How many of you are currently managing communities that are about a subject that you don’t know or you are not passionate?
If so, how did you create engagement, conversation starters and deal with field experts?
Are you an expert on the theme of your community?
I’m currently an assistant for a community dedicated to UX (user experience) http://community.uxmastery.com/.
I am in no way close to being an expert but, I am passionate about people and the topic really is interesting. There is a lot of psychology and problem solving involved.
I like to think that I’d be able to be passionate about any community because my interest actually lies with the people but I’ve never been in a community for sludge miners so I can’t be sure.
My understanding is that there are two schools of thought with this. One says that you can take an expert and teach them to manage a community. The other says that you can take a ‘people person’ and train them to be experts.
I don’t ever see myself as a UX designer or expert, but I can do research, take notes, read a LOT and learn about the people in my community; their interests, passions, experience, etc.
Thanks @Piper_Wilson ! I didn’t know about the two school of thought! I guess I belong to the first then.
I am now creating a community with some sub-communities of different types of professionals all studying different masters degree in our University online. I have narrowed different areas of interest and gathered some founders for each group, and I am now working with them.
Even if I love learning all the new things that these people are bringing to the plate, it is impossible that I will become an expert myself, (we are talking about doctors, or finance experts, etc.)
Assuming this, I am empowering the members to be the engine of the community and me the facilitator.
I have some members that took the lead and are coming up with great ideas for webinars and contributions we can feature in the community.
It is taking a lot of time in the implementation of these ideas.
They express them not in a structured way, and since I am not an expert on the matter, I don’t know how to feel the blanks that they leave.
So we spend a lot of time going back and forth with emails, recaps and meetings where I ask for more info.
If you also are not experts on the subject of your community, what kind of procedures do you have in place with your superusers?
I was also hoping that there might be some pre-made materials that I can use to guide the members in channelling their efforts in the right direction. For example, a document that they have to fill for a webinar, or something for an article so that from our side we can understand easier and faster the core of what they want to create.
When in doubt, ask more questions.
Unfortunately, I’m only a few weeks in so I don’t have any outward facing procedures with our gold members yet. At the moment, I’m focusing on welcoming new members. I look for threads and resources to answer any questions they have.
Here’s some strategy information that should help you get started. https://www.feverbee.com/strategy/
I’m definitely not an expert in my community. We have a community of people who work on DevOps, JavaScript, android, data science, machine learning etc. So there’s no way I could be an expert in all these topics. However, I make sure I stay updated on the latest topics enough to hold a conversation about the topic, the trends etc. My role is mainly to connect people in the community. [quote=“Piper_Wilson, post:2, topic:6062”]
One says that you can take an expert and teach them to manage a community. The other says that you can take a ‘people person’ and train them to be experts.
I don’t ever see myself as a UX designer or expert, but I can do research, take notes, read a LOT and learn about the people in my community; their interests, passions, experience, etc.
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This pretty much sums up everything I have to say.
In the past I managed a community where the scope was broad. It was a dev community and I only knew a few of the languages included. I’ve also worked on the agency side where I worked with finance and airport communities – definitely not my area of expertise!
While I think that being an expert in the area is a bonus (you can carry conversations, answer questions when others don’t etc) I don’t think it’s vital.
You DO need to have the respect of your community though.
I think your plan to empower superusers is the right approach.