The Community Roundtable

Empowering global community leaders with research-backed resources, training, and tools.

TheCR Network – 2018 Year in Review Infographic

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As 2018 winds down, I love to look back at the last twelve months in TheCR Network. The great joy of my work is spending my days supporting, collaborating and learning with our amazing members. I was incredibly gratified by a recent survey of members, where many said the first word that came to mind when thinking about the Network was “friend”.

The infographic below is a just a snapshot of the year we’ve had. Please take a moment to pause with me and reflect on our successes, as we prepare for an even more amazing 2019!

 

I hope you had a meaningful and productive year, and that you too can take a moment to look back at your year. Best wishes!

Announcing the Winners of TheCR Awards 2018

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I am so thrilled to share this news: last night we announced the winners of the third annual TheCR Awards, including innovative community leaders from nCino, CSA Group, Steelcase and Qualtrics. These community management awards recognize excellence in community management across five categories: Outstanding Community ROI, Best Community Dashboard, Outstanding Community Change Agent, Outstanding Community Playbook and Best Recognition & Reward Program. We also recognize individual members of TheCR Network six categories. One additional award, Community MVP was awarded based on peer nominations. In total, 14 organizations and individuals were recognized for outstanding efforts in community management.

The winners of TheCR Awards 2018 are: 

TheCR Network Detective: Elena Smith, Community Manager, AECOM

 “TheCR Network Detective” awards the member who helps source group knowledge and expertise by regularly asking thoughtful and meaningful questions in TheCR Network.

TheCR Network Explorer: Marjorie Anderson, Community Engagement Specialist, PMI

 “TheCR Network Explorer” awards the member who charts new territory in the community management industry. They take best practices, research, and community models to experiment and advance the industry.

TheCR Network Pack Leader: Keeley Hanson Sorokti, Assistant Director / Community Strategist, Commvault

“TheCR Network Pack Leader” awards the member who consistently leads the most discussions, online, in-person, and on virtual calls, and shows leadership around a topic or initiative in TheCR Network.

TheCR Network Journaler: Sarah Mahon, TPN Enterprise Community Manager, AECOM

 “TheCR Network Journaler” awards the member who works out loud the most regularly and with the most depth.

TheCR Network Power User: Peter Broadley, Manager, Community Development and Engagement, CSA Group

 “TheCR Network Power User” awards the most active member in TheCR Network who contributes on a regular basis in a wide variety of ways, from sharing their expertise to supporting and encouraging other members.

 TheCR Network Rookie of the Year: Oonagh McQuarrie, Massage Envy

 “TheCR Network Rookie of the Year” awards a Network member who has fewer than three years of industry experience, is new to TheCR Network, and is a power user – regularly collaborating and contributing inside the Network.

 Outstanding Community ROI: Premier Farnell / Element 14

 The “Outstanding Community ROI” award recognizes the community that best demonstrates significant ROI for their organization/business unit through innovative community management practices.

Outstanding Community Change Agent

 The “Outstanding Community Change Agent” recognizes a community program or initiative that supported the cultural transformation in a large or small way at their organization. The Outstanding Community Change Agent was awarded in three distinct categories in 2018: Individual Change Agent, Program Change Agent and Organizational Change Agent:

  • Outstanding Community Change Agent – Individual: CA Technologies
  • Outstanding Community Change Agent – Program: Thermo Fisher Scientific
  • Outstanding Community Change Agent – Community: Qualtrics
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Best Community Dashboard: nCino 

The “Best Community Dashboard” award recognizes a community dashboard that exhibits the most impressive and engaging design, sharing metrics and measurement in an impactful way that contributes to the overall narrative of your community program. Provide examples on including screenshots, success metrics and unique features.

Best Recognition + Reward Program: Mimecast

The “Best Recognition + Reward Program” award recognizes outstanding community recognition, reward, and gamification programs that increase engagement, drive participation and contribute to the overall positive health of your community.

Outstanding Community Playbook: World Bank Group

The “Outstanding Community Playbook” award recognizes an effective community playbook in current use in a community program.

Community MVP: Lori Harrison-Smith, Enterprise Community Manager, Steelcase

The “Community MVP” award recognizes excellence in community management – including outstanding efforts, willingness to share with peers, achievements and excellent community results.

You can learn more about TheCR Awards here, and watch this space for detailed case studies featuring our award winners and finalists.

Exploring the Transformative Power of Community

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How do we make sure TheCR Connect is exactly what attendees want? We ask them.

Our annual community conference – TheCR Connect is less than seven weeks away! Believe me when I say things are ramping up at TheCR headquarters and we can’t wait to host an eclectic group of community professionals. When our attendees register we ask them a few questions to help make sure we are creating content that is relevant and exciting for them. Our entire agenda is based on the input we get from our registrants.

This year a few big themes emerged in the responses.

A whopping 41% of attendees indicated that they were interested in exploring how to define community value, and 32% want to learn more about calculating community ROI. In addition to these measurement-focused themes, there was strong interest in cultivating strong advocates and building a powerful community narrative.

I’m excited to share our current agenda – and some of our speaker organizations. From an expert panel on Transforming Community Careers, to interactive sessions on Surviving and Thriving During a Migration and Leveraging Advocacy Programs to Accelerate Change, to deep-dive workshops with tactical outputs like Building a Behavioral Analytics Dashboard and Calculating Community ROI with TheCR’s ROI Model we’ve put our attendees’ interests at the forefront of our planning – and can’t wait to learn alongside them in Boston.

Check out our new Connect 2018 infographic and explore the full agenda here. 

The Community Roundtable’s 2018 Research Agenda

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Research has always set The Community Roundtable apart.

We’ve always believed that to get the attention and support of stakeholders for the strategic role of community management, we needed to invest in research. Our research is also a key shared value with our members, clients, and our broader community. Collaborating together, we have taken a niche discipline that was seen as an implicit art in 2009 to a structured, repeatable set of approaches that can be taught, followed, quantified, and communicated easily.

What this means for us, is that our research agenda needs to pivot. We no longer need to understand and document how to build a successful community program – we know that. Instead, the challenges we face are more about navigating current organizational environments, out-dated thinking, and market shifts.

It is now critical to translate what we know about community management and its effectiveness at addressing strategic opportunities to a broader audience. Executives have been slow to see and invest in community management skills. Because it is one of the key enablers to digital transformation, this lack of investment is keeping many organizations from fulfilling its potential.

TheCR’s 2018 Research Priorities

While our conversations with TheCR Network members have always informed and contributed to our research and, in turn, that has always informed the topics we discuss in TheCR Network and the content we publish, we have not made those themes explicit. This year is the first year we are publishing a research agenda.

This agenda is structured around four themes we are championing in 2018 and include:

  • Communities Get Down to Business
  • Communities As Change Agents
  • Community Roles Evolve
  • Strategic Measurement of Communities

These topics will be explored through programming in TheCR Network, virtual training workshops, research, and advisory work.

Interested in these discussions? Join our Facebook group for free or sign-up for our monthly newsletter to follow along.