Happy Community Manager Appreciation Day!

cmad2Today, January 27, 2014 is Community Manager Appreciation Day (CMAD). The day was an initiative in 2010 by Jeremiah Owyang who wrote a now seven-year old article called The Four Tenets of the Community Manager. For L&D those four tenets look something like this:

  1. Advocate: Representing the learner (listening, monitoring, being active and engaging others in public and private)
  2. Evangelist: Promoting opportunities to learn
  3. Savvy Communicator: Understands today’s tools of communication and the language and jargon used in the community
  4. Gatherer: Gathers Community Input for Future Product and Services

In addition to the schedule of events posted on the CMAD site, I wanted to share a couple of our resources about online community management for L&D:

Boots On The Group: Introducing A Community of Practice at Bechtel – Bechtel identified a critical success factor in sustaining its community – funding a community coordinator. Lots of value here including ‘lessons learned.’

The Human Factor: Moderators in a Creative Online Community – This is a short article on the value of active moderators in online communities.

Nuts and Bolts: Upskilling – Take a look at the community management section and the outside resources listed at the bottom.

Building An Online Learning Community – Even if you don’t yet have a dedicated community manager, this article provides details on engagement instructors can provide to the community.

Implementing a Social Learning Platform from the Group Up (Conference Handout)

Integration of eLearning and Knowledge Management – Although is not directly about community managers but do note the section under “Improving training distribution…” where AFMC talks about the role of ‘knowledge owners.’

Finally, here’s a link to research from The Community Roundtable, a resource I’ve used multiple time for valuable information about online communities. Enjoy!

Make sure you take some time today to thank your online community managers!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *