Event Replay: Executive Insights with Gradual: Navigating Community Leadership in the B2B World

00:00:00:08 - 00:00:31:03 Joshua Zerkel Hello everyone, and welcome to Executive Insights with gradual and today's topic Navigating Community Leadership in the B2B world. I'm Josh circle, head of marketing and community here at gradual. In case you are new to gradual, it's the all in one engagement and community platform to turn connection into lasting business impact and grow engagement beyond your product. Before I introduce our guest expert, just a quick note please drop your questions in the Q&A and we'll get to as many as we can live today.

00:00:31:05 - 00:00:55:23 Joshua Zerkel But after this session ends, the conversation doesn't end with it. You'll still be able to ask questions and share your thoughts and ask questions of our guest in the forum, AMA. We'll share that link later during the webinar. And now, without further ado, I'd like to introduce our guest. Danny Weinstein, his, community strategist and executive, an engagement executive with extensive experience driving customer success.

00:00:55:24 - 00:01:32:18 Joshua Zerkel So a lot of ease there. Advocacy and business value through innovative community programs at IBM, SAP, HPE, Domo and Cultura. Danny was most recently the head of Community Tech Exchange at IBM. The tech Exchange community is a place for IBM customers, partners, developers and employees to learn, grow, and connect with IBM. Danny brings a proven track record at both large enterprise and pre-IPO startup unicorns in designing and executing initiatives that captivate audiences, enhance customer loyalty, and deliver measurable results, including millions in cost savings and increased retention.

00:01:32:20 - 00:01:45:07 Joshua Zerkel He's recognized for scaling customer community programs, leveraging data driven insights, and creating meaningful customer experiences that drive pipeline and revenue growth. I'd like to welcome my friend Danny.

00:01:45:09 - 00:01:48:15 Dani Weinstein Good morning Josh. Good to be here. Quick introduction.

00:01:48:17 - 00:02:16:05 Joshua Zerkel Yeah. Thanks for having us. Having having your time with us today. I've known Danny for quite a while through the world of community builders, and I've always been impressed, Danny, with your. Just the sheer array of experience that you have in your background across really large companies. Smaller start ups, but always in the B2B space. And I think what's really interesting about the B2B space in particular is as compared to B2C, we're often communities are built around vibes.

00:02:16:05 - 00:02:44:27 Joshua Zerkel Typically in B2B there's there's more emphasis on how do we create real results with community at the center and making sure people are having a great experience. But what is it that we're driving? And, you know, you've had such a diverse set of experiences across large and small B2B companies. Maybe the first question we can start with is, how do you approach community leadership, and how does this differ across the different organizations you've been with?

00:02:44:29 - 00:03:08:11 Dani Weinstein That's a great question. So, I think in order to really properly address that question, yeah. Why don't we begin with really, you know, what does community mean? If we were going to go and survey ten executives, we like a ton of answers about what the value or what the meaning of community is. And the way that I like to explain community is how do you connect your customers to partners, developers and employees to share knowledge.

00:03:08:13 - 00:03:32:20 Dani Weinstein And if you share knowledge properly for a customer base that enables them to actually use your products and platforms in a better way if they use it more, by definition, that will drive more of the goodness around upsell, adoption, support, reflection, content creation, and even, innovation. And so with that, and again, I've, I've been doing B2B for many, many years and I've sat in organizations from, you know, I think it's the race for the HP.

00:03:32:22 - 00:03:52:21 Dani Weinstein I was in sales most recently at IBM. I was in marketing at SAP. And so I think at the end of the day, first, understand, you know, where do you sit in the organization who's paying your bills actually, and finding the community because first and foremost, if you're not tying the value of the community to the CPU of your executive, it's going to be a struggle.

00:03:52:23 - 00:04:10:27 Dani Weinstein And so you need to be able to pay the bills for the organization and actually be able to speak their language. And so if the if you're, you know, sitting in the support organization and you know, a star is going to be all right, show me the spot inflection or if I'm in marketing, you know, where is the Legion and where are the customer stories and where are the advocacy.

00:04:10:27 - 00:04:34:10 Dani Weinstein Where's, you know, where is the story? My my super fans and advocates, the same thing is true if you're in, you know, success. How is this going to tie to, you know, help, help the ksn's with their, their measurements on upsell, retention and renewal. So the way that, you know, so having that with that mindset, you need to able to break down, okay.

00:04:34:13 - 00:04:58:17 Dani Weinstein How can I, you know, measure that value in the community? How do I tie it to that Northstar KPI and ensure that you've got, you know, sort of the table set in your organization. Once you've got that and you are, you know, delivering good results to, you know, the organization that you're in, then it's really critical because community is a horizontal that delivers value across the organization.

00:04:58:20 - 00:05:31:28 Dani Weinstein So then you as you're starting to do and if you you know, when you when you come into organization or doing a road showing and a listening tour, you're going to find out quickly, sort of, you know, who else is interested, who actually cares about what we're doing is it's is it support is the success. And find that next sort of most favorable, leader in that organization that you can go and have lunch or coffee with to really sit down and talk about the value that you could bring, or the bad that the untapped value community for the organization and start to build those alliances across, across the business.

00:05:31:28 - 00:05:54:13 Dani Weinstein So what happens when you do that? It then anchors community really is a, a solid, an integrated part of the business. And it's more of a journey. And so, it's incredibly important to think about, you know, food is not just nice to have to think nice. It's not just nice to have it is fundamental to, to the business.

00:05:54:13 - 00:06:07:06 Dani Weinstein And so to do that, you really need to be able to, to measure, track and showcase how, you know, how does this provide value for the work we're doing at the end of the day? And, you know, bring that to, to the leader of each organization?

00:06:07:08 - 00:06:26:27 Joshua Zerkel Yeah, I think that's always super important is helping people across the business understand both that community is horizontal because unless, a leader has seen it played out that way before, they may not understand that. That's how it works. And understanding from the the leader of the community perspective. How do I translate this value to these other stakeholders?

00:06:27:00 - 00:06:46:07 Joshua Zerkel I've often had conversations, as I'm guessing you have as well with other community builders, especially people who are perhaps newer to leading community, where the refrain is something like this I have this awesome community of people they're really excited to be there, but no one at the business seems to care. They don't understand what we're doing. They just don't get it.

00:06:46:10 - 00:06:56:28 Joshua Zerkel What would you say to someone like that who is struggling to explain the value of community to stakeholders, or even their own executive leader?

00:06:57:00 - 00:07:15:29 Dani Weinstein So my suggestion would be that, you know, if you have a particular leader of the thing or maybe it's the VP of engineering who, you know, you have an opportunity to create a, you know, an ideas for to, for example, and to help drive efficiency on capturing the voice of the customer. And then they, you know, the majority of maybe actually, you know what?

00:07:16:00 - 00:07:40:04 Dani Weinstein That's just going to be a, an echo chamber and a place for people to complain or we're never going to do it. I think it's it's prudent to really spend time to understand what is keeping these executives up at night, what problems are they trying to solve? How can you make their lives better? And so even, you know, in my time of Donald, it took us nine months of discussions with the VP of engineering to actually enable and get approval for an ideas exchange.

00:07:40:04 - 00:07:59:05 Dani Weinstein And so there really were two big pieces. One was I could actually demonstrate, you know, greater efficiencies. I said, how many hours are being spent by your engineering team chasing emails from the CEO to the salespeople to, the CSM on the same idea, I said, if I can give you back 100 engineering hours a year, that is that is that is an interesting number one.

00:07:59:05 - 00:08:23:02 Dani Weinstein Number two. The other interesting piece there is also, you know, having data business driven decisions based on data, meaning it's not gamifying the idea and saying this one has a thousand roots, we're going to go do it. It's okay. Well, who's actually voting? What accounts care about this idea? How much money is tied to that idea? Then the executive actually has an informed decision about what's what's that worth and so forth.

00:08:23:02 - 00:08:39:14 Dani Weinstein This is just a small example. If you are able to show those two things suddenly now the executive saying, oh wow, the community is actually helping me become more efficient and providing the better business informed decisions or data driven decisions.

00:08:39:16 - 00:09:11:11 Joshua Zerkel Yeah, especially for like engineering leaders, for instance, the data driven decisions part usually really resonates. So I think some of what you're speaking to is something that I've often shared with other community builders, is you have to speak the language of the person, the executive you're speaking with. Yep. And I've often seen a mismatch in the way that we who build communities, frame the work that we're doing as creating value for members, making sure they're enjoying themselves, making sure that they're getting something out of the community, that's all great and that's all programmatic.

00:09:11:14 - 00:09:31:06 Joshua Zerkel But the other people, the stakeholders, the people that are paying the bills, as you mentioned, they may not be looking at it through that lens. And so part of our job and leading these programs is being able to be the bridge between here's what the program is doing and here's how it matters to the business. Where where in your career have you seen that breakdown?

00:09:31:06 - 00:09:38:19 Joshua Zerkel And what are some of the approaches that you've had to try to rebuild some of that bridge?

00:09:38:21 - 00:10:03:15 Dani Weinstein Absolutely. And again, this is something that, you know, many of us have been through before, change it. Change is a constant. And especially when you have new executives coming into and an existing role where you have a great, you know, executive sponsor and things are running, you know, extremely well, you may have somebody coming in who has a completely different lens on the world and how things run and their perception of community.

00:10:03:15 - 00:10:21:02 Dani Weinstein They may be that, this is just nice to have. It's really driving the value for me. And it kind of goes back to you really needing to start that conversation again, as if you never had it before with your organization about how does this person think? How are the you know, what does success look like? What is the Northstar KPI?

00:10:21:02 - 00:10:50:02 Dani Weinstein Is it, you know, is it lead gen for marketing? Is it up substantial renewal for success? Is it how many people are we going to get trained this year in our learning organizations? I've also said in learning that when we were SVP and so you've got to be able to peel back those layers and understand, where's the tie in to that in order to start KPI and then start to kind of provide them with, you know, unbiased data that shows this is a connection, this is how it it's this is the value we bring today.

00:10:50:02 - 00:11:11:26 Dani Weinstein And here's the opportunity. And this is how we're going to make your life better by partnering together. So with that, in some cases, you know, the the message resonates really well. In other cases there are things that are you out of, out of your control where, you know what, we've got to have full force, maybe have to downsize, and do a reset.

00:11:11:26 - 00:11:31:11 Dani Weinstein And so at the same time, one of the things that I like to tell people in the community as well is, you know, try not to boil the ocean, you know, jerk off. I'll give really good advice. Back in the early days, which is you got to start really small. You have to see what conversations the customers want to have and not try to, you know, boil the ocean, give somebody credit.

00:11:31:13 - 00:11:50:14 Dani Weinstein Support forums. We have people from product saying, you know, I want my products here, here, here, here. And you know, we literally start like four, four boards for all of HPC and printers back in the day. And so with that you need to have, you know, high quality versus volume initially is incredibly important. The same is true here.

00:11:50:16 - 00:12:09:00 Dani Weinstein Think about if you have to pivot, reset, think about where that most of the core value is going to be and how that's going to be sustained. But then also think about what's the next thing you know. It's kind of like a layered cake. You want to maintain that core layer, but then start building upon that so that you can have sustained value over time.

00:12:09:03 - 00:12:29:10 Joshua Zerkel Yeah. I think that that concept of start small, don't try to boil the ocean. I think most community builders work in the opposite because they envision this big, massive thing that they can create. And I think that we are really good at seeing possibilities for what could be created. And if you start there, you're going to have a really hard time showing value because you can't do it all at once.

00:12:29:13 - 00:12:49:11 Joshua Zerkel So especially when you're just starting out, I really that advice to you if don't go to the ocean and start small and build really resonates, because I've seen it play out much more successfully that way in my own career. And with those I've been advising, I'm curious, you know, you've spent a lot of your time in the B2B world, and the topic for today is community Leadership in B2B.

00:12:49:13 - 00:13:06:05 Joshua Zerkel What do you think is specifically unique and different about community leadership in the B2B world versus community leadership for B2C, for instance? And what should people who are maybe transitioning from B2C into B2B as it relates to community leadership really think about and be aware of?

00:13:06:07 - 00:13:29:20 Dani Weinstein Sure. So the common theme in it, and very much so in the B2B world, is that we have to ask ourselves why to be B2B? B2B professionals spend time in community. Why does my member base care about community? And the number one reason is they want to learn and grow with your brand. Okay, people with all due respect, don't necessarily want to go watch a training video.

00:13:29:23 - 00:13:48:08 Dani Weinstein They don't want to take a survey training course. You know, if I'm a night manager at fidelity and I'm running a SAP Hana or IBM Cloud Security, I don't want to go hang out with the salesperson or CSM today, per se, but I'm not going to need somebody like me. An IT professional at Credit Suisse does the same job and talk shop over coffee or beer or online.

00:13:48:11 - 00:14:11:02 Dani Weinstein How many people do you need to run the instance? What's the security requirements? Is the latest version of the software worth anything? What's your ROI like? And so with that mindset, you know, again, the the theme around B2B is really that it's enabling them to learn and grow. And if you're doing that again, it's to the driver to goodness around product usage, platform usage, adoption and growth.

00:14:11:05 - 00:14:28:16 Dani Weinstein You know, B2C is a different it's slightly different animal. Again, I was in the B2C world back in HP days with support, and that was very much around reflection. But that is the common theme in, in the B2B world. And again, that the world is changing quite a bit with, you know, with AI and that lens and how traditional Q&A is being consumed.

00:14:28:18 - 00:14:36:17 Dani Weinstein But it still doesn't change the fact that that connection is still very much in play, but virtually and in person.

00:14:36:20 - 00:14:56:16 Joshua Zerkel Definitely. Yeah, I agree, I think there's there's still that common thread of how community works, the mechanics of it, but the reasons why people show up vary dramatically between B2B and B2C. Thank you for calling those things out. I just want to mention to everyone who's attending live, if you have a question for Donny, now's the time.

00:14:56:16 - 00:15:19:07 Joshua Zerkel Feel free to drop it into the Q&A or the chat, and we will get to it as best we can. We would love to hear from you, Donny. Speaking of B2B specifically, in your experience, what are some of the best approaches to measuring and reporting on the value of community and really tying community to real business outcomes that executives care about?

00:15:19:09 - 00:15:46:07 Dani Weinstein Sure. So in my experiences, I'd like to talk about really four major pillars of value. And these are not limited to these, but these are really four big buckets. And you know, again, some of these are going to be, you know, evolving even more over time. But especially as you build out communities, some of the early quick wins typically around support reflection type of people typically will find answers to their questions in community versus having to, you know, contact support.

00:15:46:09 - 00:16:02:23 Dani Weinstein And so, you know, measuring deflection and, you know, doing surveys in the community, you know, did you find the answer you're looking for and have a follow up question on the survey? You know, had you not found the information the community had where you planned to contact support, you can actually definitively measure your based on traffic and the surveying.

00:16:02:23 - 00:16:25:22 Dani Weinstein You know, how much deflection could you have captured, or have you captured in the community? That's number one. Number two, there's content creation. And so the value of the eyeballs on accepted solutions or answers that are, that have been validated by experts, that also leads to not just, deflection, but there's also a certain value that would be back in the days of the Microsoft answers.

00:16:25:25 - 00:16:48:29 Dani Weinstein Compare that we did in the early days. They actually had a pretty robust model of every every view of an accepted answer was worth at the back of the thing, $0.25. So there are there are models that can be built around use of solutions. The big money really in the B2B world is in the world of advocates. And so what I mean by that is especially if you think about a SaaS model, I know back in the demo days where we were a it is a very robust analytics platform.

00:16:48:29 - 00:17:15:20 Dani Weinstein We had a, a, a count, customer health scorecard. And so we could actually it was fairly high level model, but we could actually show accounts that actually had active members in community, meaning they're there in the regularly versus accounts that had no presence on community. Those accounts were typically three points healthier, meaning higher propensity to retain renew versus a higher propensity or a much bigger risk to churn.

00:17:15:22 - 00:17:41:05 Dani Weinstein The same is true in learning, too. So those kinds of models around the value of the advocates who are influencing decisions that they can, that they're at, as well as their peers, that's where that's where cold. And the last piece is around innovation. So as we've talked about earlier, again, the efficiencies, the engineering team, but also tying the dollars of the the ideas to what business could come if we do that, that provides business value for the engineering organization.

00:17:41:07 - 00:17:57:28 Dani Weinstein So those are kind of the big four. You know, but there's certainly, you know, things beyond that. I think now with even, you know, measuring sentiment and potentially how it could get tied to, you know, there's how I think more things that can be built out. But those are usually those are kind of the big four that I talk to.

00:17:58:00 - 00:18:25:27 Joshua Zerkel Yeah. Those all resonate with me as well. And I think one of the things that you mentioned is different executives also, depending on where you sit within an org, how those typical four buckets will land will vary dramatically. And you as a leader, being able to speak the language of each one of those stakeholder groups and recognize where and where you shouldn't be putting your community focus on will make a big difference in the duration and the direction of your career.

00:18:25:27 - 00:18:32:05 Joshua Zerkel In any given organization as to how well you match what you're doing to those metrics that you're trying to impact.

00:18:32:07 - 00:18:49:09 Dani Weinstein Absolutely. And just, you know, one other minor example is even on the marketing side, especially in the world of advocates and influencers and superfans, you know, if you start showcasing how many, you know, customer stories are being generated at a community, how many members are now available to speak at user groups, at conferences? You know, there's a key.

00:18:49:10 - 00:19:02:27 Dani Weinstein These are their key KPIs for the, you know, the marketing sales organization. And so if you now showcase, you know, what 50% of our speakers are going to directed community, that's a pretty big win. It's huge. Yeah.

00:19:03:00 - 00:19:25:24 Joshua Zerkel Yeah I, I think there's just so much possible with community that translating it into real business value is typically the challenge for most leaders. I'm wondering if you're looking back at your career, was there an experience that you had where you met with a stakeholder or a leader in another org who really didn't value community at all, and you were able to turn their opinion around?

00:19:25:24 - 00:19:30:12 Joshua Zerkel And if so, how did you do that?

00:19:30:14 - 00:19:35:14 Dani Weinstein Sure. So.

00:19:35:16 - 00:19:38:24 Dani Weinstein I think I which one I want to use here.

00:19:38:26 - 00:20:14:25 Dani Weinstein I mean, you know, like earlier of the, you know, the VP of engineering in Adam org and he back the day was was very much, resistant to to doing what we did, but ultimately with the ideas exchange. And so again, that took me when I came in to Steve Allen, who was the CEO, he he essentially had under his wing, community learning, success, support, and, you know, my first 90 days is done away with were able to have the community, but the first 30 days was literally spending time with Steve and executive team, you know, understanding the landscape but also educating them on the potential of, of community.

00:20:14:25 - 00:20:32:14 Dani Weinstein And so with that, it was, you know, we're going to do the same thing, and we are going to build that value on. And as we started to showcase the value of, you know, deflection and content creation and capturing, okay, this is the the pain point that I'm going to solve with community with with it, with the engineering team.

00:20:32:16 - 00:20:54:18 Dani Weinstein It took quite a number of, of conversations to make that happen. At the end of the day, I think we had almost 2500 ideas that were created or suggested over the five year. One of that I was there and they delivered on more than 50% of those. So with all that, you know, he he did ante up a, a dedicated p who with I worked was my sidekick.

00:20:54:18 - 00:21:10:23 Dani Weinstein He was kind of quarterback to another dozen, product managers. And so as we had a process of, you know, nothing's going to get seen by engineering until it has X number of votes or X number of comments. And so once we had kind of a well-defined process and we started to show how we work together, we could have show value.

00:21:10:25 - 00:21:12:28 Dani Weinstein We will turn things around.

00:21:13:00 - 00:21:27:29 Joshua Zerkel That's amazing. After that, did you find that other executives, other leaders were more apt to see the value in community, or did you have to do the same level of, depth of conversion with other folks that you worked with there?

00:21:28:01 - 00:21:42:16 Dani Weinstein Probably the other big one in that time frame was, was marketing. So initially when I, you know, t things up, I mean, again, this is early days of lithium. You know, I was able Steve was able to write a six figure check to get me a virtual team to get things live at our first time a palooza.

00:21:42:18 - 00:22:08:06 Dani Weinstein But really, the first couple of years at the conferences, you know, sort of community was an afterthought. And once we started to showcase these customer stories and the the community stars that were showing up and, working more closely with the marketing team, ultimately the CMO got it, got her attention. And by it, I think the third year, we ultimately I was able to secure a dedicated, you know, community, community star show, Happy Hour.

00:22:08:06 - 00:22:28:26 Dani Weinstein We had space support for an entire team. But again, that was an evolution. So initially, I think it's not because they didn't understand it was just the focus wasn't there. As you start to showcase value that resonates with that executive, it takes time, takes conversations. And again, you have to articulate in a way where how this is going to help you and also how is it going to help the overall organization.

00:22:28:29 - 00:22:49:14 Joshua Zerkel Definitely. What do you think? If we're thinking about B2C in B2B, especially as it relates to community leadership? My my conversations with other community leaders is they perceive the B2B world is more difficult. What do you think are some of the pluses of being a community leader in the B2B world?

00:22:49:16 - 00:22:52:08 Dani Weinstein Compared to B to C, C.

00:22:52:10 - 00:23:06:22 Joshua Zerkel Just for those who don't have experience with it, I don't think they can really wrap their heads around what it might be like, but you've had extensive experience in in B2B and spent a lot of your career there. What do you think are some of the pluses of of doing this work in the B2B context specifically?

00:23:06:25 - 00:23:29:06 Dani Weinstein Sure. So I think, there's really several pieces to it. One is, and I think it's probably true across both, but certainly in B2B you really need to get you really need to, strengthen or develop that muscle to understand the business that you're in. What is the value that this business is providing to its customer base?

00:23:29:09 - 00:24:03:28 Dani Weinstein And how are the executives being measured? Because at the end of the day, if you don't have that, you're going to really struggle. Number one, number two, as you are able to capture that value for the different, you know, verticals, whether that be again, marketing, success, support, training, etc.. I think in my mind, in my, in my experiences as you are able to actually get to go to those conversations and measure it and deliver the value, once you get the buy in, then it really becomes it can move very quickly to operate very quickly, to, operationalize.

00:24:03:28 - 00:24:23:03 Dani Weinstein And people think about it again, much more as a business as opposed to this is a nice to have. And that's pretty pretty consistent across, you know, different businesses that I've been in. And of course, you know, you have situations where, you know, like I said, change can happen if someone comes in with a completely different perspective and you got to do a can you do that education over again?

00:24:23:03 - 00:24:28:11 Dani Weinstein And that's just something that's part of the that's part of the way that's that's the nature of the beast.

00:24:28:13 - 00:24:47:25 Joshua Zerkel Yeah, I think in many ways in my experience, because I've done B2C and B2B and everything in between as well. I, I've in the B2B world, there's often a less long of a path connecting the dots between what you do in community and the actual business outcomes, the business value that are understandable by other people within the organization.

00:24:47:28 - 00:25:12:25 Joshua Zerkel And once you get the buy in your goal, the flip side of that is once you get the buy in and people start expecting community to perform, then you have to perform. But that's a whole topic for another day. So as we move into the rest of 2026, what are you excited about for community leadership, especially in B2B and what do you see as some of the challenges coming in 2026 and beyond?

00:25:12:27 - 00:25:35:20 Dani Weinstein Yeah, so we're definitely, you know, living in interesting times. And I think that, you know, we not only touched on this earlier, but we, we definitely are living in what I would call but what we call the community everywhere ecosystem. So the days of, you know, having a destination as your, your home base, as the, the community to be community that IBM, IBM, eCommerce, App.com, those are over.

00:25:35:20 - 00:25:59:26 Dani Weinstein I mean, you still need to have that when it's justified, but at the same time, we definitely need to be thinking more broadly about having the right tools to track conversations with influencers in social, you know, using, for example, a common room, you know, where the where the conversation is happening beyond my home base. Is it on, you know, LinkedIn, X, GitHub, StackOverflow, YouTube, making sure that you are listening and engaging with the relevant channels there and that's number one.

00:25:59:26 - 00:26:26:16 Dani Weinstein But secondarily, and we talked about this earlier before the show, post pandemic, people are yearning to get back in person. So I would urge everybody here to if you're not doing it today, you really need to be partnering up with your events teams, the teams that are managing user groups, your webinars, your your dinners, the in-person conversations are 100 x more valuable than the one on ones that are happening in the digital space.

00:26:26:19 - 00:26:50:02 Dani Weinstein And that is becoming more and more critical for community, and especially for the long term success of community. With all that we're all obviously seeing, I it's here and we're seeing a lot of newbies posting content with our general content and champions, for example, getting upset, saying, well, this is wrong and why are you allowing this? And it's not a trend that we can solve.

00:26:50:02 - 00:27:17:08 Dani Weinstein However, it's a it's a, it's a signal to pivot. So at the end of the day, those champions, those influencers, the super fans are still gold for the organization. You still need to lean on them to help correct wrong content that maybe I posting. Number one recognize them for that. At the same time, think about how I can actually make your teams you know better whether you know through moderation, through sentiment, through analytics, through matchmaking, through prompting of what people should post.

00:27:17:10 - 00:27:36:07 Dani Weinstein How do we how do we take that to make it better? And this is the, you know, advice that I gave to my team at IBM before, you know, our team is sunset. It is that we need to spend our energy on strengthening the in person relationships. And so when we alter our landed or the conference, you know, with 7000 attendees, I gave everybody a chart.

00:27:36:07 - 00:27:56:03 Dani Weinstein I said, I want you to walk home with, you know, five new contacts that you can actually follow up on and develop a strong relationship from our customer base, because that's hopefully something that I can never replicate. And at the end of the day, people are looking for authenticity. They want to have that general relationship, and that actually will strengthen the value of the broader community.

00:27:56:08 - 00:28:25:02 Dani Weinstein And just two examples or example is that, you know, I was actually at a couple of our networking events last few nights and, you know, there again, they were relatively small dinner and or a, you know, 40 person, 50 person attendee webinar. And again, that whole conversation around, you know, the the in-person get together at the in-person dialog, in-person conversation and striking that that relationship, you know, well, it's not just about some virtual conversation I having with Josh and what's behind the avatar.

00:28:25:02 - 00:28:50:22 Dani Weinstein It's okay. You know, actually talking about, you know, the trials and tribulations, the community. But maybe there's something beyond that. And so with all that, the the out of this community, everywhere mindset, in addition to not being afraid of AI, but thinking about how do we leverage that to make our jobs better, but also think about how do we maintain the authenticity of the conversations in person and virtually to strengthen the overall community?

00:28:50:25 - 00:29:10:20 Joshua Zerkel That's great, and thank you for that, Danny. I think all of those are super relevant, right now, and I'm guessing on the minds of everyone who is watching or listening to this. There's a lot of change happening right now in the community space in the world in general, and the intersection between the two. Well, Danny, where would you like people to find you online?

00:29:10:22 - 00:29:23:10 Dani Weinstein So the best way to find me is on LinkedIn. So if you go to, you know, slash and slash Danny Weinstein, you'll find me and, happy to connect and, look forward to hopefully doing this again sometime soon.

00:29:23:12 - 00:29:42:28 Joshua Zerkel Definitely. Well, everyone, thank you so much for attending, Danny. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us. Danny will be able to answer your questions both on LinkedIn and in the forum. We just dropped the link, at the top of the screen, so feel free to connect with us there and we will see you at the next webinar.

00:29:42:28 - 00:29:51:15 Joshua Zerkel Thank you everyone for attending. Thank you, Donnie, for speaking. Leanne, thank you for standing behind the scenes and we'll see everyone at the next event.

00:29:51:17 - 00:29:51:28 Dani Weinstein Thank you.