TL;DR: Given that community management is a relatively new profession, it’s difficult to know how and when to expand the department. Add to that the nebulousness around what a community professional does depending on the goals of the company, and it’s near impossible! In this episode of Community Pulse we were joined by Nathen Harvey (VP of Community Development, Chef) and Phil Leggetter (Head of Developer Relations, Nexmo) to talk about learning to scale a community role.

We talk about working closely with other departments that have similar (but not the same) goals and understanding our colleagues’ day-to-day concerns, as well as the importance of communication and finding a mentor. We also delved into the murky waters of self-promotion and how to make sure you (and your team) are highly visible within the company. Lastly, we talked about the struggle of learning to step back and delegate tasks to others so you have the time to do what you need to be doing as you guide your team.

Links:

• DevRelCon: 2015.devrel.net/">London 2015, San Francisco 2016
• Evangelist Collective Slack Group

Tools:

• Asana: “kanban lite” -- allows you to sync with a calendar, organize tasks among a team, etc.
• OSS Tracker: looks after your github repos for an organization and gives you feedback and stats
• Zapier: an app to make all the apps talk to each other

Events: ChefConf 2016: July 11-13, Austin, TX DevOpsDays DC: June 8-9, Alexandria, VA

To decompress: favorite non-tech podcast: The Truth Podcast

Special Guests: Nathen Harvey and Phil Leggetter.

TL;DR: Given that community management is a relatively new profession, it’s difficult to know how and when to expand the department. Add to that the nebulousness around what a community professional does depending on the goals of the company, and it’s near impossible! In this episode of Community Pulse we were joined by Nathen Harvey (VP of Community Development, Chef) and Phil Leggetter (Head of Developer Relations, Nexmo) to talk about learning to scale a community role.

We talk about working closely with other departments that have similar (but not the same) goals and understanding our colleagues’ day-to-day concerns, as well as the importance of communication and finding a mentor. We also delved into the murky waters of self-promotion and how to make sure you (and your team) are highly visible within the company. Lastly, we talked about the struggle of learning to step back and delegate tasks to others so you have the time to do what you need to be doing as you guide your team.

Links:

• DevRelCon: 2015.devrel.net/">London 2015, San Francisco 2016
• Evangelist Collective Slack Group

Tools:

• Asana: “kanban lite” -- allows you to sync with a calendar, organize tasks among a team, etc.
• OSS Tracker: looks after your github repos for an organization and gives you feedback and stats
• Zapier: an app to make all the apps talk to each other

Events: ChefConf 2016: July 11-13, Austin, TX DevOpsDays DC: June 8-9, Alexandria, VA

To decompress: favorite non-tech podcast: The Truth Podcast

Special Guests: Nathen Harvey and Phil Leggetter.