Tickets Available! CMX Summit - May 1 & 2, 2025 - San Francisco Bay Area, CA
In this new session from Jono Bacon, he will share the key lessons he has learned in driving tangible engagement from working with over 200+ companies across a broad variety of industries across his 27 year career. This will cover topics such as community design, content, video, incentives/rewards, breaking through corporate silos, and more.
This will be packaged up into a practical set of lessons, principles, and stories that CMX attendees can apply right away, and Jono will share stories, examples, and more to bring these career-spanning learnings to life.
Developer relations isn’t just organic marketing—it’s a long-term investment in people. But how do you make the case for advocacy when it doesn’t always fit neatly into a funnel? And how do you extend that spirit of advocacy beyond your community and into your internal team? This panel dives into building a culture of advocacy—through powerful storytelling, qualitative feedback, and creating internal and external feedback loops that drive real results.
Hot Takes Sessions are bold, fast-paced deep dives where speakers share unfiltered, controversial, or under-discussed insights on community building in just 7 minutes. Expect rapid-fire wisdom and actionable takeaways-no fluff, just straight-to-the-point expertise.
What if you stopped measuring community engagement for measurement's sake? What if your members weren't prompted, notified, and pinged to all hell to remind them to engage...engage...ENGAGE!
Join Gianna Whitver, CEO & co-founder of thriving 3,600-member community the Cybersecurity Marketing Society for a quick, blunt, and potentially controversial speed session on engagement metrics. In 7 quick minutes, she'll share exactly what the Society measures and the metrics they choose to leave behind - and, most importantly, WHY.
Because...nothing will kill your community faster than making engaging a full-time job for your members!
Discover the key strategies and operational systems behind a self-sustaining, member-led community. You'll unlock the secrets to how to foster member autonomy, streamline processes, and build a culture where your community grows—even when you're not in the room.
You don’t win a race by just being the fastest driver. It’s not enough on its own. You have to know how to maneuver. You have to study and research the course you are going to race. You have to know your own weaknesses. You have to know the weaknesses of your competitors. You’ve got to have the right pit crew, gear, and obviously, you need a great car. AND with all of those things top of mind, you still need to be the first across the finish line and pass the checkered flag.
Erica and Holly learned an immeasurable amount from each other in the five years they worked together – especially when they came across something they wanted to approach in different ways. Erica always wanted to go as fast as possible, and Holly wanted to take time to think through every last detail. In this workshop, they share how melding together two very different approaches can ultimately result in achieving a huge win.
You’ll leave this workshop with real-life examples that show the successes and failures of the different approaches and a set of core questions that will allow you to maintain the delicate balance of fast yet thoughtful when you launch a new community initiative. Ready, Set, Go!
Great communities aren’t built on guesswork—they’re co-created with feedback, transparency, and trust. Armin, Maria, and Whitney will share how to make feedback part of your foundation from day one: from onboarding to retrospectives, cultural barriers to anonymous input. Learn how to collect specific insights, close the loop, and show your community that their voices matter. Feedback isn’t a form—it’s a foundation.
In this hands-on masterclass, you’ll tackle real-world community challenges using proven frameworks and techniques from FeverBee. Through interactive case studies and group collaboration, you’ll learn how to analyze problems, design better community experiences, and make strategic decisions with confidence.
This session will equip you with the tools to identify core challenges, weigh trade-offs, and develop actionable solutions that drive engagement and growth. Whether you're scaling a new initiative, securing executive buy-in, or revamping your community experience, this session will give you the strategic playbook you need to succeed. Expect a fast-paced, high-impact workshop designed to challenge your thinking and level up your approach.
Hot Takes Sessions are bold, fast-paced deep dives where speakers share unfiltered, controversial, or under-discussed insights on community building in just 7 minutes. Expect rapid-fire wisdom and actionable takeaways—no fluff, just straight-to-the-point expertise.
Great communities don’t just happen, they’re designed. The best UX principles aren’t just for apps; they shape how people navigate spaces, engage, and feel a sense of belonging.
Drawing from real-world examples in hospitality, city planning, and design, this talk explores how setting the right tone, managing expectations, and reducing friction can transform your community.
Why Attend: This session will empower you with the insights and strategies needed to build inclusive, impactful communities that drive meaningful change. Whether you're a customer marketer, a community builder, or someone passionate about making a real impact, you’ll walk away with actionable knowledge on how to elevate your community, empower individuals, and create an environment where success is shared.
This fireside chat will explore how to use the power of storytelling to best present the value and impact that an online community plays in an organization to the different stakeholders for executive buy-in and cross-departmental support. We will discuss how ESRI has achieved and presented the impact of its community, the challenges, and the best practices for measuring the community’s success.
Key Takeaways:
- Achieving executive buy-in for community initiatives
- How to build in stakeholder-focused storytelling to your community strategy
- Best practices for measuring the success of online communities
- ESRI’s path to community success
As AI becomes increasingly integrated into community management, content moderation, and search algorithms, how can we ensure that community-driven content remains valuable, discoverable, and impactful? This panel will explore the intersection of AI and community content—how it’s used to train AI copilots, the challenges of search indexing, and the growing need for human-generated insights in an AI-driven world.
We'll dive into best practices for curating high-quality content, ensuring AI tools benefit rather than exploit communities, and measuring the success of AI-powered initiatives.
Hot Takes Sessions are bold, fast-paced deep dives where speakers share unfiltered, controversial, or under-discussed insights on community building in just 7 minutes. Expect rapid-fire wisdom and actionable takeaways—no fluff, just straight-to-the-point expertise.
Join us for an insightful session led by The Community Community (TCC) Board Members, Jocelyn Hsu (Co-Lead) and Nikki Thibodeau (Founder), as they dive into what makes TCC unique.
Get a peek behind the curtain to understand the considerations around applications: How can you be exclusive while being inclusive? How do you ensure less bias during application reviews?
Then, through the lens of their onboarding process, they'll showcase what sets TCC apart, including the 90-day deactivation policy and the emphasis on context-rich posts.
Whether you're a newcomer or a seasoned community professional, this session will provide valuable insights and practical tips to help you build intentionally and apply these principles to your own community. Come learn, engage, and take away actionable strategies to enhance your community-building efforts.
Want a promotion, new program, more budget, or another headcount? In this interactive workshop with Brian Oblinger, a former executive, you'll learn how to identify what you really want, craft a clear narrative, sharpen a concrete ask, and present to an executive audience to gain approval. Participants will role play real-world scenarios with Brian to build the skills, experience, and confidence to successfully engage leadership at their organizations.
