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Event Replay: Executive Insights with Gradual: Making Community Matter Internally
Posted Feb 05, 2026 | Views 35
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Speakers
Holly Firestone
Community Executive & Strategist @ Holly Firestone Consulting
Holly Firestone is a community strategist who has built and run some of the largest enterprise communities and community programs in the world. At Atlassian, she built their powerhouse User Group program. From there, Holly joined Salesforce where she led and massively grew the User Group Program, evolved the MVP Program, built and managed the community team, and ran the multi-million member online Trailblazer Community. Holly was also EVP of Community at Venafi, where she served as a member of the executive team. Currently, Holly runs a Community Strategy consultancy where she works with a variety of clients such as large enterprise software companies, nonprofit organizations, and startups. Holly lives in Austin, Texas with her husband Eric, son Max, daughter Eve, and their two weenie dogs, Lucy and Chester.
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Joshua Zerkel
Head of Marketing & Community @ Gradual
Josh Zerkel is Head of Marketing & Community-Led Growth at Gradual. A recognized leader in community strategy, he has built and scaled programs at Asana, Evernote, HeyGen, and CBS News that have driven millions in pipeline, global engagement, and cross-functional impact. He’s the author of The Community Code, and a trusted advisor to startups and enterprise teams building community-powered growth engines.
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SUMMARY
A candid Executive Insights conversation with Holly Firestone on how community teams build internal alignment by translating member value into shared context across the business.
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CONTENT & TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:06 - 00:00:31:17 Joshua Zerkel Hello everyone, and welcome to Executive Insights with gradual and today's topic making community Matter internally. One of my all time favorites. I'm Jeff Circle, head of Marketing community here at gradual. In case you are new to gradual, it's where meaningful customer interaction happens and where those interactions are captured, connected, and made usable across your organization. Now, before I introduce my friend and our guest expert, a quick note please drop your questions in the Q&A and we will get to as many as we can.
00:00:31:20 - 00:00:52:26 Joshua Zerkel And after our session ends, you'll be able to ask questions and share your thoughts in the forum with Holly. We'll share that link later during the webinar. Now, without further ado, I would like to introduce our guest. Holly Firestone is a community strategist who has built and run some of the largest enterprise communities and customer programs in the world.
00:00:52:28 - 00:01:25:03 Joshua Zerkel At Atlassian, she built their Powerhouse user Group program. From there, Holly joined Salesforce, where she led and massively grew. The user group program, evolved the MVP program, built and managed the community team and ran the multi million member online Trailblazer Community. Holly was also EVP of Community Identify, where she served as a member of the Executive team. Currently, Holly runs a Community Strategy consultancy where she works with a variety of clients such as large enterprise software companies, nonprofits and startups.
00:01:25:05 - 00:01:33:20 Joshua Zerkel Holly lives in Austin with her husband Eric, son Mack's daughter Eve, and their two weenie dogs, Lucy and Chester. Hi, Holly.
00:01:33:23 - 00:01:37:17 Holly Firestone Hello. That was. Yeah, that's. I'm.
00:01:37:19 - 00:01:38:16 Joshua Zerkel That was you.
00:01:38:19 - 00:01:42:02 Holly Firestone Kind of shorten that bio there, but. Yeah. There you go.
00:01:42:04 - 00:01:49:09 Joshua Zerkel Hey. It's you and and we love to hear it. So thank you for taking the time to chat with everyone in the graduate community.
00:01:49:12 - 00:01:52:26 Holly Firestone I'm happy to be here. Happy to do anything for community.
00:01:52:28 - 00:01:58:26 Joshua Zerkel Awesome. Well, let's start with something straightforward. How do you define community?
00:01:58:28 - 00:02:22:17 Holly Firestone So before we kick off, I just want to apologize to everyone. I. I'm getting over a massive cold post tonsillectomy. So, hopefully, you can understand what I'm saying with this, like, rasping is going on, but. All right, that said, now everybody knows, how do I define community? Oh, man. You started with, like, the easiest but the hardest one, right?
00:02:22:19 - 00:02:47:06 Holly Firestone Okay. Well, the community that I usually work with, if I'm thinking about, like, an enterprise software community is that the community is, the group of individuals that are or a network of individuals that are connected and the, the glue that sticks them all together is the organization, or the business that, that runs that community or that owns that community?
00:02:47:09 - 00:03:06:20 Holly Firestone But I will also say that a more, kind of like higher level view is that the glue is really the values that stick people together, even if it is an enterprise community or nonprofit community. It is is that network of people that are brought together by a certain set of values and goals.
00:03:06:22 - 00:03:15:20 Joshua Zerkel Great. You have one of my favorite Holly isms, that is, community is a team sport. What does that mean?
00:03:15:22 - 00:03:40:08 Holly Firestone I'm not sure it's a Holly ism per se. I don't know. Anyway, Okay. So community is a team sport. This is not something that the community team can do alone or that would ever want to do alone. Right? So when you think about a team sport, you've got different parts of the team that take on different.
00:03:40:11 - 00:04:00:16 Holly Firestone They all have different goals. And so you have to look at community in that same way. So if you don't have different players that are aiming towards different things, not everybody, if you're playing, let's say you're playing soccer or football, but if you are doing that, you don't have just everybody gunning towards getting the ball in the goal.
00:04:00:18 - 00:04:19:02 Holly Firestone You have people that are participating with each other passing things off. And that's, you know, you just have different goals as individual players. And so that is really, really important to consider when you're thinking about community, because all teams across an organization need to have a role that they play in order for the community to be successful.
00:04:19:02 - 00:04:28:17 Holly Firestone It can't just be something was passed off to the community team and untouched by everybody else, because it does touch every part of the business, so every part of the business needs to touch it.
00:04:28:20 - 00:04:54:07 Joshua Zerkel Yeah, I agree completely. I think there's this notion and sometimes we as community builders, I've seen they're guilty of this is like community is a thing that lives on its own island. And we take care of the customers in this way. Everyone else don't touch them. But the reality is everyone at a company has some role to play when it comes to how you work with customers, whether the customer facing or not, they're either creating something for customers or working with customers are serving the customers in some way.
00:04:54:09 - 00:05:19:05 Joshua Zerkel And so helping. It's our I think it's our job as community leaders to help our across all our stakeholders, across teams, our friends in different departments understand how all of these pieces can tie together, because at the end of the day, the customer doesn't know our org chart and they shouldn't care. And it's our job to. Right. But but I think we get really attached to our org chart.
00:05:19:07 - 00:05:28:16 Joshua Zerkel And we think that's how the world operates. But from the customer's perspective they will never know. Our org chart should never even think about it. They should just think about the experience that they're having.
00:05:28:18 - 00:05:34:10 Holly Firestone Exactly. If you're not playing community as a team sport, it ends up hurting your customers for sure.
00:05:34:13 - 00:05:54:16 Joshua Zerkel Yeah. It's it's funny, I've seen many organizations because like you, I've done advising and consulting where they say we're customer centric, we're customer first, and then as soon as we start really digging in, it's like, well, this team does this with customers and that team does that with customers. And each of them feels a great sense of ownership over the customer, which on the face of it is great.
00:05:54:16 - 00:06:03:10 Joshua Zerkel We want people to feel like they own the experience that customers have. But to be truly customer centric, you have to look it from the customer's. Yep.
00:06:03:13 - 00:06:04:14 Holly Firestone Yep. Absolutely.
00:06:04:14 - 00:06:05:23 Joshua Zerkel That's that's harder.
00:06:05:26 - 00:06:14:13 Holly Firestone Yeah, definitely. And I think the community team can own steering a lot of that in the right direction, but certainly cannot own all of it.
00:06:14:15 - 00:06:32:08 Joshua Zerkel You know. And I found that it only works well when there's executive buy in, in helping make sure that any steering or any observations that the community might bring, actually get translated into real, actual business, from these other teams. Otherwise it's just platitudes. And that doesn't really feel good for anybody.
00:06:32:10 - 00:06:34:25 Holly Firestone Exactly. Right.
00:06:34:27 - 00:06:43:25 Joshua Zerkel So in your experience, what are some baseline things that community leaders need to do?
00:06:43:28 - 00:06:48:19 Holly Firestone Tell me more like like, oh, community like the community team. Sorry.
00:06:48:21 - 00:06:58:25 Joshua Zerkel Yeah. Like if if, if if we're saying community is a team sport, what are some things that like the community leadership, the community team leaders need to do internally to help make that happen?
00:06:58:27 - 00:07:22:03 Holly Firestone Yes. So, I mean, you just touched on it, which is there nobody's really going to care if they can't understand what the value is to them. Right? So it's it's translating what the value is coming out of the community and how that relates to all of these different teams. So everybody has too much on their plate. Everybody is being asked to do more with less.
00:07:22:05 - 00:07:43:06 Holly Firestone Why are they going to participate in this team sport if they can't see the vision for it? The bigger picture and how it supports the goals that they are working towards. So it's not just saying, okay, these are the community goals. And so you're going to help us drive this because it's important to the company. That's great. But nobody's doing charity here.
00:07:43:08 - 00:08:02:11 Holly Firestone Everybody has their goals that they are being okay. You know, that they're being judged on for lack of better words. And so they need to be thinking about that. And they need to be thinking about their teams and their team's growth as well. So putting everything in terms that each of these teams can understand, this is your input.
00:08:02:11 - 00:08:29:04 Holly Firestone This is your output. And it doesn't have to always remain the same. It certainly can and should evolve. And those teams need to understand the role they play and helping that evolve. But I think that that's baseline. Like the first thing that you have to do is really understand how are you going to how are you going to build this community to be able to bring some kind of, ROI for all of the teams?
00:08:29:06 - 00:08:39:01 Holly Firestone And all of the goals, you know, not always necessarily at once, not always necessarily all the highest priority. But what does that look like for these other teams? Right? I mean.
00:08:39:04 - 00:08:55:18 Joshua Zerkel Like play out in real life when when you have seen the buy in from other teams work really well and maybe sometimes where you haven't, like for instance, there are some teams that I found get it a little bit more easily depending on the nature of the organization and others where they it's just not on the radar and not something they see as important.
00:08:55:18 - 00:09:10:02 Joshua Zerkel Even though you as a community leader can explain how this might tie in, getting that buy in isn't always automatic. So where have you seen that that process of getting buy and go really well and what made it so? And where have you seen it go sideways?
00:09:10:04 - 00:09:33:21 Holly Firestone I think the first thing I will, I will say the first thing is when it goes really well, you see that reflected in the experience for the customers. Now, how that all takes shape. The times that I've seen it, the most successful is when there's leadership buy in. So when I was at that, if I was on the executive team and that made a huge difference.
00:09:33:21 - 00:09:56:10 Holly Firestone My boss was the CEO. I was in the board meetings. I was in all of the executive planning meetings, and so helping all of the other executives understand what we were trying to do with community, why it was important. That made a huge difference in how it was received from everybody else on all of the other teams, and how it was worked into the goals for everybody on all of the other teams.
00:09:56:10 - 00:10:20:09 Holly Firestone Now, it's not common for a community leader to be on the exact team, certainly not necessarily in $1 billion company. That was a wild experience. But I think you go as high as you can, in terms of leadership. So the goals for community can be viewed by as many people in the organization as possible and understood by them as well.
00:10:20:09 - 00:10:41:12 Holly Firestone And so you may have to ask your leader to help support this. And I think nailing the communication around this based on your audience is also really an important part of this. The exact team, you know, they care about a very different set of things. Then, you know, the leaders, for each other, individual team as well.
00:10:41:12 - 00:10:56:29 Holly Firestone So it's really thinking about how are you going to communicate this and make them care about it. As far up as you can go, so that they can also pave the way for their teams to be able to have the bandwidth to do this.
00:10:57:01 - 00:11:17:20 Joshua Zerkel Yeah, I've in my experience, I've even with execs who are bought in, I still make sure that I help them understand exactly the nuts and bolts of how this works and the impact that we expected to make. And why? Because I think there's a fine line between they support it versus they get it, and I want them to have both.
00:11:17:20 - 00:11:26:23 Joshua Zerkel I want them to to be on board, and I want them to understand what they're on board with him for so that when people ask them, they can understand and explain it to other people, too. That's a.
00:11:26:23 - 00:11:28:23 Holly Firestone Great point. Yeah.
00:11:28:25 - 00:11:35:03 Joshua Zerkel Right. Because like, I feel like we most community leaders, I speak with they they assume that people just get it.
00:11:35:05 - 00:11:35:14 Holly Firestone Yeah.
00:11:35:14 - 00:11:37:19 Joshua Zerkel And they really, really don't.
00:11:37:21 - 00:11:39:17 Holly Firestone They really don't.
00:11:39:19 - 00:11:55:01 Joshua Zerkel And I wish they did. That would make everyone's lives a lot easier. But it's it's a useful practice, I found, to know that we're going to have to explain what we do and why we do it in the impact and how it works over and over and over again. And that can be for every level of an organization, whether it's the access that we want to have.
00:11:55:03 - 00:12:16:06 Joshua Zerkel Have you back as well as the cross-functional stakeholders. And and I think uniquely for a community who we speak with and, and, or we need to change the message. Like when I talk to someone on the product, just that's a very different message that the results that I'm delivering for a product manager are very different than what I'm going to be delivering for ahead of support.
00:12:16:09 - 00:12:21:05 Holly Firestone Yes, it's almost like everybody speaks different languages and you have to translate it for them to understand.
00:12:21:07 - 00:12:43:22 Joshua Zerkel Absolutely. And and I've seen this go really sideways, where community leaders are saying the same message to every single team. Well, of course, each team cares about something different. That's why they're on different teams. They do something different within the work. But giving them, it's like when you see a speaker at a couple of different conferences and they give the same speech each time, and they didn't bother to tailored for the audience, like, don't do that.
00:12:43:23 - 00:12:53:06 Joshua Zerkel Like you were speaking to a different group and you need to understand what it is that's important to them in order for your message and what community can do for them to really, really land.
00:12:53:09 - 00:13:13:12 Holly Firestone Yep. Absolutely. And I will say, you know, I maybe not, I got lucky but like one of the, one of the things I like to highlight about my experience at edify is that the CEO, Jeff Hudson, was very supportive of community. He used to be a user group leader or user group member. So he like early, early, early user groups like in like the 70s and 80s.
00:13:13:12 - 00:13:31:09 Holly Firestone So he just got it on a different level than a lot of other executives have. Because he started as a practitioner, he just really understood community. So I think that that played a role, you know, in in me being, you know, moved to the executive team and participating at that level.
00:13:31:12 - 00:13:40:04 Joshua Zerkel Of course, when someone has that level of direct experience with community as a participant, they understand in a way that someone who never has just can't. They won't.
00:13:40:06 - 00:13:41:09 Holly Firestone Exactly.
00:13:41:11 - 00:14:04:17 Joshua Zerkel And in my experience, also like if a leader has had experience with community, each experience is different. Like one community is not the same as all the other communities and the one that you might be creating for the company that their leader had might look totally different. And so sometimes it's in education and reeducation, because if they've had a community, they expect that what you're building will look like the one that they experience.
00:14:04:17 - 00:14:05:13 Joshua Zerkel But as it turns out.
00:14:05:13 - 00:14:06:18 Holly Firestone Immediately.
00:14:06:21 - 00:14:17:23 Joshua Zerkel You break into things will work that way in the real world, especially when you're building relationships at scale with community members. Things take time and they look different than what they would have at another organization.
00:14:17:26 - 00:14:36:15 Holly Firestone Yeah, and I try to use analogies a lot because I just feel like they help people understand them. Like if you look at community like it's a product, you don't launch a product and then immediately have tons of happy customers and, you know, tons of happy customers and recurring revenue and all of those different things right off the bat.
00:14:36:15 - 00:14:54:17 Holly Firestone It takes so much time to build. It's it's the same idea, right? Like community, you're not just going to have everybody join and be active and happy and engaged. And I and I always do my best to try to to express that in that way, especially for an executive audience that wants. Now, no, now.
00:14:54:19 - 00:15:03:09 Joshua Zerkel Yeah. For sure. Have there been times in your career where you've seen this effort to build alignment, go sideways?
00:15:03:11 - 00:15:05:01 Joshua Zerkel Of course, people just didn't get it.
00:15:05:03 - 00:15:29:15 Holly Firestone Yeah. I mean, of course, I think the common push back in anybody who's watching us sits in community spaces, probably heard this before, but we're too busy. We don't have the bandwidth. It sounds amazing, but like, where are these resources coming from? I mean, everything under the sun. And same for leadership teams in a way. You know, like trying to get buy in to get more resources to build your community.
00:15:29:17 - 00:15:47:23 Holly Firestone Why can't you just build it on slack? I mean, you name it, it like every, every other thing that you can imagine, these things come up. But I think the bandwidth one comes up a lot, and that's why it's so important to translate this into how they are getting some kind of benefit from it. Other ways that it's gone sideways.
00:15:47:23 - 00:16:02:26 Holly Firestone I'm trying to think, I mean, or or it's like champagne problem, right? You have all these people that want to participate and they want everything out of the community, and they want it right now, and they're gung ho and super excited, and you kind of have to set expectations there as well. Right? Like I'm sure you've had that happen.
00:16:03:00 - 00:16:04:17 Joshua Zerkel Oh yes I do.
00:16:04:19 - 00:16:08:02 Holly Firestone Just people get excited about it. They're like, I want the world.
00:16:08:05 - 00:16:27:17 Joshua Zerkel Yeah, it's it's usually one of the two. It's like, this is great. Go make that happen. We're going to give you zero energy and effort to do it. And there's ones where it's like, I love literally every single thing that you're saying that you're going to do. Can we have that yesterday. Yes. And like that's I prefer the one reaction rather than the other.
00:16:27:19 - 00:16:51:19 Joshua Zerkel But the reality is like, like building any business program, especially ones that involve external people to your company, it's real time. It takes real resources and real effort. And if it was as easy as just getting a tool and turning it on, everyone would have a thriving community. But that, unfortunately, is not the case. And so helping people understand the reality of what's involved, it's almost like being a teacher and inside of your organization.
00:16:51:19 - 00:17:01:22 Joshua Zerkel You need to help them understand your function, because it's likely that if they experience the community function at all, it will look very different than whatever it is that you're building because communities vary from company to company.
00:17:01:24 - 00:17:04:05 Holly Firestone Yep, absolutely.
00:17:04:08 - 00:17:06:08 Joshua Zerkel So that's part of the fun of the work that we do.
00:17:06:11 - 00:17:28:07 Holly Firestone Yes, I, I feel like as a, as a consultant, there's so much I feel like I spend so much of my time working with people in the community space that know exactly what they're doing. They know how to build the community. They are really smart in how they, you know, build and execute on their strategy, but they need help communicating it out.
00:17:28:12 - 00:17:52:02 Holly Firestone I spend so much time I feel like helping, helping teams. Craft the communication that they're using to speak to their leadership teams or kind of, you know, re rethink that. And, you know, work on a product team that's not necessarily bought in. And it ends up being a lot of that. Just how do you take what you've built or the ideas that you've come up with and and get them out to the world.
00:17:52:02 - 00:18:13:22 Holly Firestone So you can get that buy in because it doesn't work without that buy in. Really, really surprising how much time I end up doing something like that or even a community. It's it's, you know, it is what it is with consultants, but, you know, community professional that said something to their leadership. I come in, say the exact same thing, and that's the confirmation that they needed.
00:18:13:22 - 00:18:22:05 Holly Firestone And it's funny because I've been the community person that's coming in and saying something to my leadership team, and nobody will listen until someone from the outside comes in and confirms it. And it's, it's.
00:18:22:06 - 00:18:31:14 Joshua Zerkel That's the magic of consulting. Consulting. You can say the exact same thing that someone in the org has been screaming about for years. But since you're the outside person saying it, of course it's right.
00:18:31:16 - 00:18:35:22 Holly Firestone Yep. Boop. Just pop in and say my thing. Boop. Pop out.
00:18:35:25 - 00:18:54:08 Joshua Zerkel This is the beauty of consulting everyone. If you haven't tried it, you should, because it'll make you feel great when you go into the magic test and everyone agrees. It's it's wonderful when you are advising people on building those communication paths. What are some of the things that you say to them? Because most people, as we've talked about, don't really know how to do this.
00:18:54:10 - 00:19:10:25 Joshua Zerkel And I found also, community is often somewhat buried in an organization. Speaking to execs for a lot of community leaders can be very stressful. And it's it's like their career literally on the line in that moment. Well, what advice do you give to people?
00:19:10:28 - 00:19:33:12 Holly Firestone That's a great, that's a great one to think about, because I do think in some situations it is organization specific. I won't get too in the details about places that I've worked where, you know, there's a lot of very tricky things to navigate with the leadership team. I mean, I guess that's pretty common is that there's tricky things to navigate with the leadership team everywhere.
00:19:33:12 - 00:19:59:26 Holly Firestone But it's different. Kind of like landmines that you're trying to work around. For community leaders, I would say going to their direct manager and working really closely with them, making sure that they are supporting them and helping them, you know, move whatever messaging forward with the rest of the leadership team or, you know, whoever it is that they're speaking to, like that's your manager's job is to help you, to help you grow, learn and be more successful.
00:19:59:28 - 00:20:21:01 Holly Firestone And, and kind of coach you to that next step. And you can be you can still be the community expert. Of course. Even if you know your manager is the CMO or head of customer marketing, whatever it is, you can still be the community expert while looking to them to get some support and how to level up your communication.
00:20:21:04 - 00:20:37:13 Holly Firestone But I again, like you, have to tailor every message. There's no shortcut here. So depending on the audience that you're talking to, you really need to think about how you want to translate that to them. And then I would say repetition constant. Like there are some threads that will, no matter which group you're talking to, they stay the same.
00:20:37:16 - 00:21:08:10 Holly Firestone And so making sure that that just kind of is constantly repeated. And as you're doing this, like doing Brown Bag lunches and a road show and, you know, obviously there's a lot to community, but, you know, distilling some of it down to just the main, most important things, that's how you're going to get people to remember, not, you know, a 30 page document, of course, like that stuff exists for a reason, but you really got to slim down the message that you're trying to get across.
00:21:08:13 - 00:21:16:29 Holly Firestone Especially for leaders, leadership teams and executive teams. You really need to think about your audience in that way, too.
00:21:17:01 - 00:21:48:14 Joshua Zerkel For sure. Yeah. The simpler the cleaner, the clear, the message you can offer, the better people just digest it more easily. And if our goal is to get people to understand what we're doing, we don't need to overexplain it. We don't need to overcomplicate it. Just make sure it lands for the people that you're speaking to. One of the things that I really like to doing, in addition to, to me as a senior leader, having meetings with the senior leader stakeholder for each of the teams was showing up at the team meetings, like at the stakeholders meetings with one slide where I explain, here's what's happening with community, here's how it matters for your work,
00:21:48:16 - 00:22:04:21 Joshua Zerkel and here's how you can get involved, like really making it impactful for them specifically because you have to get the leader board in. And then once you have your brought in, they'll invite you to their meeting and they can give an intro for you. And then you can say to the team, the team whose help you'll likely be asking for.
00:22:04:23 - 00:22:13:12 Joshua Zerkel Yep. Here's how. Here's how we're helping you, here's what we're creating, and here's what people who are participating in the community say about the work and how it's impacting yours. So yeah.
00:22:13:14 - 00:22:21:23 Holly Firestone There's a lot more to ask. Tons of questions. Two more questions, the better, right? Oh yeah. So starting to really think about how it connects to them.
00:22:21:25 - 00:22:27:19 Joshua Zerkel That's right, that's right. And I think neglecting the road show is one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a community leader in order.
00:22:27:21 - 00:22:30:03 Holly Firestone Yeah yeah I agree.
00:22:30:05 - 00:22:49:13 Joshua Zerkel Well we have a few minutes left. I know there are a few people here with this live. If you have a question for Holly and I'm sure you do, please drop in the chat. Now is the time. But while we are waiting for people to think of their question. Holly, you shared with me an interesting thing that you did that help connect the dots between community and internal team members.
00:22:49:16 - 00:22:52:02 Joshua Zerkel Do you want to share a little bit about that?
00:22:52:04 - 00:23:13:25 Holly Firestone Yeah. So are we talking about my project? Yeah. Okay. So when I was at Atlassian, I still love this. This is like the beginning, beginning, beginning of my career. I was I started as a community associate manager, basically. Excuse me, community manager. Right. But always, always, always thinking about community. And Atlassian had something called ship it days.
00:23:13:27 - 00:23:42:11 Holly Firestone So that was basically like our hackathons. And you could put together a team and build anything you wanted for 24 hours. And so I convinced a few developers to join me. And a couple people from I think it was, like finance team. And we built something where if anybody booked a flight in our internal, travel system, they booked a flight somewhere, and there was a user group within a 30 mile radius.
00:23:42:13 - 00:23:56:06 Holly Firestone Then, they would get a notification saying, hey, there's a user group in your area. Do you want to visit? It would send them to another, you know, set of resources that are like, you know, what is what is your role? Do you want to speak at the user group? Do you want to do this? Do you want to do this?
00:23:56:06 - 00:24:16:22 Holly Firestone And then like another set and another set and another set based on their answers? And we thought that it was really important to make sure that everybody saw what they were working for. You know, meet their customers. It doesn't matter if you are a product manager or you're working at the front desk. Atlassian, like everybody had a role to play to making those customers lives better.
00:24:16:26 - 00:24:49:06 Holly Firestone And I think connecting with them and seeing that is hugely valuable. And we wanted more people to have the opportunity to do it. It was a really fun project. And the year, a couple of years before one of the funniest, hackathon projects was called, ship it, ship it. And that was when, somebody came up with some idea that if an Atlassian was traveling somewhere and they had a package that needed to be sent to that office, that they could just have the person traveling take that package, which is hilarious.
00:24:49:06 - 00:25:07:12 Holly Firestone Atlassian was like historically way back in the day, so cheap that they would, instead of mailing something, have someone who's traveling, have to swap this package to the destination. So we called ours, ship it, ship it to this time its personnel. And it was like, we did our presentation the next day. It was like this whole movie trailer.
00:25:07:12 - 00:25:27:04 Holly Firestone But in the trailer, we interviewed a ton of different user group leaders and saying, like, what would it mean to you if they're last in comes to your event? And we had stats that, if not lasting, was there no matter what team they were on, the numbers would just shoot up in terms of attendance. And I'll never forget one of the user group leaders big like we live in Minneapolis.
00:25:27:06 - 00:25:51:22 Holly Firestone Nobody comes to Minneapolis. It was just the saddest thing. That was the whole clip. And everybody wanted to go to Minneapolis after that to go visit this poor user group that was like, oh, pretty cool, pretty obvious. So it was just it was a lot of fun. But I think it really opened the eyes of a lot of people as they were booking travel and realizing, oh my God, no matter where you go, there's a user group there and just the sheer number and the sheer reach that it had to.
00:25:51:22 - 00:25:59:06 Holly Firestone So it was it was a really fun project and I, I think thinking outside of the box like that for a lot of those things is pretty cool.
00:25:59:08 - 00:26:22:00 Joshua Zerkel I love everything about that. And I've also been able to bring like, unexpected team members to some community events. Like, I remember each time I would bring someone from product to a community event, oftentimes they were nervous to meet customers. It's like, well, you think you're building this thing for, so you get to talk to them. They're going to they're going to love you, and they're almost always super appreciative of everything that we're building.
00:26:22:00 - 00:26:40:14 Joshua Zerkel And they'll give you really useful feedback in their own voice, like without the user study part of it. And it'll be real. And invariably after our events are over, they would be so elated that they came and then they would go back to their internal teams and talk about this is the experience. Here's what I learned. Here's what I heard.
00:26:40:21 - 00:26:50:04 Joshua Zerkel You should go along with the community next time. And so building that ship and product mix just made that process much more seamless. I it's my dream to have something like that. That is.
00:26:50:06 - 00:26:52:08 Holly Firestone Yeah, it was a lot of fun.
00:26:52:10 - 00:27:03:03 Joshua Zerkel All right. Quick question from Michelle. What are the biggest internal misconceptions about communities today and how do we actively dismantle them?
00:27:03:05 - 00:27:24:01 Holly Firestone Biggest misconceptions I think is very dependent on who we're talking about here. So, you know, going back to Josh, what we were saying about tailoring all of these messages, I mean, I think that's kind of the main thing we keep saying is just overcommunicate and tailoring all of these messages. And I think that the mis conceptions are very different across whichever team that you're talking to.
00:27:24:01 - 00:27:51:20 Holly Firestone Oh, well, I was working at a place and they had a community and we they had a community where the product managers had to respond to this and that. And, you know, I think it just it's very dependent on which team you're talking to. But the dismantling of them goes right back to what we're saying. Josh, it is communication value and in, well, communication that's translated to each team making it very, very, very personal.
00:27:51:22 - 00:28:02:20 Holly Firestone And, and and then of course, like having them understand the value of community. So I think that it boils down to that for all of them. What do you think?
00:28:02:23 - 00:28:10:29 Joshua Zerkel Yeah, I think so too. I would just say assume that they have a misconception about the community that you're building because if they have a conception at all, it's about a community they've experienced in the past.
00:28:11:06 - 00:28:13:15 Holly Firestone That's a really. Yes.
00:28:13:18 - 00:28:30:02 Joshua Zerkel Right. Because they're basing their context on what they know, and what they know is not what you are creating. It's what they've experienced. And so think of it as part of your job to be able to communicate what it is that you're making, why, how it impacts them, what you might need from them in order to make it go like.
00:28:30:04 - 00:28:42:06 Joshua Zerkel Just know that communication is a big part of this job and that can be awesome. It can be challenging, and it can be all of the above, but it's it's a part of the gig that can help dispel and dismantle those misconceptions.
00:28:42:09 - 00:28:59:20 Holly Firestone Yeah. And I think it's hard because community teams, I mean same situation, you have to do more with less. And you're thinking, gosh, I need to be spending all my time building this community, and I don't want to have to spend all my time doing all of this other stuff to communicate to these teams internally. But it is such an important part of it.
00:28:59:20 - 00:29:12:26 Holly Firestone And we're spread thin. I mean, and I've dealt with this. I mean, I've dealt with this my whole career. You're spread so thin and you want to do the work of building, building, building. But this is a huge part of it. You cannot build a community without internal support.
00:29:12:29 - 00:29:16:24 Joshua Zerkel This is the work that lets you build. This is the support you need to make happen. Yep.
00:29:16:27 - 00:29:17:24 Holly Firestone Yep.
00:29:17:26 - 00:29:23:14 Joshua Zerkel All right, Holly, with that, where would you like people to find you online?
00:29:23:16 - 00:29:39:20 Holly Firestone Oh, well, we've got the AMA that's going to happen in the forum, which is lovely. And then, I guess LinkedIn LinkedIn's the the place it's, in psychology. Firestone. That's probably the best place to find me for now.
00:29:39:22 - 00:29:46:18 Joshua Zerkel But we will see you there. Everyone. Thank you for attending. Holly, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom today. This was.
00:29:46:18 - 00:29:49:18 Holly Firestone Always, always. And again, I mean.
00:29:49:20 - 00:29:57:13 Joshua Zerkel Yeah, thank you. And Leanne behind the scenes. Thank you for helping make it all run smoothly. Everyone. Thank you for attending. And Holly, great to see you.
00:29:57:15 - 00:29:58:07 Holly Firestone You too.
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