the tactical part of community w/ pauline narvas, community @ vercel

full transcript

auto-generated from the audio, so expect a few typos. the audio is the source of truth.

just I want to hang out with your whole team I know I know just hang out with the whole team all right uh good everybody um happy Thursday once you get over the hump day it's Thursday and Friday just FYI um excited for this one you know it's so funny Jason Jason was giving me heck Jason's kind of whole like thing at torque is just to give me heck and he was like didn't you just have her on I was like yeah yeah yeah but it was such a great conversation we needed to we need to make it happens through the rather than later um

so excited excited for this episode to have Pauline back on the show uh staff community at versel staff Community engineer at versel I'm excited pumped it's a great conversation if you did not check if you did not uh happen to get our last conversation go to my YouTube tor's YouTube I know Pauline's posted about it too it was a great conversation it's really good I got a lot of DMs I got a lot of DMS from it uh a lot of people pretty pumped about it so excited for excited for part two um we're a little tactical today there there's no set questions I was

hanging out with Pauline life's nuts uh with both of us um we both said it's so crazy so Pauline's gota jump five minutes before 10 Central or yeah 10 Central my time so we're gonna dive into it today so Pauline let's give let's give what the people give what the people want give what they need I don't know the saying let's give them what they want who are you what do you do we'll go from there yes uh good morning everyone it's so nice to see so many people already in the chat so excited to hang out with you all um so for those who

don't know me I'm Pauline Navas and I am a staff Community manager at Vel I've been working in the community space I would say like pretty much all my life by accident most of the time I go into that like my journey in the previous chat so if you want to like watch that video I go into a little bit more depth of how I got involved in community um but yeah excited to just keep chatting about Community I honestly can speak for hours about this we've done like zero prep but I'm happy just like no prep yap on no prep whatsoever so I I'm

curious so you know you were chatting backstage it's crazy right now we're crazy like Jason prime example sent me a loom video on how to do something today and like I didn't even watch it yet like it's Prime like if you work with me like I only receive about 50% of the information well we're all busy we're all iterating we're moving fast I I'm seeing and shout out to versel shout out to you shout out to C I'm seeing more stuff coming out from the versel camp probably in the last uh few weeks um than I have seen in a while so shout out to

y'all um I I wanna I want to kind of get and you don't have to reveal too much you don't to reveal too much I mean I'm in no book I don't really care but um what how are you guys viewing this year how are you guys viewing deah how are you guys viewing Community uh give me kind of some themes and then I I'll obviously share as well and kind of how how we're viewing things yeah absolutely so it's super exciting right now in like the community space at versel we obviously had the wonderful cat join us recently and she's uh going to be

looking after a lot of our like Community programs I won't reveal too much because she's working on some really awesome stuff that should be out soon um but like I guess from like my direct team in community um the veral community specifically um we have a couple of things that we are looking at and um I think the most like the biggest investment of time right now is our versal community platform which is um our Forum where people where our customers and users come in and ask questions on how they can be successful in versel and it's great it's it's a good start for um

a lot of these conversations to happen but we want to build on on top of that and really make it into like a all-in-one Community platform where all the central kind of communi ty engagement happens um so that includes like uh one thing we shipped I don't know if we shipped it when we were chatting uh but last month we um shipped our very first versal Community live session which is essentially very similar to this where we have someone from the community or um like one of our customers or someone internally to just do a deep dive like office hour Style on what's going on

at verel what are they building um what are we what's the exciting projects that's really um that people need to know about and really kind of give a face to versel and show that there's a lot of people who make this company run well and you know kind of really make it shine um and be one of the best out there and so we wanted to highlight those folks a lot more so that's an that's an initiative that we're launch we we launched in December and we have so many fun sessions coming up um one I just need to like do a quick promo please

yeah yeah promo I'm gonna use this platform just to promo it we have one um with malava one of our um amazing product managers who is going to be talking about how you can protect your Versa sites from common attacks and that is like literally a 30 minute session if you want want to learn more about how you can protect your veral sites please join us and I think from like a really nerdy perspective the reason I'm so excited about these versal uh Community sessions is it's on our platform it's versal do community it's like built on top of where conversations are already happening we

basically use a plugin with discourse um where you essentially embed a YouTube video through streamyard it's a bit hack it's not hacky but it's definitely complicated with how we set it up but it works so well because we have an inbuilt chat that's not like on YouTube or other platforms but directly on the community platform itself and it took it took quite a lot of um work to get that all set up but I really love the result because we have basically all of the conve rsations in one place which is one of the things that we wanted to build like in the versal community

that is the North Star to keep all these Versa discussions happening in one place like at least one central place I know there's always going to be chatter by across everywhere but um but yeah so that's kind of one of the things that we're really excited of doing um we'll see a lot more in-person um kind of events across um across the world yes that's so exciting um and just generally um you'll see a lot more from the team as we continue to expand we have a lot of fun initiatives lined up I wish I could share them all with you I know I know

we'll see maybe privately yeah absolutely absolutely and and so I think it's interesting because I think one of the hardest parts about building Community is it's so fragmented right so you got Discord slack for like kind of chat communication you got uh you know telegram WhatsApp text you know whatever then you got the social medias and then you got the red I mean it just is it's it's it's it's extremely extremely uh complicated uh on how do so you guys it sounds like are literally trying are you guys like is this like I mean you can like blink twice type of situation are you guys

like trying to build a product that for for like Community people in general um no I wouldn't say that it's more about like trying to set like from from my perspective anyway like a Playbook of how it could be done I know people run communities in lots of different ways but I've been in this space for so long I've seen all of the different problems that have popped up and I'm like okay I really want to I have like this idea of what it could look like with what we have right now which is discourse and I'm just we're just putting all of our energies

into like building like that Central Hub but like you said Community is kind of like everywhere and it's a balance I think of having our own platform where we are like engaging with people and like our commun ity and our customers know that this is the place to talk to people at versa like officially but there's also things like Reddit and like Twitter and like LinkedIn and all all these other spaces that we still have eyes on like we have eyes everywhere yes to make sure that we're there to meet our community with like where where they are um but it's also like um like

a bit of a balance um in that but we are like my team at least is like focusing all of our energies into like building this Vel Community platform and making it like one of the best um example of what community could look like um for for for like on a discourse kind of setup um so yeah that's that's what I'm really excited about I could n about this like technical stuff in yeah yeah yeah no I love that so much so what what are some other themes you know again we don't dive into initiatives but like what are just some themes that y'all talking

about you know I think one of the things that that I'm really trying to do is is activity right I think you know you and I talked about that backstage I was talking to Taz yesterday off stage he goes he goes he goes I have literally never met any I've never met a team who has iterated faster uh and are doing more things than you guys and I think that was your biggest compliment for for our team because you know I you know I think so I and I say this all the time and and and aside from beliefs like I grew up Southern Baptist

right so like I was always in the church Mondays Wednesdays Thursdays Saturdays right very very kind of chal church growing up and like you know I think whe whether what whatever your views on religion is I think institu religious institutions I think do a really good job building Community I they just do no matter what religion whatever like I think like at the end of the day it's about community and so I've pulled a lot from kind of my upbringing but I want something every single day like like and I think too kind of pulling from the Tik Tock sh ops these days pulling from

um uh you know I think it's like QVC back in the day um I think honestly uh when it comes to like um you know the moms back in the early 2000s selling the leggings on Facebook live like they were all they were always streaming right streaming right now Kai sonat right you have all these streamers going like and and I wrote a a blog post about this or newsletter about how I think every company should have multiple streaming shows right like bar stool sports like people fall in love with Jason for different reasons that they fall in love with me and then hea's on

the chat hea's basically everybody in Mexico knows hea right so like everybody falls in love with her right and so like that's kind of what I'm thinking about is kind of having all of these like shows so I'm kind of curious um what what you guys are kind of thinking about um I have to say like with the show's perspective I totally agree I remember like the I would say the Golden Ages during like the pandemic I I was like subscribed to every person in Tech who was doing regular shows because I felt like I had an Avenue to connect with them and I still

feel like it I mean it's obviously fad the way in in a little bit because everyone wants to have that in-person kind of like um event and connection but I still feel like there's places for this for streaming and like basically online events and actually you've nailed you've nailed it for for us as well we are doing more online events so we're trying and I hope one day we could get to your kind of um level in Your Capacity because right now our team is quite small but we've you had conversations with uh fellow Community engineers in the team like do you want to run

one of these like verel Community sessions you co-host with someone else in our community one of our customers or even like a fellow like velan um and let's let's do more of these things because um we have so many things going on we actually shipped a events calendar in the community and you can see like everything that is like that's not even like I would say there's more of them but we probably Miss and I'm trying to find all of them right now that's going on in in Vel and it's a mixture of inperson and online uh but the thing that my team is focusing

on mostly is that like online space um getting like the lowest level of friction to get people on stage our customers on stage talking about their stories community members sharing what they've built with uh versel and also like us as well we need to talk more about what we're building and kind of the behind the scenes and I think that is the key like if there's anything that I would like take away from what we're doing in team the key focus is like really highlighting the people whether that's like people internally but also our customers and that is kind of like our North Star like

showing the humans almost behind like the brand behind the products behind the people who are like building things yeah EXA AB I love that so much yeah and shout out to Jason uh on our team we are using a versel I'm not technical Jason we using a versell app or versell page we're using versel uh for our page so if you go to what's what's what's the link I'm going to put the link up here it is nope that wasn't it hold on it is actually Jason just just ju we are hosting that's it yeah yeah ell oh we're doing that sweet vers uh Jason

drop drop the link in the chat uh but basically like one thing I one thing I want to do is like is is my thought was like we need a calendar where people can come to um and basically just hit it and be like hey like this week like and we even just pivoted again we pivot all the time where we're gonna put all of my podcast all of Brian's all of hea all of Jason's on our community page so then literally like we probably have two to I I would say Jason k for or hea k for I'm pretty sure we have two to

three streams going every day every day impressive and the thing is is that like I just think activity when it comes to community is huge to get people in if you're dormant again like you guys I've seen more activity yeah from versel I have seen more activity shout out Hank Taylor from Lille right like at the end of the day it's it's it's activity and I think the problem is in community teams it's like oh we'll post a blog article oh we'll do one webinar panel that's not live which I have another kind of set of issues with that and then it's like oh we

are we're done for the week or or done for the month I didn't thoughts on that no totally like so aligned with what you said it is about activity it's keeping that momentum up it's making sure that you actually engage with the people who are using your product who's be part of your community whatever it is um and that's kind of what we're doing as well like um at versal we are focusing mostly on these like Live Events but we are like building on top of the foundations we've already created with this Vel Community platform um and really finding ways to get increase engagement by

increasing activity like you said like it's not just answering questions from people about how do I do this on this s like this is broken it's not about that it's about having like organic conversations in it bringing like get bring people together to talk more about like why they're using verile or their ideas for feature requests and then also having these like virtual spaces they can connect with us like instead of just you know writing to us like asynchronously having this like discussion exactly what we're doing right now but we want to really like double down on that and I think like the activity is

the is the key to making sure that your community stays alive and stays like active and stays um just like fresh with new ideas and things so yeah and and listen I hate to say it I hate to say it but if you're not using social media and you're not on Twitter and you're not on Blue Sky and you're not on LinkedIn and you are n ot posting and engaging and letting people know what's going on you're obsolete like that's my hot take and I feel like a lot of people like oh we can send out an email newsletter or like we can we can

we can send out like a text and that's and like that you know that's activity it's like dude like what I've realized is um prime example I I've posted so I posted like I have my Vlog right my my B monthly Vlog and I still had people go who I know go oh I didn't know you had a vlog so now literally I have I literally and this is a little little peel behind the onion I'm literally looking at my list right now on Apple notes of things I tweet about consistently every Monday Wednesday Friday Tuesday Thursday they're just the same things over and over

and over again because what I've realized is that just because you think you talk about it a lot is not enough I mean I feel like is that really a hot take because I feel exactly the same okay I don't know I mean I've been in other organizations that don't feel that way so that's why I said that yeah I I definitely feel like actually you know what you're right now you've said it now you've said that I would tend to agree I feel like some people some organizations may just assume that people will come to us because we have a cool product but it's

not that you have to keep talking about what you're doing um what what you're building and I actually love that you and your team are always on the top of my feet maybe because I engage with you folks a lot but I always see folks and I I kind of know what you're always doing which is which is great I feel like like when just behind the scenes I didn't even ask like how is everything because it just felt like I saw I know because I engage with your content like all the time so yeah no and again like you know I'm you know I

know I know tor's the biggest fan of the versel community team and and obviously I know we're chitchatting about doing some stuff but like you know again like going back yeah what Jordan says here that's a great social media hack I mean literally like it's like Tuesday Thursday so like just to give you some ideas like on Tuesdays and Thursdays I I tweet consistently torque Discord torque jobs platform promote a previous podcast you on I was just on contagious tagus Kumar's podcast um cross promote another social media channel that I have some people don't know I have an Instagram some people don't know I have

a Tik Tok um Vlog promotion dads and Tech promotion in a virtual event promotion for torque right there if we're talking about social media strategy which I'm always fascinated with that's 2 4 six there where people like I don't know what to post just document what are you doing it's about do I feel very passionate about this because like a couple of um when was I would say like a couple of years ago before it became like like documenting your life and vlogging and things became a thing I've been documenting my life on on my blog since for like a couple of years now since

2008 yeah it was like my online diary and I think that's kind of how I got started with tech and got connected with the right people because people found my blog and they were like oh that's really cool that you're like talking about tech and like improving like um uh getting more women into Tech and like being part of all these initiatives it's really cool like do you want to chat and then it kind of snowballed honestly like just documenting what you're doing what you're building online and you know building in public goes so much like just goes a long long way and I remember

in my old um company that's what I was basically doing like as much as I can just yapping on about the company about the the product and it's it's the best way to like build like a following build like uh customers who like are interested in what you're doing and just just Yap keep going you know across all absolutely and again I I it's so cool this is the third conversation this we ek about Community we had kenty dods on Monday we had Taz yes on Tuesday and then you today um and even Brian and I went live yesterday talk about some torque updates with

about community so I do want to go back I I want to ask you how are you guys thinking about this kind of goes off of Kent C dod's conversation about conferences sponsoring conferences without without I obviously giving too much away like how are you guys viewing conferences what conferences you're going to what conferences you're sponsoring what's kind of the conversations um that you guys are talking about at a high level that's uh that's great I feel like the so I'm not too involved in the conference conversations right now it's more like uh like a different like the events team um at the moment but

I can tell you that in previous roles I've um I've had as Community person our Focus was mostly on the where our users were like if our users were our customers were attending like um I don't know like a like some oh actually a good example was cubec con which was a conference I went to every single year for like three years um that was the reason we went there was because that was where like our Target kind of persona our customers and our community like most active community members were going too so we were like it makes a lot of sense for us to

have a presence there and I tend to have this same s it's like for me it's like who who who are the people we are who who are the people that we want to use our product let's go to where they go and if we don't know that yet like do some interviews talk to your customers literally just ask are you what what are you using for your personal development budget like yeah for conferences like where are you going and kind of like find those patterns and then um go go from there and and sponsor them or get involved send a team um but yeah

that's kind kind of how I would approach it I love that yeah I mean one thing we're talking I mean again torque you know we ar e we are we've already dug our Lane in latam Engineers right so we are we have three or four conferences we're going to in Latin America this year really really excited about I think the other side than what we're doing and I think a lot of people are doing this right now um but you know we're kind of hopping on the AI train like want to help staff up llm Engineers or um ml Engineers or whatever so like we're

looking at AI conferences right and and and one thing I I was texting with a conference organizer the other day and he's like he's like hey I'm thinking about bringing back X conference and I was like all right he's like what do you think and I said I think with the way we are viewing conferences and viewing budgets that I think conferences that are actually very specific now I think get is going to get a better Roi from a from a from a um sponsorship perspective I think like the general maybe another hot take maybe not think the general conference Circuit of course like you

have render who's Big got that right and all things open big got that and even all the all the other bigger ones but I think like the the the the midsize conferences the three to a thousand person conferences I think the the more drill down you can go in terms of of of skill set ex you know what you want to do I think you're actually going to get more sponsors I also maybe the is even a hotter take I I would I would even say that maybe conferences isn't the way to go these days with sponsorship especially because you know we're all on budgets

and stuff I would actually argue meetups are probably the best way you can get a good return on investment um we I'm we're still like you know bringing meetups at that sell like to become a thing like cap is like leading on that and it's it's great but I again we'll use an example from my previous uh role and in that one I would say we had higher engagement in the meetups because they were we branded them directly as this company's Meetup and you know we are in your city we're coming to your city come join us and we got the best conversations from like

prospects current customers just proactive community members we got the best return on investment from meetups um then in conferences I would say um just because they create you create more of that um direct kind of relationship with um with people that go to the the meetups in comparison to a large conference that has like thousands of people and you're talking to so many people a day but how many of those people actually like convert to something uh like useful like being part of the community um but I would say meetups are the way to go and if you are thinking of Hosting meetups you should

use Guild by Tas so yeah obviously he would be happy I mentioned that yeah big big Taz fan for sure and big Guild fan I think what you said was interesting because Kent C dods brought that up on Monday Kent basically was like I guess tail is does he say Tailwind does this basically it's like a series of meetups and they're like tiny conferences but like if you think about it like and and if you think about again I pull everything from fashion and pop culture like you know you have these companies that do limited drops in different cities yep right they don't open up

a store they just do a limited drop right and so I think I do think that's an interesting trend of hey what if what what if we hosted three meetups in three cities over three months around these topics and it is a it it is a work blank or it's a it's a versel you know Meetup series whatever it is I think that's a very interesting thing because like the ROI is like all right we're gonna pull like if we have a hundred people show up to a Meetup and then you got to make the meetups cool which is like a whole another conversation in

himself if you have a 100 people show up at that Meetup and it's all you and you get to give out your brand at swag which by the way tor's gonna have some six swag I'm excited we're working with a designer now um like I think like if you if you get a 100 people in your ecosystem that are all bought into if they buy a 100 buyers and you continue to replicate or duplicate or triplicate that across the board then you got a thousand buyers that are really I think I think that's the thing I think that's thing I totally totally agree and I

feel like you also have um you like in comparison to a conference it's just the like lower lift you don't and that's what keny dods was saying too it's so much better and you can show up with a bag of Swag and like just feed the folks that go to your meet up and that's it and you don't even have to Brand everything it's just everyone is all in one place you get to make those connections have those like um interesting discussions in a much smaller scale so I actually am all in for meetups more than conferences I will talk about that forever I love

that I love that all right uh we're about at time I want to log off a little early uh just so we can get the recording uh quality correct we're having some issues with quality reportings um any last p uh pieces of advice for people specifically who are building Community Ed company um okay firstly if you do have any more questions about like community building and is specifically um in a in a company I recently started doing coffee chats like very casual coffee chats with folks and I've had some incredible discussions over the last couple of weeks so if you are interested in like chatting

with me oneon-one completely free it's only 20 minutes you can hear me Yap tell me about your community issue or your problem with building in your um your company then we can we can talk about that in a little bit more detail so I just wanted to pitch that and also I just feel like one of the thing we can get really bogged down with all of the like how can we do this the Tactical stuff like like you know the technical details of how to build community uh that it becomes almost like a robotic Pl aybook but one thing I will always always stand

by is remember that the community that you're building is for people you are talking to humans and all you can do to become like the best most genuine Community person out there building a community in your organization is just to show up as a fellow human being and just listen listen to the feedback like be empathetic and really just like lead with like people in mind um and that's it that's like my mic drop there you go I love it you all have a good one uh we are do I have start something tomorrow I think I have something tomorrow yes I have Stephen Sherry

he's a CTO staff engineer in Cincinnati great around the interviewing process we're back on the job search tomorrow after three wonderful days of community talk Pauline thank you so much stay on so say bye to you backstage youall have a great one we'll see y'all tomorrow morning peace