt, like I'm sitting here talking to you for an hour,.

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And I don't really know if anything's changing., like I don't know, if I'm having an impact on how you're building your company or how you're building your community., I just feel like I'm talking at you..

B

So when she approached me it just was kind of like, yeah!.

B

Let's actually make a difference., probably all these companies that want to have great communities and don't know how to do it,. Let's work with them.

A

Which is almost all of them.

B

Well,, not that everyone is bad at community,.

A

I think we've seen this really strange, awesome transition.

A

Actually, back into the people, economy.

D

A

What's been your experience, coming from ning,.

A

That was like the beginning of that?

A

sort of like making platforms for people?.

A

How do you think that's changed in the last couple of years?.

B

That's a good question..

B

I do think there's just a lot more awareness around other people,.

B

Other team members, other experts in various fields.

B

Developers and designers and product people,, I think, there's just a lot more awareness around the importance of engaging with your users and bringing sort of community skills higher up in an organization.

B

And making it part of your core., I think that's probably the biggest difference. people are important,. It turns out.

A

Yeah! so,, you again talked about your experience at ning,.

A

And like ning in my mind,, especially during the startup phase,.

A

Is most famous for their like--? I know people who were laid off from ning.

A

If you don't know someone, that's been laid off by ning, (laughter), you probably,, I don't know., you live under a rock.. You all know me now!

A

the whole point of that question, we're done,. We can move on.

A

What was it like having to shut down that community,.

A

And like be taken away from something that you really loved, doing,.

A

And a team that I assume you really loved being a part of?.

B

Right. there was a big round of layoffs at ning that actually happened.

B

It was after that sort of the community aspect.

B

The stuff that happened at ning was crazy.

B

not in a bad way,, but I saw so many different changes.

B

When I joined,, I don't know, if I'm going to get in trouble for saying this,.

B

I don't know who would get me in trouble,, but (laughter).

B

Here, goes, actually...

B

I joined in 2007 and I think we were just breaking the million user point.

B

I think it was a million users, and at that point in time, ning was,.

B

We called it content neutral,, which was, you could have adult content on ning..

B

So there were lots of very interesting networks that were completely allowed, that had very adult content.

B

That was something that everyone on our team had to deal. With.

B

provide support, for, and tips, and, like fix their videos.

B

So that was really interesting., probably the first big change. There was then deciding to allow, basically,, like pg content, only.

B

Or maybe pg-13, I guess. yeah.

B

Kids, these days..., I know.- I don't even know!.

B

That was actually a big change,, because everyone who joined--.

B

I mean, this was sort of like a part of the interview process., you had to make sure that they were comfortable with adult content and usually, to be comfortable with adult content.

B

You actually have to feel pretty strongly about freedom of speech and freedom of expression,, so it was actually something that was core to the group of people.

B

And to the users that we had to change., so that was the first big change that they went through and that was really hard, and I think that actually made some of the other changes a little easier..

B

Just because we had been through it.. We had been through a big announcement to users.

B

And it's interesting, the whole co-create thing..

B

I always am just like, "have. Your canaries. have your beta testers.".

B

"Have, your superusers, that you couldn't reach out to." and you can say, like "hey!, here's an nda., here's! What we're thinking of doing.".

B

Like, "what: do you think of this?" and like,? They might hate it., but then you understand how they hate it and why they hate it,.

B

So you can like craft a response at the very least,.

B

And potentially figure out how you're going to communicate it.

B

That really sort of addresses those concerns.

A

Yeah. and people are just afraid of change, right?.

A

I feel I've gotten a lot of, as a designer, feedback. Like,.

A

"I hate, this", or like "this sucks!, put it back the way it was".

E

Really, what they're saying is that they're afraid that it has changed.

A

So weeks years later, they're still using it more than ever..

A

So it's about designing communication around that and to support that and so on..

A

How do you pick yourself-- like what was your next move after ning?.

A

What was the first thing you did? (laughing).

B

Oh, man., I went into the [churt] party and had a good party.

B

So, for what it's worth,, the ning layoffs., it was really sad because about half the company left and we were all very close., yes! very close!.

B

So I had been there for a couple of years.. There had been a lot of changes.

B

Actually, I had already started sort of talking to other companies,.

B

And when it did happen,, it was a lot of layoffs where people were--.

B

Well, first of all, ning was very helpful..

B

They gave us severance and they gave us resources..

B

They said, "we have recruiters that will help place. You.

B

We have recruiters that will help you with your resume",, so they did it. The right, way.

B

Could we talk about this?? I got fired like three times that year from three other jobs.

B

No,, let's talk about this.

B

Another lesson: is,: if you don't bond with your community,, it's probably not the right. Fit.

B

ning was fired. Once,.

B

And then there was a contract that didn't turn into a full time: job somewhere, else,.

B

And then somewhere else, I worked at it for a couple of months.

B

And I was just kind of brought on too early.: it was a b2b company and they didn't quite have--.

B

B2B community is very different than b2c..

B

It usually happens a little bit later, because, if you're using something professionally.

B

You're, usually not like, "oh,. I just want to hang out and talk about this".

B

You need to have a compelling reason to participate.

B

In kind of like a community around it.

A

And you have to do the checklist thing., that's how enterprise projects usually are.. They want to see if you mean this,, no amount of like--.

A

Yeah. and then to go beyond that, it's like you're throwing a conference.

B

Or, there are things you can do,, but it usually requires a bigger user. Base.

A

What advice would you give laura who just moved here?.

A

If you could speak to the laura who just moved here...

B

Oh, yeah., I got this. (laughter) as mentioned,. I moved here in 2006.

B

I didn't get into tech until 2007,, so I would have said,.

B

"Skip that sales job that you sucked at".

B

Skip the recruiting job that you got fired, from.

B

And get into tech sooner, and do what you're good at.

A

That's pretty solid feedback.. I think you've thought about this..

A

It's awesome. there's a couple of laura's here.. You could probably just g give that advice to them. she's. Already in tech. I know, yeah. she's good.

A

that one's doing all right.

A

I stole this question from someone here that might know you pretty well,.

A

But I was asked to hear the story of when you and lucille met.

B

Lucille is my dog. she's amazing..

B

I should have brought a picture!.

B

Like half of my friends have pictures of her, probably.

B

I just decided one day that I really wanted to have a dog,.

B

And I was living with someone at the time who wasn't quite as ready,.

B

But I was like, "screw this,. I want a dog".

B

I started looking online and I wanted a schnauzer.

B

Because I had dog, a schnauzer named rocky.

B

Shout out to rocky! no...

B

(laughs), he was amazing.. I was like, "I want one of those"..

B

My white fluffy mutt lucille came up in a schnauzer search.

B

For this organization called dps,, doggy protective services.

B

Dps.Org or something., but they're amazing. they're. This amazing rescue that takes in dogs.

B

And gets them surgeries if they need it--.

A

Sounds like you really like taking care of things.

A

like you like taking care of people, animals.

A

Yeah., mostly people.

B

B

Is that it?? That's your story of how you met lucille?, so dps. they're, also very stringent..

B

It's a one to one adoption policy,, so you can't just like--, there's no place to go and meet all the dogs.

B

It's like you pick one online, you put in an application and there's a phone screening,.

A

Then amazon delivers it to your doorstep...

B

No,, you have to go down and sign all this paperwork.

A

They screen you and they do a home visit.

B

I did get a home visit from the schnauzer rescue organization.

A

Oh,, that's deep. deep web.

A

She's amazing, though., that's awesome., so, lucille was my punch line, so that joke's over.

A

Who has a question for laura? jessie.

E

We all deal with whether our communities.

E

Which is very tricky for the lack of [inaudible] funds,.

B

Why don't you repeat: this?, don't worry.

E

So my question is just as somebody who specializes in online communication,.

E

What tips, tricks, advice can you give us.

E

For how to not ruin your real life relationships with people.

E

When you communicate with them, online?.

B

Yes. yes. a couple of things.

B

If you're not sure whether or not you should post it, don't.

B

And if you're not sure whether or not you should post it,.

B

But you're still thinking about posting it, think about why you're posting it.

B

is ti just because you want to be sarcastic and funny?.

B

Is it potentially to hurt someone?.

B

And I'm not by any means perfect at this,.

B

But thinking that through, has stopped me from posting some things.

B

Where literally, there's no benefit to me, putting this online.

B

There's like nothing., so I'm just not going to do it.

A

Have a question?, I know everyone's name., I feel so cool!.

D

I thought it was really juicy when you started talking about the actual things you and fiona are doing in signal camp. in fiona camp.

D

D

Especially with the no reply and the email addresses,.

D

And you flew over that, and I was like, "ooh,. This is the good stuff!".

D

Like I know you,, so I know your story,, so I was like, "ooh,. This is good!".

D

I would love to just hear you share,, even if you just expand upon that.

D

A little bit further, like "here's what I was saying".

D

specifically,, the no reply/. What I gather with that is that you're saying.

D

"Don't send out emails that have no reply".

B

D

The other one is when you said text only emails,.

C

So just talk to me a little bit more about some of these.

D

Sweet little tips and tricks. you don't have to give up your whole kit and kaboodle,.

B

But I thought that was-- no, this was pretty funny,, because this is what I'm really passionate about,.

B

This is my passion, project., so yeah. noreply@whatever., that's just lame.

B

If someone wants to reply to you, like,, let them?.

B

You know,, you want to build in ways to deal with bouncebacks.

B

And vacation messages and stuff like that., but stop rolling over this,, because these are things.

D

That are obvious to you,, but genuinely other people are like,.

D

"Ooh,, what is she saying?, she's mumbling.? What is she saying, felicia?".

D

So, set up your rules, so if someone has a vacation, auto-reply you're not getting those,.

B

But if someone is trying to reach you,, you need to make sure that they can.

B

another tenet of a lot of community people. Is...

B

There's like this balance between being available everywhere to everyone,.

B

And not like work-life balance,,.

B

But I think you definitely want to, where you're communicating,.

B

You should be available for responses.

B

I also have this big thing around your beta users, especially,.

B

And I think there's a lot of us here who probably have been beta users of products,.

B

This is just me as a person,. I get really disappointed when I beta test a product, and I sign up- and I probably send some feedback,.

B

Probably like "hey,, don't use noreply", (laughter) and, like I never hear anything again from the company.

B

Then, like six months later, I read on some tech blog that they launched.

B

And I'm like, "hey!. I was part of your user...!.

B

So I really feel strongly about building those one on one relationships,.

B

And if you can't do it,, there are people that can.

B

That's a little bit different from the text only emails,, but it's like being thoughtful about how you communicate with people.

B

From day one at your company.

D

And what do you even mean by text only emails?.

B

I think emails should be designed.. I think your content should have intention behind it.

B

Don't launch your product,, especially out of beta,, where you have a welcome, like "hey, thank's for joining!".

B

Like,, there's just no thought behind it.

D

What about the argument that it's like high touch,, where it seems like the founder, is talking just to me, and like, "hey willa, thanks so much for signing up!" "I'm, the founder. signature"... you know?.

B

I think that's better than something that clearly was done six months ago.

B

And never looked at again., but it depends on the product. and who is the speaker of the product,.

B

Who is the speaker to the community,, and that can be the founder.? It can be a community manager,, it could just be the team. it changes.

D

But branding: is your vote for more branding initially.

D

So that it's consistent branding throughout versus just a text, email?.

B

Yeah,- and I think it's just to be aware of how you're communicating, and that should be a part of-- to me,, that's as important as how you're building your technology,.

B

Or how you're designing your interface.?

B

I think it's part of it. like how are you communicating with your users?.

B

And again, every touch point is part of that.

B

(Laughs) fiona agrees.

A

I've got to give it to the lady first.

B

Yeah! reverse sexism.

F

Yeah, that's... I'm cool with that..

F

I was just wondering, out of all of your experience,.

F

If you have,, and you don't have to name names,.

F

But like a nightmare, situation,.

F

And like a dream,, I can't believe that happened situation.

F

In terms of community and customer service and all that.

C

Yes., can this be life?.

F

I mean, professionally,, but sure, you can go personal..

F

This can get weird.. Let's do it.

B

(Laughter) no,, I mean like I met jz once., that was my dream.

B

yeah. thank you.

B

I did nothing, but burst into tears. of joy.

B

It's on the internet.

B

(laughter) oh,, my god.

B

Nightmare situation.

F

Like that, you actually went through.

B

Just some really obscure stuff.

B

Like I remember one time a table in a restaurant made me cry,.

B

And that to me was a nightmare situation, because I was crying on the floor of a restaurant on a saturday night,.

B

And that's just terrible., I'm like in charge, and here I am.

B

Just breaking down because some people yelled at me.

B

Which is, on a scale of nightmares, still pretty low.

B

Then the other nightmare situations- were, again,,.

B

Sort of more personal,, but when I was doing these jobs before I got-- the jobs in between the restaurant work and the tech work.

B

Were nightmarish for different, reasons.

B

the recruiting job actually,, where my male boss told me.

B

That women weren't good at sales.

B

He also told me,. There was something else like that where I was just like,, "wait, what?. Why am I here?".

B

There's no way for me to be successful,, and that was terrible.

B

B

A dream was like jz. well,, jz!, actually, no!.

B

This is sort of overarching, and I don't know if I expressed this,.

B

But ning was an amazing place to work for them and for the users,.

B

But our team there was incredible.

B

and it's the sort of place where everyone's in each other's weddings.

B

Today,, like years later. we're all still in touch.

B

We know where each other works and we support each other,.

B

And I think that's a situation,, an experience overall,.

B

And if you can find that anywhere,, that is the tits.

D

G

You mentioned earlier about the b2b,, where it was too early for the community.

G

Can you talk a little bit about how you know whether it's too early, and also what you might be able to do.

G

Ir you're before that threshold.

B

Yeah. I mean, we kind of learned that the hard way.

B

part of it might have been that I wasn't the right person for that.

B

I think I definitely thrive more dealing with consumer than business.

B

But man,, I think this is sort of an indirect answer,.

B

But I think what I would have done differently in that situation,.

B

If I were in charge of it, is like bringing someone on part time,.

B

Or bringing someone on as a contractor,, because what I was doing was calling up every single user like every week,, because there weren't that many., because it was an expensive product or whatever..

B

That just got old, pretty quick for everyone.

B

There are things like webinars to do,, but again, there just weren't that many people there.

B

So either you bring someone on to do it, part time, or you just,, probably ideally initially it's the founder.

B

Or it's someone on the founding team, who has something else to do.

B

Because, talking one on one to your communities or to your users when you're b2b, to me, that's a no brainer.

B

If you're selling them expensive, software.

G

How do you make that transition from talking to them? One on one.

G

To trying to get them to talk more to each other?.

B

Yeah., that's a really good question.

B

This is something that fiona and I do quite a bit as well.

B

One of our goals is trying to figure out how to empower your users.

B

That sounds really cheesy,, but you want to figure out ways,.

B

Like are there places within your website, within your application,.

B

Or just within your social channels where they can connect with each other? and then,, are there things built in eithrer to the application.

B

Or to the website again,, or maybe it's making sure that your emails have.

B

Lots of ways that they can share.

B

ways that they can evangelize on your behalf.

C

Oh, hello! sorry.. I got distracted by a dog.

B

B

You don't have to implement that right. Away,.

B

But it's good to be aware of that, and where that can come into your product.

B

Yeah. is that good?.

B

Lindsey? lagaia? she has enthusiasm. yes!.

A

H

So, whats.app sold for, however many billions of dollars yesterday to facebook,.

H

Largely because they have like three hundred and sixty million users or something like that.,.

H

And they have no marketing spend.

H

So when something like that comes up,, I'm wondering.

H

What's next for signal camp in terms of, yes?,.

B

We're available for 19 billion dollars..

B

We have two users.

B

H

No, but that's a company that sold for a lot of money because they have a large, strong, engaged user base.

H

So how are you using signal camp to approach more people that way?.

H

Man,, I will say one thing that I think I've talked about.

B

With you and other people here, in that a good sort of technique to promoting community.

B

Is basically just saying "instagram tumblr",.

B

Because, although now those are dwarfed by whats.app,.

B

But those are two companies that were sold for a billion dollar,.

B

Billion dollar-ish, that were sold because of community.

B

So yeah,, I guess signal: camp school is just to help create more billion dollar community companies.

B

yeah! okay.. We have to discuss that. and we take equity as payment, so...

A

Shout out... for equity. (laughter).

A

C

I have a question that piggybacks on that.

C

So,, what were some of the biggest challenges.

C

When you were starting your own thing with fiona, starting signal, camp initially?,.

B

Great question!, don't worry,, you got that.

B

Actually, one of our biggest challenges in the bay area.

B

Was that we spoke about creating signal camp for about six months.

B

Before we got our first client., part of that was talking to each other about what we wanted to achieve,.

B

What we wanted to accomplish., but we also spoke with a lot of other entrepreneurs in the area.

B

originally, signal camp was going to be like a word camp.

B

Or other camp products, features, conferences.

B

We wanted to do like weekend workshops, because we love, we did like our jobs, and like, "oh,. We can do this on the side",, and so we did user research, and it turns out.

B

Entrepreneurs were just like, "no,. Can you just come? Do this for us?", so we decided to launch signal camp,, but all of our resources there, every time we'd try to get business advice,.

B

They were like, "well,. Are you raising money??

B

Do you need, like how are you distributing equity?" and we were like, "no! we're just going to help people and charge them.

B

We don't need that.", so we wasted like a year of time, meeting with startup lawyers.

B

Because those were the people we got introduced to by friends,.

B

And it turns out, we needed a small business lawyer, and we needed an accountant who could deal with a small business and who didn't care about mergers and acquisitions,, because frankly, well,, maybe that'll happen,. I don't know.

A

I heard that as murders and acquisitions,, which is pretty relevant.

A

I think we're out of time and we have an amazing artist, here,.

A

Bobi cespedes,, so if you guys-- we're goiing to have a dance party.

A

So if you want to help out and like push the chairs back,, because we're going to get it. we're about to get it.

A

Gettin' it! gettin' it! okay.. That's all I've got.! Thank you guys. So much!

A

(latin jazz).

C

Passion projects laura gluhanich.