The Community Roundtable

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

  • About Us
    • Our Values
    • Our Team
    • Our Clients
      • Client Success Stories
    • Community Leadership Awards
      • Community Leadership Awards 2024
      • Community Leadership Awards 2023
      • Community Leadership Awards 2022
      • Community Leadership Awards 2021
  • Services
    • Benchmarking and Audits
      • Community Performance Benchmark
      • Community Readiness Audits
      • Community ROI Calculator
      • The Community Score
    • Models and Frameworks
      • Community Maturity Model™
      • Community Engagement Framework™
      • Community Skills Framework™
      • Community Technology Framework™
      • The Social Executive
  • Research
    • The State of Community Management
      • SOCM 2024
      • SOCM 2023
      • SOCM 2022
      • SOCM 2021
      • SOCM 2020
    • Community Careers and Compensation
    • The Community Manager Handbook
      • 2022 Edition
      • 2015 Edition
    • The Social Executive
    • Special Reports
    • Case Studies
  • Events
    • Connect
      • Connect 2024
      • Connect 2023
      • Connect 2022
    • Community Technology Summit
    • Professional Development
    • Resource Bundles
    • Upcoming Events
    • Community Manager Appreciation Day
      • Community Manager Appreciation Day 2025
      • Community Manager Appreciation Day 2024
  • I’m looking for…
    • Community Engagement Resources
    • Executive Support Resources
    • Community Reporting Resources
    • Platform and Technology Resources
    • Community Strategy Resources
    • Community Programming Resources
    • Community Career Resources
    • Something Else
      • Vendor Resource Center
      • Community FAQs
      • Community Management Podcasts
        • Community Conversations
        • Lessons From The NEW Community Manager Handbook
      • Community 101
        • Community Management Glossary
        • Community Management FAQs
      • Case Studies
      • Community Webinars
  • Community
    • The Network
      • Member Login
      • Join The Network
      • Roundtable Call Library
    • The Library
      • Subscriber Login
      • Subscribe to The Library
  • Blog

Meet TheCR Team | Sean Marlin

February 18, 2021 By Jim Storer

Heads of Networks

At-a-Glance:
Member Since | 2021
Superpower | Building a fire
#teamcat or #teamdog | #teamcat


Sean comes to community management after years in the not-for-profit world. From program management to stakeholder communication, Sean loves translating all of those skills into a community practice.


You can ask Sean about:
1. Tabletop RPG’s
2. Anything on hyperallergic.com
3. Where to camp in Maine

Meet TheCR Team | Kelly Schott

February 18, 2017 By Jim Storer

  • unclear why there is no #teamfish?
  • online community manager conference
    Just a few of our fabulous former fellows!
  • love this journey for her

Head of Networks

At-a-Glance:

Member Since | 2017
Superpower | Comma placement
#teamcat or #teamdog | #teamdog

Kelly is a veteran community engagement practitioner in the journalism space and loves applying this knowledge and experience to the community management world.

You can ask Kelly about:

1. New Jersey beaches: the official ranking
2. Anything Martin Scorsese related
3. How to work the offline into online communities

Email Kelly or connect with her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Meet TheCR Team | Emma Nicholas

February 18, 2017 By Jim Storer

Community Strategist

At-a-Glance:

Member Since | 2017
Superpower | Planning and organizing
#teamcat or #teamdog | #teamdog

Passionate about all things process, Emma loves a list. She is here to keep the team on track with all things advisory. You will find her tackling project planning in Wrike and transitioning projects from pipeline to process. A newcomer to the USA and to Community Management, Emma moved from the UK in July 2016 with her family. Consequently, Emma spends much time wondering if people understand her British humor and correcting her spelling and punctuation. In her spare time, you will find Emma on a ski slope or a beach with her family.

You can ask Emma about:

  1. What world records I hold
  2. Where to go if you’re visiting the UK (specialty: kids under 5)
  3. Turning vague requests into actionable chaos

Connect with Emma on Linkedin.

Friday Roundup – Will Winter Ever End? Edition

March 14, 2014 By Jim Storer

By Shannon DiGregorio Abram, Relationship Manager at The Community Roundtable.

seasons-winter-comic-funny-cartoon-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Illustration by Sarah Lazarovic)

Despite it being not quite halfway through March we are very ready for winter to be over. After an unseasonably warm weekend it snowed twice in Boston this week. Enough!

We are already looking forward to April – and not just for the (hopefully) nicer weather. April marks our five year anniversary and we are ready to celebrate. This week we announced our 5th anniversary celebration – a Happy Hour in Cambridge, MA. If you’re in the Greater Boston area we’d love to see you!

  • Our first Meet TheCR Team post with Rachel Happe
  • Tapping the power of hidden influencers
  • Webinar: Community Manager Spotlight with Heather Ausmus on March 26th
  • Celebrating community success with TheCR member Ian White from Rackspace
  • Four community jobs: Community Manager, Boston, Director of Community Engagement, Online Communities Manager and  Senior Community Manager and two social media jobs: Social Media Specialist and Manager of Digital and Social Media
  • Using online community to increase member retention
  • How can communities be a tool for product teams in driving innovation?
  • SXSWi Panel Recap: Humanizing Your Brand Through Effective Community Management

That’s all for this week, friends. Have a great weekend, beware the ides of March and we’ll see you back here on Monday!

 

—–

Did you know that 95% of TheCR Network members agree that the content and peer input available inside the Network improves the quality of their work? It’s true!

Membership in TheCR Network saves community and social business leaders time and improves the quality of their work by connecting them quickly with peers, experts and curated information. Learn how joining TheCR Network can improve the work you do.

Meet TheCR Team: Rachel Happe

March 12, 2014 By Rachel Happe

By Rachel Happe, Co-Founder of The Community Roundtable.

Rachel HappeIf you had asked me a decade ago whether I wanted to start a company, the answer would have been a resounding no. But a funny thing happened on the way to the circus – technology, communications and organizational development collided in a way where my experiences gave me unique insight – some of which is personal and some of it through my previous work.

I am a minister’s daughter and not just any minister, one who worked in a church where the congregation was responsible for hiring and firing their leaders. And as a child I had an odd fascination with church meetings and listening to people resolve issues collectively. I also watched as my father had to balance factions in an intense culture (in the midst of Cambridge, MA where people do not lack for opinions). It was its own education in people, relationships and power dynamics.

Rachel Happe - RowingLater on, I had the opportunity to row on a crew team and first experienced the concept of swing, which profoundly impacted how I thought of group performance. I was never the best student (or the best athlete) but I realized that I could be an important member of the best team and that together, when there is swing, groups can do profound things.

Professionally, I’ve had almost nine lives; as a research assistant looking at health care systems, working in government, as an analyst assessing operational strategies, managing software products, managing start-up teams and as a technology market analyst. I’ve had experience working with the implications of organizational structures, with the application of cutting edge technologies (I was building SaaS-based ideation and partner portals in the late 90s), and from my youth I understood how you manage in environments you can’t control.

Rachel Happe - Eating FrogsSo now I’m eating frogs – our team’s term for getting critical but not necessarily inspiring things done – and helping to lead The Community Roundtable. I believe passionately that new communications environments enable individuals to be rewarded proportionately to what they contribute because those contributions can now be seen by everyone in an online community. For me, this means more equality and more access for more people – without the traditional barriers that limited talented people from succeeding; like the school you went to, your family’s social circles or where you live. It also gives individuals the responsibility and the opportunity to determine their own contribution balance. For organizations, it means lowering the transaction costs of creating and distributing value. My job at TheCR is to help organizational leaders understand how to execute on this opportunity by applying what we call community management instead of traditional management approaches. In the end, my hope is that I can improve lives by improving people’s control over the work they do.

One of the things that I am most proud of is that as an organization we collaborate with our members and clients to create value that neither one of us could deliver on our own. Recently for me, that meant working closely with a client to build a training program for internal community managers. The training program consists of short videos paired with worksheets that allow participants to immediately translate what they learn into actionable plans. While we had the content, our client pushed us to create a format that allowed part-time community managers to immediately put best practices to use. It’s a great example of how to create value that is a win for the client, a win for us and ultimately a win for other clients who need similar programs to make their social business initiatives a success.

 

—–

Did you know that 95% of TheCR Network members agree that the content and peer input improves the quality of their work? It’s true!

Membership in TheCR Network saves community and social business leaders time and improves the quality of their work by connecting them quickly with peers, experts and curated information. Learn how joining TheCR Network can improve the work you do.

Meet TheCR Team | Rachel Happe

February 18, 2014 By Jim Storer

  • Get in the wayback machine!
  • Emerson is cooler than us all.

Co-Founder and Principal

At-a-Glance:

Member Since | 2009
Superpower | Simplifying the complex
#teamcat or #teamdog | #teamdog

Rachel is the chief wonk at TheCR and oversees the research, content and thought leadership.

You can ask Rachel about:

1. The secret lives of eight-year-olds
2. Tips on how to travel for fun and profit
3. Why our approach to enabling human potential needs to be community-centric

Connect with Rachel on Twitter or LinkedIn.

More About Rachel:

Rachel has spent the last 25 years helping organizations implement emerging technologies to advance their business strategies. 

She understands how networked communications environments can transform how people work, their productivity and their personal satisfaction by aligning their passions, skills and relationships.

Rachel co-founded The Community Roundtable to support business leaders developing their community and social business strategies. Clients including SAP, Aetna, BASF, CA, H&R Block, and CSC benefit from Rachel’s ability to make sense of abstract trends and her ability to see the implications that technical and operational decisions can have on people and processes.

During her career Rachel has served in analyst, product management, product marketing and executive roles.

Rachel’s writing:

  • The CR blog posts
  • Harvard Business Review: Calculating The ROI of Customer Engagement
  • InformationWeek articles
  • CMS Wire articles
  • [IDC Research, 2008] The Social Enterprise: How Social Networking Changes Everything
  • [IDC Research. 2008] U.S. Social Networking Application 2008–2012 Forecast: Enterprise Social Networking Takes Hold

Podcast and Interviews with Rachel:

  • Aberdeen Intelligent Business Show: Going Beyond Engagement: Finding Meaning in Community Data 
  • Diginomica Podcast: Communities are a-coming and you’d better be ready for them
  • Constellation Research DisruptTV: Episode 132 with Stuart Miniman, Host & Senior Analyst at theCUBE, Rachel Happe, Co-Founder & Principal at The Community Roundtable, and Heather Willems, Visual Strategist.
  • Smashing The Plateau: Why Community Is The Key To Success With Rachel Happe
  • IBM Conversations with Industry Innovators with Rachel Happe from The Community Roundtable 

Rachel’s speaking:

  • APQC’s KM Conference, 2019
  • Aurea Experience, 2018
  • J.Boye Conference, 2018
  • Igloo’s ICE Conference, 2018
  • Social Connections 2018
  • ALI 2018, Chair Strategic Internal Communications for Government
  • Higher Logic Super Forum 2017
  • JiveWorld, 2017: Building the Business Case to Defend and Grow Your Program
  • ALI Strategic Internal Communications, 2017
  • Higher Logic Super Forum 2016
  • INBOUND, 2016
  • KA Connect 2016: Architecting a Collaborative Culture Using TheCR’s Working Out Loud Framework
  • JiveWord 2016: Becoming a Community Ninja: 5 Secrets of Community Black Ops
  • FeverBee SPRINT, 2015
  • Higher Logic Super Forum, 2015: The Quantified Community
  • INBOUND, 2015
  • Summit on Customer Engagement, 2015
  • FeverBee SPRINT, 2014
  • JiveWorld 2014
  • Sitrion Collective Keynote, 2014
  • J. Boye, 2014
  • Enterprise 2.0 Summit, 2014
  • Gilbane, 2013
  • JiveWorld 2013
  • The Social Shake-Up, 2013
  • Community Conference Keynote, 2013
  • Boston Product Management Association, 2013
  • Defrag Keynote, 2012
  • JiveWorld 2012
  • IBM/Avnet Social Business and Web Experience Roadshows
  • CSC’s Technology and Business Solutions Conference, 2012
  • Social Media Week at SAP, 2012
  • IBM Connect, 2012
  • Enterprise 2.0 Keynote, 2011
  • MarketingProfs B2B Forum, 2010
  • Enterprise 2.0, 2010
  • Social Media & Community 2.0 Strategies, 2010

Have Rachel speak at your event

Have Rachel come in to your company for an advisory session

Community best practices

Resources for the people who build online communities.

ABOUT US
Our Values
Our Team
Our Clients
Careers

RESOURCES
Vendor Resource Center
Podcasts 
Community 101
Case Studies
Webinars

PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
Benchmarking and Audits
Models and Frameworks
Research
Professional Development

QUICK LINKS
Blog
Newsletter
About The Network
About The Library
About The Academy

LOGIN
The Network
The Library
The Academy

Contact
Support
Partnership
Inquiries
Subscribe to
Our Newsletter