Where has community management taken you?

đź’¬ Community Chat
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I’m always curious to learn about others career paths :railway_track:

So tell us; What was your first role in community management and where are you now? Did you go anywhere exciting inbetween? :speech_balloon:

Have you had any “pinch-me” moments when you’ve been working on a project/with a client that you’d dreamed about? :stars:

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I have a story. :slight_smile:

My first relevant role (I actually started life as an architect, then a software developer) was CM of the SitePoint network.

I moved from there to an agency based role with eModeration (now The Social Element) while setting up my own community on the side at UXMastery.

But my first “pinch me” moment was when Richard Millington shoulder tapped me to manage his Experts community. As well as Rich being a big name in the community space (which gave me confidence in my skills), this was an amazing opportunity to consolidate all my experience to date in a way that was useful to other community managers.

I left FeverBee for my second “pinch me” moment, which was working with Jeff Atwood (aka codinghorror of Stack Overflow fame) at Discourse. This was a role that gave me the opportunity to pull together all my community management, software and UX skills, working alongside one of my personal heroes.

But the biggest “pinch me” moment of my career came earlier this year when I took over as co-CEO of Discourse. Never saw that coming! It’s been quite a journey and one that I’m so proud of. I think I’ve found my forever job.

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My “pinch me” moment was working at Indie Hackers (a community for founders). I had watched it grow and I even had my own interview published there in the early days.

I had watched it grow and get acquired by Stripe and as I was stepping back from my business I saw that they were looking for community help, so I put my hand up for the role and ended up having a very fun 2 years.

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Wow @HAWK! It feels like you’ve had the dream career so far :smiley: I hope my career is as successful as yours :crossed_fingers:

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I think it goes to show what can happen when you support something from the beginning @rosiesherry :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: You never know where it might lead!

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