When we started The Community Roundtable in early 2009, community management was not yet a mainstream concept and social business was barely used as a term. A lot has changed in a relatively short amount of time. A majority of organizations now understand that this new way of doing business, enabled by social technologies, also requires a new way of thinking about management. The demand for education and training in the discipline of community management has increased significantly. That is great news for us because this is what we have focused on from the start.
As the field of community management has grown, it has also become more fragmented. There are events for more traditional online community managers like ForumCon as well as those focused on parts of the market like developer and open source community managers, media community managers, gaming community managers, and startup community managers. This fragmentation has been challenging, but has also motivated us to articulate our core competency – for us that is the strategic and operational layer of community building driven by the Community Maturity Model framework. While we do discuss the day-to-day needs of community engagement, our unique strength is in helping leaders understand the business of community building. As a result, we’ve updated our tag line – Advancing the Business of Community – to reflect that strength.
Our experience in helping organizations understand the opportunities and risks of integrating community approaches into their operations has driven our growth. We are thrilled to announce the addition of two new team members and a local event host:
- Hillary Boucher – Hillary is our new Community Management Fellow and after the experience of working with our members for a year, she will be a rock start community manager. She has a great demeanor and has been working in a variety of areas including digital communications, maternal health, and in small business operations. We will be mentoring Hillary as she helps us with TheCR Network programming, content, and member outreach.
- Leanne Chase – Leanne is joining us to focus on our marketing – making sure we are effective in connecting to and reaching out to those interested in how our education, advisory, and reporting services can help them advance their business goals.
- Stephen Anfield – Stephen will be our local #TheCRLive host in the Washington D.C. area where we have a number of members and where there is a lot of activity happening in the community management space. Look for more information about that soon.
Please reach out and connect with our new team members – we are excited and lucky to have them.
As we grow, I’ll be continuing our work with partners and conference organizations, overseeing our advisory services, working on the development of formal training, and growing our report business. Jim will continue his leadership of TheCR Network, streamlining our operations, and overseeing one of our new products, TheCR Focus. It’s an exciting time for us and if you or your organization has a good handle on the basics of social media and it looking for the next step, please consider what we have to offer:
- TheCR Network: A peer membership network for community and social business leaders.
- Advisory Services: Workshops and executive education
- Coming soon: TheCR Focus and community specialist, manager, & strategist training
