Committee Membership

 View Only

  • 1.  Food For Thought: Information and considerations for New Community Roles

    Posted 12-19-2024 15:38

    Hi everyone - I wanted to share some additional information about what we discussed at the meeting today.  

    1. Roles and Responsibilities

    • Community Managers: Oversee the community, moderate discussions, ensure guidelines are followed, and act as a liaison between the technical team and the users. They may escalate complex issues or questions that require higher-level expertise.
    • Subject Matter Experts (SMEs): Designated professionals or experienced community members who have deep technical knowledge in specific areas. SMEs are responsible for providing detailed, accurate answers to complex technical questions.
    • Community Respondents: Active community members who regularly contribute to the discussion and answer questions. They should have expertise in relevant technical fields but may not have the depth of an SME. Their role is to help with day-to-day inquiries.
    • Moderators: Ensure discussions remain civil, on-topic, and within the community guidelines. They may assist in directing questions to the appropriate respondents or SMEs.

    2. Levels of Engagement

    • Basic (Newbie/General) Questions: These may be answered by community members with moderate technical knowledge. Such questions should be answered quickly to foster engagement.
    • Intermediate Questions: These are more specific and may require input from experienced community members or SMEs. Responses should provide detailed guidance and problem-solving steps.
    • Advanced Questions: These questions involve deeper technical problems and will be answered by SMEs. It's crucial that SMEs are readily available to provide thorough, well-researched, and accurate responses.

    3. Response Process

    • Tagging System: Use a tagging system to classify questions by topic or technology area. This helps direct questions to the right respondents or SMEs.
    • Escalation Procedures: Create a clear escalation process for questions that require an in-depth response. For example, if a community respondent cannot answer a question, they should know how and when to escalate it to an SME or senior technical support team.
    • Response Time Expectations: Define clear response time guidelines for each level of question. For example:
      • General questions should be answered within 24 hours.
      • Intermediate questions within 48 hours.
      • Advanced questions within 72 hours, with the possibility of escalation if necessary.

    4. Training and Guidelines

    • Knowledge Base: Maintain an up-to-date knowledge base that respondents can use to answer common questions. This should be accessible and searchable to speed up response time.
    • Best Practices for Respondents: Provide guidelines on how to structure answers, including:
      • Provide clear, concise explanations.
      • Break down solutions into easy-to-follow steps.
      • Include links to relevant documentation or resources.
      • Maintain a helpful, positive, and respectful tone.

    5. Community Recognition and Rewards

    • Reputation Systems: Implement a reputation system where community members can earn points or badges for providing high-quality answers, promoting engagement and encouraging respondents to contribute more.
    • Monthly/Quarterly Recognition: Highlight top contributors and most helpful respondents to incentivize active participation. Recognition could include certificates, badges, or even access to special sessions or resources.

    6. Continuous Improvement

    • Feedback Loop: Allow community members to rate answers and provide feedback. This ensures that the responses remain accurate and helpful, and also helps in improving the overall quality of the community interactions.
    • Regular Training: Provide ongoing training for all respondents, including community managers and SMEs, to ensure they remain up-to-date with the latest technologies and best practices in answering questions.
    • Content Reviews: Regularly review and audit community content to ensure it is still relevant, accurate, and valuable.

    7. Community Engagement

    • Discussion Threads: Encourage ongoing discussions to follow up on previous answers. This can help clear up misunderstandings and allow for collaborative problem solving.
    • Weekly or Monthly Q&A Sessions: Hold live Q&A sessions or office hours where SMEs and senior community members can address common or difficult questions in real-time.


    ------------------------------
    Anne Sawyer
    Executive Director
    90 Minds Inc.
    Sunset Beach CA
    ------------------------------


  • 2.  RE: Food For Thought: Information and considerations for New Community Roles

    Posted 12-20-2024 11:38

    First thought was, this is awesome and thanks for the thorough documentation!  

    As I ruminate on the concepts discussed, we should keep a couple of principles in mind:

    1. Keep it simple - Points 2 on the complexity of the questions are good and might be useful for tagging, but are also subjective and may not be the best for developing a service level expectation.    When you look at response times, the complexity of the question is less relevant than the impact on the customer.  Similarly, the feedback loop in item 6 is a great idea but likely be administratively burdensome.  We may want to use some award survey at end of year and tie into reward and recognition (see below).
    2. Community Definition - Is a community defined as a group in Higher Logic?  Although it says 23 communities, I think we really have 9 after you eliminate inactive and committee communities.  This number will likely grow as we diversify.  I think we should be clear when a Higher Logic community requires a manager and/or moderator and be certain we can staff the required positions.   I believe follow up on discussion threads from item 7 would be included in the roles and responsibilities.
    3. Reward & Recognition - IMHO, recognition and rewards should be 90Minds community wide and not Higher Logic community specific.  I think the largest constituencies will tend to win all the rewards unless we add additional recognitions for new member contributors, or qualitative rewards.

    I am all for this idea and would suggest we start with 2 Community Leaders

    1. Sage 100 and Sage Urgent Support could be managed by a single community leader who moves items from urgent to regular and helps tag and escalate support issues.
    2. 90 Minds Community and General Consultant Discussion could keep sensitive posts in the right area and really be responsible for generating community engagement in these areas.

    Starting with just two, we could invite the first community leaders and then announce and advertise this new volunteer position at MOTM.   These positions could then be eligible for discounts on membership or MOTM attendance.   We may want to make attending MOTM a condition so the community can meet the individuals in person, but then again this could contradict the KISS approach.   I believe the position should be nominated on an annual basis to encourage greater community involvement and we should also have a mechanism for changing the leaders if they are not performing the duties as outlined.



    ------------------------------
    Gary Feldman
    Principal
    I-Business Network
    Marietta GA
    16786270646
    http://www-i-bn.net
    ------------------------------



  • 3.  RE: Food For Thought: Information and considerations for New Community Roles

    Posted 12-23-2024 07:25

    I like where this conversation is headed. Agree with Gary and really like the points provided by Anne.

    I would add: 

    • Community Managers should have terms of some sort or an evaluation period where we simply ask the question, "does the moderator wish to continue moderating?" As with EOS, any position within the community I would think should easily adhere to the GWC - gets it, wants it, and has the capacity to do it. Additionally, giving community members the ability to hold that position would offer growth opportunities for those individuals.
      • Some communities might require that even a Community Manager be a SME or know who the SMEs are. For example, Urgent Support should have someone that's well-versed in the product AND knows the appropriate people to tag into the conversation.
    • We should consider quarterly Town Hall meetings, and at those meetings have a "Rewards and Recognition" portion that has committee, board, and peer recognition categories. Each person recognized could get a $25 gift card or something so this exercise has a tangible reward outside of the equivalent of a digital high-five.
      • Committee-level recognition of committee members going above and beyond (or something that acknowledges contribution to the advancement of 90 Minds)
      • Board-level recognition where the board recognizes stand-out contribution from any level (community, committee, board, etc.)
      • Peer-level where it gives people the opportunity to nominate people within certain categories (thinking there would be 2 people recognized each quarter)

    Lastly - a question - can Higher Logic support everything that's been outlined from Anne's post? If so - great! But I wanted to ask since there's been consistent performance reliability fluctuations and challenges, and I didn't know whether HL could a) do all the things and b) keep up with the demand that our community will place on the platform as we grow (both in scope of what the community offers and the complexities of membership levels).



    ------------------------------
    Best Regards,

    Basil Malik
    President/CEO
    e: basil@malik-inc.com
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


Related Content