A Few of Our Members

We are fortunate at The Community Roundtable to have started off with a number of amazing members – individuals experienced in online communications, support, and marketing who are pushing the boundaries of both the profession of community management and what it means for organizations to engage their communities. One of the most engaging pieces of content in the community is the podcasts that Jim does with new members – where we get to know them a little better than we could just with text. So far, a common theme of all of our members has been a thoughtfulness in how they approach their job and a bent towards collecting. Every time I listen to one, I am reminded about what Jim and I are hoping to build – a community of rich interaction where we learn from each other but also connect at a deeper level… and smile.

I wanted to share a few of our particularly compelling new members. I urge you to follow them on Twitter if you are interested in the community management space. They are worth watching – each bringing a particular skill set and perspective to the space that is immensely valuable:

Dawn Lacallade has been involved in enterprise social media and community initiatives since the days when Dell was struggling to figure out how to respond to the PR issues surrounding its batteries.  Dawn is now at SolarWinds after a very successful run managing Dell’s IdeaStorm initiative. Dawn brings an almost unmatched passion to the community space because of a belief in its ability to improve customer experience with brands. She is also well known for sharing her time, experiences, and expertise with others and is an advocate for a more articulated description of the community manager role and discipline.

Tom Humbarger is currently consulting, helping companies develop community strategies and writing on community topics. He was the community manager for Catalyze Community (a B2B community sponsored by iRise) from its initial spark of an idea in August 2006 through the public launch in June 2007 until it hit the 4,000 member mark in July 2008. Tom brings with him a background in product management and marketing and has been a leader is mining and using metrics to understand community performance. He blogs at: https://tomhumbarger.wordpress.com/

Rachel Makool spent a number of years at the helm of eBay‘s community management group and has unmatched corporate experience in understanding large consumer communities, how to manage them, and how to integrate community management into a larger enterprise. Rachel feels passionately about how communities and transparency is improves business performance, both financially and in terms of the customer experience. Rachel is particularly committed to raising awareness of how the community management role contributes to corporate performance and how strategic it is.

Ryan Eades is the Online Community Manager for Special Olympics and acts as their brand manager for the online space. Ryan deals with the challenges many distributed organizations have – particularly in the non-profit and government space  in that Special Olympics is a group of independently run organizations under one banner. This creates unique challenges for marketing and customer support, particularly as more activities go virtual. Ryan blogs at: https://ryaneades.blogspot.com/

We are really pleased to have their perspectives as part of our group… and looking for a few more good members. Interested? Feel free to email – rachel@community-roundtable.com or jim@community-roundtable.com.