@aaronoleary My community tech stack for Rosieland: - Discourse - Ghost - Slack - Waves (https://meetwaves.com/) - Butter.us - Whereby - Savannah (https://savannahhq.com/) There's other community tech stacks here: https://village.rosie.land/t/wha...

@mikestaub Honestly, I'm mostly disappointed. 😢 The deeper I dive into community the more problems I see that need to be solved. I really want people to step up. Most of the tools out there are not doing it for me and it's still too hard to do things that should be easy. On the plus side, there's plenty of room for innovation. I love the creator economy, but I also feel it's a bit too influence-y and most of these communities really serve themselves first. It's a bit of a nuance of what community is and isn't, the lines are definitely blurred, and that's ok. I detest the web3 world (sorry) and I feel it was a huge distraction and theft of what community actually is or could be. I'm a big fan of custom built communities (like PH and Indie Hackers) and hope to see more of these appear in the future.

@rosiesherry I agree with you 100%. The gap between the potential and what exists is enormous and I think web3 may have corrupted the term "community" with its get-rich-quick ethos. What do you think is the biggest problem that needs to be solved if you could only solve one?

@mikestaub @rosiesherry It's not quite ready for PH but i'd love to demo what I'm working on,... It is a pure, decentralized, creator economy and meCo is designed to not be a middleman... our tagline is 'Mind your own business; we'll provide the tools'

@mikestaub web3 definitely corrupted the community term, and honestly, I'm so upset about it, but onwards we go. The biggest problem imho is too many conversations and not taking any action on them. People are overwhelmed by it all and they are just not helpful.

@rosiesherry talk is cheap and fun. Idk how to solve that problem? Action requires planning and commitment

@richw build relationships, have conversations, become known for that person/company/community that does x. Do as much as you can in 'public'. People are put off this because it is slow, but the deeper you go, the more relevant you become and the more people will pay attention to you.

@umut_sonmez Question whether you actually need a community, most people won't want to join a product community. But mostly, I recommend the Minimum Viable Community way. https://rosie.land/posts/a-guide...

@_abhitweets think in terms of community flywheels https://rosie.land/tag/flywheels/

@asthakor51 there is no best, there is only context. Mostly, it depends where your target members tend to hang out.

@simon_s_j I honestly struggle with questions like this. It feels like too much to bite off in one chunk. Partly the language thing is so complex 🤯 Another part is that I don't have direct experience with different language communities. I'm sure there are (enterprise) tools out there that cater for this (and likely cost a lot of money), but that's not something I directly know about. Another part is that I'm a sucker for the Minimum Viable Community approach. I've only ever been able to build community slowly, tackling one thing at a time, and often these things don't actually rely on a 'community tool', it's more about figuring out what people want. I'd go where your people are, embrace conversations that are happening, start something low risk, don't assume you know what they want and aim to build with their input. https://rosie.land/posts/a-guide...

@codefreechris 1. create their own influencers: stop relying on big names to get traction, build people within 2. focus on outcomes rather than vanity metrics: the more you change people's lives, the more they will come back 3. understand that communities are forever evolving: what works now, might not work in the near future (but also, don't give up too easily and understand that many things take time to work).

@zainab_saeed1 First up, you're not alone. "Engagement" is the biggest challenge for community builders out there. Many of us haven't really been taught or trained in any aspects of how to have good conversations or how to research the needs of the people and the community. They key to engagement is not in the tools, no tool will solve that for you if you can't figure out how to connect and be of interest to your members. Every community that I lead, I dive in deep to understand the ecosystem I'm serving. For me, and especially the professional communities that I naturally gravitate towards, there is no other way. How can we facilitate good conversation if we don't understand what matters? If we don't understand the trends? The pains? It's not necessarily about us knowing everything, but it's about knowing what questions to ask, or what things to post. It most definitely takes practice. I call the research phase 'Community Discovery'. I've written about it here: https://rosie.land/posts/a-guide... Also of interest would being careful of the engagement trap: https://rosie.land/posts/the-com... Also worth considering is the fact that sometimes just posting stuff isn't enough, you need to put effort into getting people to see those posts.

@runqiu Q: What's the ideal size of an accountability group? I was thinking 15-20 because I assume only half will actively participate. I think it depends on the context. For cohorts, which is related to Maven, I'd personally prefer smaller groups. I've spoken to people time and time again who say they get overwhelmed when there are too many people in the room. The ideal size (imho) being around 5 people. If it's bigger than this then there is too much small talk and not enough getting deeper into what really matters. The best conversations happen when people have deeper understanding of everyone's situation. There's so much generic advice out there that is not actually helpful A thing happened in a cohort I did: 6 students self organised into private DM Slack Group. The self organisation was based on them having a break out room in our first intro session. These students were the most engaged and stuck through until the end. The other students completion rate was much lower. I would also encourage considering neurodiverse needs, for some people it is torture openly speaking with others, some will only want to lurk, some will prefer async discussions, or even the ability to ask anonymous questions. Q: What's the best way to "put them in touch"? This such a hard one. I still opt for Slack every single time, but it can also depend on the context and the tools people prefer. I'm edging towards more forum like stuff these days, especially with the likes of Discourse and Circle now offering 'chat' within these spaces. Forums are great for longer term discussions that people can look back on too, that's just not an option with the likes of Slack. It is with Discord, but I just think many people don't search past conversations that much. Q: I know people are bad at self-organizing. How do I ensure that they actually meet without me creating Zoom links for them? This is so hard. The reality is that you may need various touch points, some people need a calendar invite, some need email reminders, some need a place to check. Make it as easy as possible. For example, I like Whereby for this, where you can create URLs for rooms that don't change and people can just show up. Butter.us has similar functionality, though from a very different use case.

@archisman_das all of this comes back to community discovery, the research and understanding of your people. If you are unable to start conversations then that is an indication you need to do more work on what you could talk about, what kind of conversations will help your people move forward and what you want to be known for. This does take experimentation to get right and it's never static, you'll have to change and adapt over time. I tend to ask a lot of open ended questions on things that I think people should be thinking about. Then getting people's perspectives ends up being educational for all. However, really, it shouldn't end there, what will you do with all that information? How can you promote it more? How can you turn it into other content? etc.

@frankie_zhang People don't understand how hard community is. Ask yourself: - why would they go back? - is it worth their time? - Is what exists inside helpful? - what are you doing to build up their habits of coming back? - how are you investing into growth? I find that a lot of communities are just not very interesting or helpful. Often they have *too much conversation and not enough action*. Conversations are key to community, but you have to find ways to make it into something more. No one wants to go to their 'local town hall' and be forever discussing things, they want outcomes and change. It's really hard. ❤️

@alexanderisora Easy to spin up Out of the box tools Not 100 different services to make it work Plenty of ways to make them financially stable Not dominated by big tech

@alexanderisora @rosiesherry I have the prototype MVP built... This answers a question i was going to ask... what's missing in the current formats...?

@vivek_vardhan 1. How to engage the community without being noisy? Esp when the community is made up of professionals like founders & CEOs? Don't be noisy? Focus on being relevant. Saving them time. Bring them new insights and different perspectives. Help them achieve what they want to achieve. 2. Any tools you recommend for good community engagement? Honestly, good conversation and community discovery. There are no tools for this, only your mind and creativity. 3. How do you manage hours to shut down PC and mobile notification as a community manager esp when it is a global community? Create boundaries and live by them. We all need them. Community builders are so prone to burnout because of this. We have to get better at creating boundaries. And honestly, your members will appreciate and understand. Fast responses are not necessarily better ones.

@vincent_meco I have monetized communities, in varying ways. With Rosieland I use Ghost as my main website and membership. With Ministry of Testing that I founded, it's membership, events, sponsorship, but most of it is custom built, when necessary. And I don't think there is a 'best', but I'd love to see easier to implement membership options that also handle tax requirements.

@0xblackbird Focusing on conversations and not enough action. Thinking you need a 'community tool' to have a community Being too transactional in your behaviour. Not doing your research. Do your research!

@ashrahman It's a debate that may never end. There is no right or wrong, though. Discord was built for gamers, it has a different vibe. Slack is more professional and tech focused. Do what you feel happy with. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Personally, I used Discord for over a year and decided I hated it. The UX, the bots, the confusing threads, the spam, urgh. I started an indie founder community (where you get kicked if you don't participate 😅) we started on Discord, but interest soon was lost and people ended up saying they hated it. We moved to Slack and conversations massively increased and have stayed way up. https://twitter.com/rosiesherry/... I also have ethical concerns about Discord, which I wrote about here: https://village.rosie.land/t/i-d... People complain about Slack losing history, but I think that lack of history brings a sense of peace to members who don't necessarily want their conversations to exist forever. There are also tools like MeetWaves (https://meetwaves.com/) that allow you to capture Slack conversations. In addition to the huge amount of integrations, the DMs in Slack are highly under rated. (https://village.rosie.land/t/can...)

@rosiesherry Looks like we have a mutual feeling for discord. A great tool when gaming but nightmare for a community. Thanks for sharing insightful thoughts.