Happy Community Manager Appreciation Day! Started in 2010, this all day event encourages people from all over the world to send a sincere thank you note to community managers or teams doing amazing community work.
At Mobilize, we are fortunate to support thousands of community managers year-round. We know that managing a community is no easy task. Community Managers often find themselves the sole organizer of hundreds and thousands of people, and are tasked with moving those people toward a unified goal. They daily provide excellent support, communication, and leadership. They do this with very few tools built just for them, putting creativity and ingenuity to good use to assemble community campaigns and initiatives. You may never see all the work that goes into what they do, but trust me (having spent ten years in the role myself): the best community managers do a lot behind the scenes—and much more than you can ever imagine.
Even if it’s the first time you’ve heard of this international event, it’s not too late to participate. Take a moment today to reach out to a community team or manager that has helped you achieve a professional goal, learn something new, grow your business, or find new opportunities.
To get this love-fest going, we’ve assembled seventeen community managers in our own sphere that we’d like to thank for their hard work assembling and motivating their communities.
Docker
Big ups and thanks to the Docker Community Team! Victor Coisne, Karen Bajza and Lisa McNicol use innovative tools and strategies to foster their community of Docker enthusiasts. Aside from fostering camaraderie among their fans, they give their community a lot of awesome perks—including priority access to beta programs, frequent updates on product releases, and opportunities to become a mentor, speaker, blogger, meetup organizer, etc.
Tweet your thanks!
Meetup
Thank you to Andrea Murphy, Community Engagement Manager at Meetup. Meetup brings people together in thousands of cities to do more of what they want to do in life. As Community Engagement Manager, Andrea says her responsibility is to “make sure the community is well represented, maintained, and that we’re providing everyone with the best resources and support possible.” We think she’s doing an awesome job, and encourage you all to reach out and thank her for ‘Keeping Meetup, Meetuppy!’
Tweet your thanks!
Prezi
A huge thank you to Ashley Whitlatch, a community alumni for Prezi—a presentation software for visual storytelling and conversational presenting. During her time at Prezi, Ashley found new ways and tools to nurture relationships, and streamline communication with their Expert community. As a result, Prezi increased engagement within the Prezi Experts community, and was able to better tap into their user community for product feedback during beta tests, improving the product for the whole community.
Wonder Workshop
Thank you to June Lin and Bryan Miller of Wonder Workshop—creators of Dash & Dot, award-winning educational robots, and applications that make learning to code fun and meaningful for kids. If it’s not already pretty amazing that this power team helped build the education segment at Wonder Workshop from the ground up, the fact that they created an experience around it by also hosting student/teacher competitions makes their work even more incredible. What’s more, they created a community through Mobilize where they can send product and competition updates to their teachers group, allowing teachers to get help from each other.
Tweet your thanks!
Looker
Thank you Carter Moar, Margaret Rosas, Brian LaFaille, Ryan Lee, Kelly Payne, Matt Kuhn at Looker. Looker—an analytics tool that brings data and business teams together—makes it easy for everyone to explore and understand the data that drives business. While this team operates without the title of community manager, they all do an awesome job engaging their developer network in the process of building better products. Together they run an early release group that gives the network an early look at their newest features.
Tweet your thanks!
Vinted
A very special thank you to Ro Hensley, a Community Ambassador alumni for Vinted, a peer-to-peer marketplace to sell, buy and swap vintage clothing. During her time at the company, she discovered innovative tools and communication workflows that helped create a movement full of loyal users known as “Vintees”. Those ambassadors have made a huge impact on Vinted—increasing the company’s number of active monthly users in the U.S. from 19,000 to 2.2 million.
Tweet your thanks!
SFEtsy
Thank you to Rebecca Saylor of SFEtsy! When she’s not running her own small business, Rebecca is the volunteer organizer, leader and organizer of the SFEtsy team, a collective of artists and small business owners selling their work online at Etsy.com and at local pop-up events in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The team seeks to discover and surface opportunities for its members to “grow and develop their small businesses in ways that enrich our community and the lives of our team members.”
Tweet your thanks!
RocketSpace
Thank you to the amazing community team at RocketSpace, a technology campus located in the heart of San Francisco. Working together as a team (Sophie Bousset, Psyche Resus, Teresa Lutz, Carly Fortunato, Ashleigh Harris, Mitra Broomand, Ryan Lee, Ronan Roche, Brad Strum and Duncan Logan) ensure companies get more out of their experience in their coworking space—special opportunities, membership and event updates, announcements about new or existing companies in the building, and helping them connect to one another.
Tweet your thanks!
Magento
Thank you to Sherrie Rohde, Community Manager for flexible commerce platform, Magento. Sherrie first began as a developer for a Magento merchant before transitioning to role of Community Manager where she now connects her members to resources that can help and support each other, she also co-produces a weekly broadcast for community professionals called #CMGRHangout.
Tweet your thanks!
Scoop
Thank you to Adam Faludi, Head of Community at Scoop, a shared commuting rideshare service and mobile application for improving the commute to work via automated, smart carpooling. Using innovative communication tools, Adam manages and promotes the Scoop Ambassadors program as the “backbone of support for the broader community engagement goals.”
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Seedcamp
Thank you to Miguel Pinho and Sia Houchangnia at Seedcamp—a First Round Fund which invests in pre-seed and seed stage startups. While not Community Managers by profession, they’ve helped build a family of over 170 invested startups, encouraging their alumni founders to “keep in touch, share knowledge and make the most of the entire Seedcamp network in order to accelerate their success.”
Tweet your thanks!
Bessemer & Scale Venture Partners
Thank you to David Wehrs at Bessemer Venture Partners and Scale Venture Partners, a VC firm that invests in enterprise technology companies with a focus on SaaS and cloud infrastructure. As Partner, Head of BVP Funded Solutions, David does exceptional work keeping all of his network of portfolio companies successful and connected.
Tweet your thanks!
ybSF
Thank you to Dara M Wilson at ybSF, a community where “young Blacks of the Bay Area share information about social events, jobs, volunteer opportunities, and more.” Dara organizes local events for all her members, encouraging them to connect and experience local culture, friendship, and networking with open-minded professionals in their twenties and thirties.
Share your thanks!
Maker Faire
Thank you to Jessica Hobbs and Sabrina Merlo at Maker Faire, an all-ages gathering of tech enthusiasts, crafters, educators, tinkerers, hobbyists, engineers, science clubs, authors, artists, students, and commercial exhibitors. Using Mobilize, this team has organized their community of 600+ Maker Faire organizers online in a searchable, chattable Mobilize group. This is a special place online where their community can get access to meetups, workshops, VIP access to flagship events, and news about a weekend conference for producers. In general, they can share best practices, suggest solutions, and provide peer-to-peer support. Tweet your thanks!
Microsoft Ventures
Thank you to Yonit Soloducho and Michal Bloch at Microsoft Ventures. This is an elite team at Microsoft Ventures, the venture capital arm of Microsoft, that makes early-stage investments in world-changing startups. They also use a community strategy to keep their global alumni in their network connected and thriving.
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CrowdCompanies
Thank you to Jeremiah Owyang and the team at Crowd Companies—an association to help big companies better understand the collaborative economy. Using a community strategy, they share newsletter content, access to the member directory and exclusive research—all through Mobilize.
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RisingTide
Thank you to the team at Rising Tide Society, an international network of creative entrepreneurs who believe in community over competition. A nimble group of dedicated employees manages a network of local city group leaders using Mobilize, regularly sending event updates and other announcements to keep the network motivated and active in leading all their local groups. The local leaders each have their own city groups of hundreds—or sometimes thousands of members.
Tweet your thanks!