No

I was hired by Waze in 2009 to launch the Social Media presence of the company in Latin America. After a couple of years, the Support and Map teams slowly started to notice that the same users would write them email after email. A small community of map enthusiasts was being formed. In parallel, I was building an online audience that started to look more like a community than just an audience. Soon my activities became more dedicated to the shape and nurture of a community and less to the marketing messages usually sent over the Social Media of those days (mostly Facebook and then-called Twitter). At some point, the Support team split in two: Customer Success Team and Community Team. Since I was also building a community in the Marketing Department, I was called by the newly-formed Community Team to join them, which I did. Since then, I fully dedicated myself to build, scale and manage the Latin American Community of Waze Map Editors, both in Spanish and Portuguese. In 2019, when Waze decided to embark on the creation of a new product called Waze Carpool, I joined the new team to lead the creation of its global community. It flourished and I even built my own team with two vendors in Brazil. But COVID came almost immediately after and with everyone at home plus the health concerns of being in a closed reduced space with another individual quickly jeopardized Waze Carpool's mission. Once Carpool was officially deprecated, I went back to lead communities at Waze core. This team to lead Western European communities such as France, Germany and Spain, as well as Eastern European communities such as Ukraine and Belarus, as well as Russia. Right before my family and I decided to relocate to London, I started leading the Waze communities in the Philippines, Japan, Vietnam and other South East Asian countries. It was such a thrilling ride!

How to grow from a team member to someone who advices and teaches more junior members. It wasn't easy to simultaneously manage hands-on community management with people management as well as advisory. But I think I learned a lot about this challenge, mainly about myself as a person with lots of patience for people and a gift for education.

Waze's growth from a scrappy startup to a serious corporate entity provided me with the tools needed to thrive in both environments. This growth was a significant challenge for the entire Community Team, and some members couldn't adapt. I am a person who likes change and is flexible enough to adapt to new situations (after all I migrated between countries twice!). So seeing the company grow and adopting new ideas was the way for me to develop. I am proud to say that I can both thrive as a community leader in a scrappy, disorganized startup AND in a big corporation with streamlined processes.

During my career, I only used 4 platforms: phphBB, Discourse, Facebook Groups, Whatsapp Communities. None of them is ideal and each platform serves a specific type of community. But if I need to choose between those I have experience with, I'd choose Discourse. It's modern, intuitive and relatively easy to use. I know there are many others out there with cool features but I haven't used them so I can't tell.

Provide value to those members and make it crystal clear what that value is and why it's worth it for them to contribute.

This is a very big and broad topic, but I can say that at the bottom line, a community is a group of people who share a common interest and actively interact around that interest. A successful community needs to be friendly, welcoming and inclusive.

Have a clear view of what your goals are and work to achieve them in an organized, persistent manner. Try to avoid getting things done quickly and respect your community members' time. Build or manage your community one small bit at a time, while planning ahead and documenting your past and next steps. Good luck!