Whenever meeting someone for the first time, I eventually get asked the question: “what do you do?”, now most people can simply respond in a word or two - “Marketing”, “Finance”, “Sewage & Sanitation Engineer”, etc. Me on the other hand, “Community Manager”. Community Management? Community what? Huh? What is that?
These are the questions I myself asked a few years ago when entering this field. After all, there weren’t any Online Community Management courses offered in college. In fact, a few industry influencers believe the title, “Community Manager”, is a bit misleading, because communities don’t want to be managed they rather be taken care of (that’s a completely different discussion - shout outs to @chrisbrogan & @julien). Additionally, at the time I entered this space there wasn’t a lot of relevant resources to explore, and today, while things have slightly improved there’s still a ways to go. A couple of weeks ago while eating lunch with a few fellow online community junkies it came to us, wouldn’t it be great to organize a lunch event that gathered like minded individuals? Eureka!
Community Speak Up is a lunchtime meetup designed to help Community Managers and Social Media professionals come together and share personal experiences and best practices. The plan is to talk about everything from popular trends, key challenges, to basics like how to address your specific community. While there are conventions and conferences that take on similar goals, not everyone can easily access them, we want to make this more open. If we’re lucky, we’ll be blessed by some awesome speakers on occasion - we want to make this a rewarding experience for all of the participants.
We’re holding shop at the Current SF office on King, right across from Pac Bell park on Wednesday October 28th. This will be a BYOL (bring your own lunch) event and seating will be limited, so please RSVP below. Thanks and hope to see you there!
Community Speak Up Invite
Also check out what my friend Mario (@manima) had to say about the event on his blog here.
