The themes from Feverbee SPRINT 2015

Community

Last week I had the pleasure of attending Feverbee’s SPRINT conference for the second time. While the fantastic CMX Summit focused more on high-level community thinking and strategic implementation, SPRINT was a much more details-oriented event, focusing on tactics, studies, and how community should interact with the rest of the company it resides in.

A few themes stood out to me.

1. The era of community frameworks is upon is

At least two speakers produced individual frameworks they use when building community. Which is to say nothing of Douglas Atkin’s commitment curve or David Spinks’ concentric circles of community. The bad news? It’s hard to know which to use (or whether to create your own). The good news? We’re moving beyond loose strategies and soft buzzwords to a more standardized and repeatable set of frameworks and processes.

2. Community management is great, but community architecture can be far more effective

One of the advantages community professionals have is that we understand people and how to talk to them and earn their trust. So it’s not surprising that much of community management focuses on interpersonal interactions. And while I love this work and think it will forever be a huge part of what we do, several speakers at SPRINT showed the beauty and power of community architecture.

Whether it was Richard Millington himself talking about registration CTA locations and examining the community growth funnel or Jeff Atwood impressing (as always) with the depth of thought put into Discourse’s architecture to ensure productive interactions, the most impressive stories at SPRINT weren’t about blog posts or events, they were about building community spaces. We have the interpersonal skills. Now we need to stop being supplemental to the product and insert ourselves and our expertise into the product and design process.

3. It’s time to get professional

“Winter is coming for community professionals.” Richard’s keynote wasn’t meant to depress us, but rather impress upon us that the popularity this role currently holds in tech may fade quickly unless we become more professional, consistent, and scientific. This was the first year there were fewer people joining the community profession, he said. My take? That’s great. There have been far too many social media marketers with the title “community manager” and far too many people asking me how to get into community because “it’s so hot right now”. I’m looking forward to a smaller, leaner, smarter, and more passionate group of community professionals in the future.

Interested in being part of that group? Why not join us at Community Manager Breakfast?