{"id":1112,"date":"2009-07-30T08:24:05","date_gmt":"2009-07-30T16:24:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/?p=1112"},"modified":"2009-07-30T08:24:05","modified_gmt":"2009-07-30T16:24:05","slug":"my-thoughts-about-community-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/2009\/07\/30\/my-thoughts-about-community-management\/","title":{"rendered":"My thoughts about community management"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Eaves wrote about open source contributions<\/a> recently, and how community managers fit into the picture. <\/p>\n

He remixed a graph from Angie Byron, and I wasn’t completely happy with the results. A fairly long twitter thread ensued, between myself, Jeffrey McManus<\/a>, Emma Jane Hogbin<\/a> and Peter Krenesky<\/a>. In the end, David piped up and asked if I’d comment on his blog. So I did<\/a>. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

\nHi! <\/p>\n

I commented via a long twitter thread that I “disagree with putting comm mgmt between user\/dev. like @webchick’s ideas better.<\/a>” \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

To flesh that out a bit — my gut reaction to the ultimate diagram you created is that it puts community managers *between* users and developers.. This is a convenient way to demonstrate a process, but ultimately, I have to disagree with the premise behind it.<\/p>\n

I work to break down barriers between “users” and “developers”. My ideal world is one where the two overlap to a very large extent. I dislike models of open source community development which seem to promote the idea that there needs to be an intermediary. <\/p>\n

I agree that most communities require an interface — it is rarely self-evident how one goes about joining a community if you were on the outside. Many times it is an organic process — your friends invite you, or you run into someone at a conference or bar, or you have to use or work on a piece of software for work. For those who, for whatever reason, are not already on the inside, having a single point of contact (a “community manager”, or in the amusing case of the open source developer group I primarily work with – a “liaison”) can be an invaluable tool.<\/p>\n

However, I do not see that role as one that ultimately should belong to just one person. If I do my job right, eventually, people won’t even come to me any more. They will go directly to the individuals inside the community they most want to connect with — because I have managed to open up our community interfaces to the point that they are self-documenting, or easily found with a few clicks on our website.<\/p>\n

Possibly, this vision is a bit unrealistic in the near term. But I’ll paraphrase my friend Audrey — it’s way more fun to craft your reality, than it is to passively experience it.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Eaves wrote about open source contributions recently, and how community managers fit into the picture. He remixed a graph from Angie Byron, and I wasn’t completely happy with the results. A fairly long twitter thread ensued, between myself, Jeffrey … Continue reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,23],"tags":[645,262,263],"class_list":["post-1112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-open-source","tag-community","tag-community-management","tag-open-source-development"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1112"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1113,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112\/revisions\/1113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}