Who do we appreciate? Among other well deserving folks, we appreciate Jeremiah Owyang for taking the lead in making community management a more visible and recognized discipline. Other thought leaders who have contributed quite a bit to the understanding of community management are Bill Johnston, Amber Naslund, Blaise Grimes-Viort, Jono Bacon, Tamara Littleton, Richard Millington, Dawn Lacallade, Sean O’Driscoll, Jake McKee, Matt Rhodes, Dawn Foster, Bertrand Duperrin, Connie Bensen, Dion Hinchcliffe, Oliver Marks, Rawn Shah, Luiz Suarez, Megan Murray, David Armano, Jamie Pappas, Claire Flanagan, and Gia Lyons. These are people whose voices have helped the market better understand and appreciate the complexity of what community management is. They are not alone and the list it expanding daily which is very exciting to see.
We would thank our customers – we would not be doing the work we do without them. They know who they are – we don’t call them out publicly and they self-identify as members if and when they wish. Suffice it to say, they allow us to help grow and evolve the discipline of community management in a significant way.
And finally, another very important group to us are the experts and thought leaders that have joined TheCR Network calls to talk about a huge range of topics related to community management, social media, and social business. You can see the topics and experts here that we think are adding tremendous value to the wide variety of subjects about which community managers and social business leaders need to be smart. They include many of the above as well as Francois Gossieaux, Laura Fitton, Leslie Poston, Mike Pascucci, Mark Yolton, Steve Garfield, Beth Kanter, Cynthia Gilbert, Janet Fouts, Nathan Gilliatt, Michael Katz, Gargi Patel, KD Paine, Len Devanna, Gia Lyons, Cappy Popp, Patti Anklam, John Wall, Frank Eliason, Chris Bailey, Natanya Anderson, Mary Wardley, Lauren Gelman, Leanne Chase, Margot Bloomstein, Andrea Weckerle, Liz Strauss, Nancy White, Adam Garone, David Alston, Dave Delaney, Debra Askanase, Nigel Fortlage, Chip Rodgers, Erica Kuhl, Burr Settles, Julie Wittes Schlack, Aaron Strout, John Hagel, Tony Byrne, Mari-Anne Snow, Ed McNicholas, Michael Pace, Kevin Ryan, Gail Moody-Byrd, Andrew Davis, Robyn Tippins, Jaime Punishill, Marcia Conner, David Armano, Valeria Maltoni, Allen Bonde, Jeremiah Owyang, Jacob Morgan and Alexa Scordato.
This is the community from whom we learn every day – we recommend you get to know them too if you are looking to build your understanding of community management, social media, and social business. We think community management is both an explicit role but also, and increasingly, an approach to general management – widely applicable to more than just the people whose business card says ‘community manager’. We would also like to extend a big thank you to them all for helping us to build The Community Roundtable.
Happy Community Management Appreciation Day! We’ll be co-hosting a get together in Boston but see Jeremiah’s post for other celebrations.
