Calling all Community Managers: This course is a must!

Our objective at Net2Van is to provide opportunities for the nonprofit community in Vancouver to have access to education, networking and the tools to help your organization thrive in the quickly changing world of technology. We understand that the lifeblood of any organization wouldn’t be possible without the support of donors – individuals and businesses. Building an engaging community strategy is key to forging new opportunities, raising awareness, recruiting volunteers and retaining those vital, hard-won relationships.

The UBC Continuing Education Studies department is offering a course on community management The Evolution of the Community Manager from January 25 – February 22, 2016. Net2Van committee member, Michelle Sklar, caught up with the program facilitator, Crystal Henrickson, to learn more about the course (that you don’t need to be a UBC student to attend).

Check out their interview below:

Tell us about the Community Management course you are teaching at UBC?
This is the foundational course in the Community Management Award of Achievement program offered at UBC’s downtown campus. In this 4 week course, that starts on January 25th, you’ll learn what the community manager landscape looks like — what skills and experiences are required, the types of roles and responsibilities of a community manager, how community managers differ and are complementary to other roles in the marketing/communications departments. We’ll also dig into the stages of communities that help community managers decide on where to focus their efforts.

What’s great is you don’t need to be a registered UBC student, or a university graduate to attend, as The Community Management program is part of Continuing Studies.

What topics will you be focusing on?
The focus of this course starts with properly defining a community manager’s role within an organization, and assigning roles and responsibilities to this role. We then move on to understand the DNA of different types of communities and how they act at various levels of maturity.

Can you tell us a little about the program format?
What’s great about the Community Management program at UBC is that the class sizes are small, meaning there is a lot of peer to instructor time and deeper discussions amongst peers. Our case studies and industry experts are curated from a number of industries: technology companies, non profits, online social networks and lifestyle brands. We take a lot of care to simulate real world community scenarios and use modern communication tools like Slack to give students a very practical approach to Community Management.

Who is the ideal participant for this course?
Industry professionals who are working in communications and marketing roles and want to increase engagement levels amongst their audiences, career transitioners who want to deepen their skills in community management, hiring managers and executives who want to understand emerging community roles.

Can you share with us some of the fun things you have in store for your students?
You’ll get to experience hosting your own AMA’s with community builders, “hangouts” online and offline with local industry experts, and unlimited access via Slack to program instructors (myself and Destin Jones: Change Heroes, formerly of Hootsuite, Latergramme).

Register for this course here.

Follow Crystal on Twitter: @marketing_girl

Follow Michelle on Twitter: @michelle_sklar

[#Commbuild Tweet Chat] Growing Your Community: Hacks for Finding Your Tribe

I’m gonna host a #commbuild chat on May 7. You should join us!

TOPIC: Growing your community: hacks for finding your tribe
DATE: Tuesday, May 7, 2013
TIME: 1–2 PM ET/ 10–11 AM PT

#commbuild tweet chat

Starting a community can be daunting, and growing it can be even harder. How do you grow your group so that it isn’t just you talking to an empty room? Because THAT is demoralizing! :-p

There are tricks and hacks (AKA “best practices”) that you can use to accelerate your community growth. Join the #CommBuild-ers to learn from grizzled experts and share your secrets to community growth and success.

Join the tweet chat and follow the hashtag #commbuild.

YOUR FACILITATOR

Elijah van der Giessen must be 100 years old, because he started doing Community Building back when “online social networks” consisted of email. Eli is the NetSquared Local Community Curator supporting a global volunteer network of 50 groups that each year hold over 450 events for the nonprofit technology sector. He’s also been the volunteer coordinator for outdoor festivals, environmental NGOs and Canadian Idol.

ABOUT #COMMBUILD

These conversations are focused on issues and topics relevant to those working on community building or in community management roles. They are open to anyone interested in learning and sharing about building community, on and offline, with the use of social media or other technology tools.

[#Commbuild Tweet Chat] Growing Your Community: Hacks for Finding Your Tribe

I’m gonna host a #commbuild chat on May 7. You should join us!

TOPIC: Growing your community: hacks for finding your tribe

DATE: Tuesday, May 7, 2013

TIME: 1–2 PM ET/ 10–11 AM PT

Commbuild tweet chat

Starting a community can be daunting, and growing it can be even harder. How do you grow your group so that it isn’t just you talking to an empty room? Because THAT is demoralizing! :-p

There are tricks and hacks (AKA “best practices”) that you can use to accelerate your community growth. Join the #CommBuild-ers to learn from grizzled experts and share your secrets to community growth and success.

We’ll be talking about:

  • Event formats that promote group growth
  • How you can hack meetup.com to find venues and speakers
  • Levaging the power of other people’s networks to grow your community
  • Setting up your community to grow by giving up control
  • The sexiest #nptech topics of 2013

Join the tweet chat and follow the hashtag #commbuild.

YOUR FACILITATOR

Elijah van der Giessen must be 100 years old, because he started doing Community Building back when “online social networks” consisted of email. Eli is the NetSquared Local Community Curator supporting a global volunteer network of 50 groups that each year hold over 450 events for the nonprofit technology sector. He’s also been the volunteer coordinator for outdoor festivals, environmental NGOs and Canadian Idol.

ABOUT #COMMBUILD

These conversations are focused on issues and topics relevant to those working on community building or in community management roles. They are open to anyone interested in learning and sharing about building community, on and offline, with the use of social media or other technology tools.