If you haven’t heard, this year’s CMX Summit 2017 will be the biggest and most industry-changing conference to date. Join 600+ community professionals and ~40 speakers for this 2-day conference to learn, make new friends, mentor, and contacts, and move the industry needle forward. Early bird pricing ends on Friday! So let’s dig into the details as you make your case to attend Summit.
Major CMX Summit changes:
- Summit will be held September 19-20 in Los Angeles. That’s right, we’re moving the show permanently to sunny LA to switch things up and provide growth opportunities for future years.
- This year, we’re having one unified conference, instead of two on different coasts. We want to unite our entire community together, which means even more new friends and networking (and who knows, maybe a West Coast Vs. East Coast dance-off or two).
- Incredible sponsors, demo sessions, book signings, and more will allow you to connect and push your community plans forward.
- This two day event will help you maximize your learning with even more speakers and industry experts than we had before.
- In conjunction with our sponsor Shopify, we’re offering 20 diversity and inclusion scholarships, which includes a free ticket to Summit and a travel budget. Applications close Friday, June 16th.
- We’ve moved the party to Wednesday evening. We know that community managers know how to have fun (wink), and having the party on the last conference day will allow you to unwind, solidify those connections, and relax after two full days of learning.
We’re getting so excited as the details are coming together that we wanted to share them with you, our amazing community. Because, let’s face it, you are what makes Summit come to life.
Meet CMX Summit’s speakers
Jeremiah Owyang
Founder & CEO at Crowd Companies
@jowyang
Jeremiah Owyang is the Founder of Crowd Companies: an innovation council that helps brands overcome challenges and navigate the next wave of disruption and opportunity. From the autonomous world to the collaborative economy, Owyang views every aspect of emerging technologies through the lens of growth, opportunity, and constantly shifting consumer behaviors and expectations. He identifies trends and advises major companies to adapt their business models to better connect with customers and community. His clients include Adobe, Electrolux, Wells Fargo, Nestle, Cisco, Western Union, Visa, Colgate, Yum, and Pepsi.
The Next Phase of Community Strategy: Innovation
Join Jeremiah Owyang, founder of Community Manager Appreciation Day (CMAD), as he challenges your community strategy and career to uplevel to the next phase: corporate innovation. Find out how external and internal communities can crowdsource the next generation of your company’s products and services.
Leila Janah
Founder & CEO at Samasource and LXMI
@leila_c
Leila Janah is the Founder and CEO of Samasource and LXMI, two companies that go beyond charity to #givework to low-income people around the world using cutting-edge social enterprise models in technology and luxury skincare, respectively. She is the author of the forthcoming book Give Work, forthcoming from Penguin/RandomHouse in September, 2017.
Give Work: Leveraging Traditional Business to Bring Opportunity to the Global Talent Pool
Leila Janah founded Samasource in 2008 on the premise that while talent may be equally distributed throughout the world, opportunity is not. Samasource brings digital work to people living in poverty around the globe, a practice called impact sourcing. Now a self-sustaining social, community enterprise, Samasource has launched a call-to-action for corporations to create a more equitable global community by leveraging their investments across their supply chains to give work to those in need. And they are proving that doing good is doing good business, too! She’ll walk you through how you, too, can leverage traditional business practices to make strides globally.
Chip Heath
Professor at Stanford University
Chip Heath is a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is the co-author with his brother Dan on four books. Their newest, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact, is forthcoming on October 3. Their previous three books–Decisive, Switch, and Made to Stick–have been NY Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers and have been translated into 33 languages. His parents are just happy that their sons play well together.
The Power of Moments: Creating Moments That Build Communities
Certain moments unite communities and inspire them to act: lunch counter sit-ins, pride marches, and, less profoundly, code jams and even Diet Coke + Mentos. Using research from his new book, The Power of Moments, Chip Heath will describe how we can craft our own moments that will make a community feel proud, connected, inspired, or delighted.
Malcolm Ribot
Founder at FTM Traveler and Gorillashrimp Designs
@gorillashrimp
Malcolm Ribot is a transgender man who started traveling over two years ago visiting, connecting, and making visible over 1,000 fellow individual trans male experiences in 49 of 50 states in the United States thus far. His efforts have been featured in video, radio, and written forms via NBC Out, NPR: Hear & Now, KNKX: Sound Effect, The Rainbow Times, FTM Magazine, Buzzfeed, and Transform Washington.
Connecting Our Community and Spreading Visibility: The FTM Traveler
Have you ever discovered a need for connection in your community? Malcolm Ribot, a transgender man, began traveling around the United States over two years ago to meet others like himself. He’s connected with those who’d never met another individual like them and didn’t know there were others nearby. Learn how and why his trip began, and how it grew and evolved into an ongoing initiative to help fellow transgender men find one another in their own cities and towns.
Angie Thurston
Ministry Innovation Fellow at Harvard Divinity School
Angie Thurston is an On Being Fellow and a Ministry Innovation Fellow at Harvard Divinity School, supporting leaders who are deepening community nationwide. With Casper ter Kuile, she co-authored How We Gather and Something More, two reports profiling new forms of meaningful community in America.
Casper ter Kuile
Ministry Innovation Fellow at Harvard Divinity School
@caspertk
Casper ter Kuile is building a world of joyful belonging. He’s a Ministry Innovation Fellow at Harvard Divinity School where he supports innovative community leaders across the secular/sacred landscape. Casper also hosts a podcast, Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, which engages a modern classic through traditional sacred reading practices.
How We Gather: Learning from Religious Communities
What can community builders learn from religion? Harvard Divinity School researchers Angie Thurston and Casper ter Kuile share their research on what structures and systems build flourishing communities of belonging and formation. From CrossFit to 800-year-old monasteries, come and explore the next frontier of religion in America!
Ian Cumming
Founder at Travel Massive
@travelmassive
Originally from Tasmania, Ian Cumming is the founder of Travel Massive — the world’s largest tourism industry network — which connects innovators, creators, and leaders in the global tourism industry. He is the creator of and open-sourced Travel Massive’s community and event platform which connects over 30,000 members in 174 countries. He also founded and invested in a number of Australian startup companies.
Topic: TBD
David Spinks
CEO at CMX
@davidspinks
David Spinks is the CEO of CMX, and has been building communities since he was 13. He is really good at growing hair.
Welcome to CMX Summit 2017
Community is evolving. CMX CEO David Spinks welcomes you to CMX Summit 2017, and he will dive into how our industry is growing and what opportunities are out there for community professors and business utilizing community.
Arielle Tannenbaum
Community Strategist at Buffer
@ariellemargot
Arielle Tannenbaum spends her days building the global Buffer community and designing meaningful experiences for people to connect, learn, and grow together through social media. Always exploring, she has grown community in many settings — in the worlds of dance, tech, coworking, and holistic health. As a remote worker, Arielle is grateful to have more time to be outdoors, practice yoga, and cook.
Designing Community Experience
Meaningful experiences are at the core of strong communities. How do you ensure that your members have fulfilling experiences that give them a sense of belonging? Community building, meet experience design! Arielle will explore how to think through the intentional lens of an experience designer to mindfully foster a community of engaged and devoted members.
Ashley Elder
Sr. Community Manager at Atlassian
@aelder6
Ashley Elder equips Atlassian User Group leaders and deepens engagement with user group members globally. Her passion for community began while working in healthcare, leading her to manage communities in both nonprofit and tech. A proud Boston native and current Austin, Texas transplant, Ashley is loyal to all things New England while still enjoying the superior weather, hospitality, and queso of Austin.
Getting Buy-In for Your Community and Backing It Up
Ashley Elder will share how the in-person community at Atlassian grew from an under-resourced side project to one of the top initiatives in the company. She’ll help you to identify which eye-catching key metrics will prove value to your executive team; how to measure and track against those metrics; and how to back it up with tremendous growth and scale.
Cesar Manara
Community Manager at Hoplon
@CesarManara
Cesar Manara is a playwright who has been working in the gaming industry as a community manager and truly believes in a better online — and offline — world, to be built by developing meaningful relationships between people. Besides writing, he enjoys planning, launching, and managing communities across different platforms where people can thrive.
Balancing Inclusion and Exclusion in Online Communities
As online community managers, we are often tasked with enforcing rules in our communities, including excluding members from the entire community altogether. Behavioral psychology believes punishment doesn’t change behavior, so what does? How can we promote inclusivity and acceptance without relying on punishments for bad behavior?
Christina Shorter
Community Manager at National Geographic
@ShorterCR
Christina Shorter is the community manager for National Geographic, where she focuses on Your Shot, a global community of 800,000+ storytellers. Her interest in community started with her first internship, where she cultivated community for families of U.S. diplomats abroad. In her free time, she’s most likely checking out the latest art exhibit in D.C. or facetiming her nieces.
Building a UGC Community When You’re 130 Years Old
Submitting UGC can be intimidating for members. Christina Shorter will share what she’s learned growing a photography community under a brand very well-known for its photography. You’ll get tips on how to grow the size of your community, maintain engagement, and empower all users at every level to come together and collaboratively tell stories together.
Holly Elizabeth Herbert
Community Manager at Blackbaud
@hollyeherbert
Holly Elizabeth Herbert’s passion is harmonizing outstanding customer experiences with demonstrable community ROI. With over a decade of experience, this former chemist finds balance between the art as well as the science of community. Holly was a 2017 Community Manager of the Year nominee and appeared on CMX’s Top Community Managers Working in 2017 list. She and her dog, Humphrey, live in beautiful Charleston, SC.
Michael Beahm
Sr. Marketing Manager at Blackbaud
@mabeahm
Michael Beahm knows a good customer experience when he sees one, and has set out to craft more of them to drive customer loyalty and business growth. He manages the Advocate Marketing program at Blackbaud, the leading cloud software company powering social good. Michael earned Advocate Marketer of the Year honors from Influitive in 2016. He resides with his wife and three kids in North Carolina.
Undeniable Chemistry: The Relationship between Customer Marketing and Community
Internal team siloing causes customers pain. Michael Beahm and Holly Elizabeth Herbert will share how breaking down these silos and working together with a customer-centric approach is a win for both customers and the company. They’ll explore how they optimized the relationship between community management and customer marketing, created an integrated customer experience, and measured ROI success at key points in the customer journey.
Jenn Patel
Senior Director of Community at Health Union & Founder at RipLB
@jennlebowitz
Jenn Patel believes your past experiences have significant value when you’re a community pro. She attributes her success in moderating the 5 million patients/month that Health Union reaches to her prior roles as a college Dean and founder of RipLB, an organization that combats heroin addiction on Long Island. She’s thrilled to be back at CMX after leading a workshop in 2016!
Moderation Is Stressful, but Burnout Is Optional
How do you stay healthy while dealing with moderation stress, especially as you scale your community? Jenn Patel will demonstrate her 4-step plan for using stress to formulate solutions and her self-care tips. You’ll walk away armed with strategies to avoid burnout and help you stay successful in your work.
Jenna Kleine
Community Growth Lead at ClassDojo
@jenna_kleine
Educator turned community builder, Jenna Kleine helped grow ClassDojo to 90% of US schools and over 180 countries. She spends her days developing creative growth marketing and community efforts centered around relationships, trust, and brand love. Jenna enjoys collaborating with fellow community builders and geeking out over the endless impact of thriving communities.
Building Community as a Thriving Growth Engine
Authentic relationships are the core of any healthy community, but can they drive growth? Jenna Kleine will share how to turn your community into your growth team’s secret weapon. She’ll dive into the tactics of building meaningful relationships that promote the growth and scaling of a community.
Jennifer Sable Lopez
Director, Global Communities at Welocalize
@jennita
Jennifer Sable Lopez is the Director at Global Communities at Welocalize, a professional translation and localization services provider. Previously, she built the Moz community team and community strategy from the ground up, and grew that community to over 600,000 members. Jen is a self-proclaimed geek and faux-vegetarian and she prides herself in having kicked colon cancer’s butt at the young age of 37.
Starting Strong – How to Make an Impact in Your New Community Role in 90 Days
You landed the perfect community role, and you’re ready to jump in and make things happen. But how do you make an impact and not fall flat? Jennifer Sable Lopez walks you through real-life strategies to help ensure you soar in your first 90 days.
Lindsay Starke
Lead Community Manager at Higher Logic
@lindsaymstarke
Lindsay Starke has been involved in online communities for the past 20 years as a user, a volunteer moderator, and, eventually, a full-time professional. At Higher Logic, she works with clients to build successful communities for their users, as well as leading a team of community managers as a mini think-tank for testing new community tactics.
What All Community Managers Can Learn from Association Communities
For hundreds of years, professional associations did the work of online communities: bringing like-minded people together to share ideas and support their mutual interests. These days, many of these organizations have online communities of their own, and Lindsay has worked with dozens of these vibrant, natural communities of practice. She will share some of the universal lessons learned and how they can inform and empower your community — no matter its purpose, demographics, or quirks.
Lindsey Erlick
Senior Manager, Student Advocacy & Marketing at Pearson
@linze_e
Lindsey Erlick created Pearson’s first advocate community: the Student Insiders. In one year, she grew the Insiders to 3,200 members and added sizable ROI. Her work greatly boosts the brand through blogs, videos, and feedback. She also runs Pearson’s scholarship and mentor programs. Outside work, Lindsey is pursing an MBA at NYU and leads our CMX NYC Series. She’s also an insta-foodie, follow her @theglutenfreetravelers.
How To Cultivate Your Best Content From Your Biggest Fans
Content is everything, but how you get to that content isn’t always clear. Join Lindsey Erlick as she walks you through the surprisingly simple — yet easy-to-overlook — steps toward getting that all-important content right from your brand’s biggest advocates. She’ll share best practices on making UGC shine and grow.
Marc Siegel
Community Consultant
@marcsiegel
Marc Siegel has been doing online community since before the web existed for NASA, IBM, eBay, Intuit, and several startups. He’s connected people together in consumer/games, B2B, education, and developer relations. He is a leader in OCtribe, a San Francisco group that hosts and livestreams Community Manager talks. Marc lives in San Jose with one wife, two daughters, and numerous pumpkins (in season).
Partner with Your Community for a Better Product
Customers are great at pinpointing ways your product can be improved. Learn to listen to their ideas and respond so they feel part of the team. You’ll get insight into how to internally build processes to ensure this valuable input is not only heard, but also pushed forward into the product.
Margot Mazur
Partnership Co-ordinator at Wistia
@margotcodes
Margot Mazur is a business and marketing nerd focusing on growth, community building, product, and partnerships. She obsesses over metrics and connects people to the resources they need to do their best work. On any given day, she pets anywhere from 2-6 dogs. That’s a good doggie.
How We Grew Our Community 500% by Switching to Slack
Moving away from web forums can seem daunting. Margot will show you the steps she took to move her community to Slack and how they saw a 500% increase in active users. She’ll share best practices on how to successfully create your Slack community.
Sara F. Hawkins
Attorney at Sara F. Hawkins, Attorney at Law
@sarafhawkins
Sara F. Hawkwins is a private practice attorney with nearly 20 years experience working with startups, entrepreneurs, and marketing and advertising agencies, as well as major corporations. She counsels clients on legal matters in marketing and advertising; international promotions; social media and internet law; copyright, trademark, and digital rights; and general business matters.
Laws and Other 4-Letter Words Community Pros Need to Know
Running a community means playing different roles. Sometimes you’re required to be a referee or judge, other days an executioner or jury. Understanding the legal issues your community may face and the solutions available will give you the confidence and expertise to address these difficult matters as they arise.
Suzi Nelson
Community Manager at DigitalMarketer
@Suzi_Quzi86
As Community Manager at DigitalMarketer, Suzi Nelson provides assistance, support, encouragement, and advocacy for DigitalMarketer’s private customer group by bridging the gap between company, content, and customer. In her time at DigitalMarketer, community activity has increased 92.81% through her strategic approach to relationship building. Suzi was recently awarded Community Manager of the Year 2017 by CMX, Online Community Results, and Community Manager Appreciation Day (CMAD).
Topic: TBD
Trish Fontanilla
Head of Community & Customer Experience at Freight Farms
@trishofthetrade
Trish Fontanilla is Head of Community and Customer Experience at Freight Farms, where she leads company-wide initiatives focused on improving the customer journey. Previous to FF, Trish worked as Startup Institute’s Global Director of Community, and was Vsnap’s Vice President of Community and Customer Experience. Although her most notable job to date has been Showroom Coordinator at Chuck E. Cheese.
Leveling Up Your Community Career
Sometimes we get so focused developing our communities and companies that we forget about our own professional development. Trish will show you different ways of advancing your community career. You’ll learn day-to-day tricks to managing your personal community to more involved projects like creating your own advisory board.
Wow, this is a lot of insanely in-depth knowledge that we’re dropping. But guess what? We’re still confirming speakers and topics with about 15 speakers left to round out our lineup. Not to mention all the other fun and surprises. (We promise, we’ll tell you, but not just yet.) So stay tuned, and make sure to check out our conference page.
As Summit plans continue to grow, we’ll be sharing them with you all summer long. Please let us know if you have any questions about our programming and, as always, feel free to reach out to us at events@cmxhub.com.
