Community in a Time of Crisis: Thoughts from CMX Global Connect

In a world with no physical contact, digital and accessible communities can redefine human connection

9 min readApr 30, 2020

When I started working on online communities for my doctoral dissertation projects, I justified my decisions in various ways.

First, being an active, avid, core community member myself, in the many years of respected online activity I saw too many things that just needed an explanation. Why is it that just a few people are able to dictate the tone of the community conversations? When something unexpected happens, how does a community recover and why?). Second, it is the kind of topic that never stops being relevant. Communities exist since the dawn of mankind — they have changed format, shape, intentions, but the fundamentals have stayed the same, for millennia: we are social beings who need each other, and together we are better than the sum of our parts.

However, when I first started, I would have never thought that I would witness a world in which online communities were called to redefine the meaning and significance of human connection.

This balance between digital presence and authentic sense of humanity was at the heart of an event that took place just a couple of days ago. On April 28 2020, 29 speakers, 3 hosts, many volunteers, and more than 2000 attendees came together to discuss and experience the challenges and the future of online communities, during the first all-virtual CMX Global Connect conference. CMX Global Connect was organized with the purpose of educating and connecting community professionals during a time of crisis. The focus was, particularly, on how to build community virtually and online (while keeping a sense of human connection).

I must admit that due to time-zone differences, I was only able to join for the last ~2.5 hours of presentations and activities. But for those interested, here are some takeaways from the several, interesting talks I was able to attend (along with my academic self speaking in quotes, here and there in the text).

Tips & Tricks for Facilitating Online Events Like a Pro

(by Rachel Eilbott, Head of Community Building at Makesense)

In this workshop, Rachel guided the audience into understanding the strengths and weaknesses of online events. She also shared some interesting tricks to create a sense of human connection, and encourage interactivity among virtual event attendees. Here are some of the tips I found most clever and useful:

The attention span of online attendees is much shorter than during offline counterparts. Long online sessions can benefit from breaks and interactive activities between talks and presentations. Visualization exercises are an example of engaging, fun and useful intermediate activity. Rachel tested this on the attendees, and made us imagine our next virtual event, visualize it as successful, imagine all the attendees logging off being happy and satisfied.
Other examples include using the “breakout rooms” function on Zoom to let people speak directly to each other, and polling or sharing preferences on something creative, like a favorite TV show, or favorite music track.
During slide-supported presentations, it is easy to both lose the focus of the attendees, and create a sense of detachment from the human experience. This is due to the long time looking at the screen without the presence of a real person. Rachel recommended to remove the slides from the screen whenever you don’t need them anymore, especially during a Q&A or discussion.

Online Events Planner: Your Ultimate Checklist to Launching Online Events

(by Shana Sumers, Head of Community at HER App)

Shana touched upon many pragmatic and logistics-related points of organizing online events. Within the content of her talk, I found some profound gems of community-management wisdom, such as:

Online communities are full of spaces that have no purpose — this is a big difference with offline communities, and one of the biggest elements that lead people away from a digital community. In a real meeting room or floor space, only a few spots have no purpose. Most real-life spaces are designed with an intention in mind: the front door is for welcoming the guests, the conference halls are for having them comfortably seated, and the kitchens or bars are for accomodating catering and refreshments. This is not the case for virtual spaces. Many online communities don’t start with a purpose — or start with one, but then don’t live up to it. It is wise to think about a virtual community space in terms of its multiple purposes.

This suggestion is in line with academic research on community engagement. According to existing research, members participate actively in their communities because they extract one or more benefits from participation–especially social and hedonic benefits (see Kang et al . 2014, Wang and Fesenmaier 2004). Shana is, indirectly, suggesting to make those benefits more salient in virtual environments, since they may get lost in the medium.

Online events may carry an implicit association of being cheap, at least compared to their offline alternatives. While there may be smaller start-up or infrastructural costs, online events can quickly become expensive as more capacity is required — and with it, more moderation, more processing power, more internal communication, and so on. Charging a fee for an online event may encounter resistance in the mind of the members: in those cases, transparency is the key. Communicating upfront, and clearly, about the motivations behind those costs can turn the members from resistant to understanding.
Webinars do not technically classify as virtual events, because they don’t typically allow people to interact with each other. Consider adding some interaction to the classic webinar format to achieve a deeper sense of event, community, and connection.

Existing research suggests that computer-mediated communication can range anywhere from completely impersonal (especially in presence of anonimity and software imposed interaction structures) to hyperpersonal. CMC achieves hyperpersonality when people experience commonality, are self-aware, are physically separated, communicate via a limited-cues channel that allows to selectively self present, construct, and reciprocate representations of their relations without the interference of the environmental reality (see Walther 1996).

Discussion — Making Accessibility More Accessible

(by Will Butler, VP of community at Be My Eyes)

I arrived a bit late to this one, but nonetheless, it was able to inspire me. Will talked about how accessibility — the quality or characteristic of something that makes it possible to approach, enter, or use it — can not only transform into a business-superpower, but actually improve quality of life.

While we can all agree that accessibility is fundamental in the physical world, it is just as important to ensure that a virtual community is accessible. Accessibility and inclusivity translates into support to consumers, employment boosts, public awareness, and ultimately, a change in culture.

Will also shared an accessibility checklist: how many items can you already check off?

Don’t assume
Ask early
Consult experts
Invent new solutions
Don’t give up

Fireside Chat with Anil Dash

(by Anil Dash, CEO of Glitch. Moderator: David Spinks, Founder of CMX, VP of Community at Bevy.)

Anil and David’s fireside chat had a bit of a Q&A flavor, with questions and insights flowing from both sides. The chat was also the last item on my schedule, and I will report on two particular points: commerciality and the future.

Communities for business: can businessed reconcile helping people and making profits? Or are business goals and the construction of meaningful communities at opposite ends? Anil responds that it’s a matter of communication. Business leaders tend to be disconnected from the community. They delegate, and then stop checking in with the communities — at least until there is a problem.
Leaders don’t have to necessarily understand community management to support it (yes, also financially). But as leaders, they have to be aware of the compatibility between the community, its purpose, and the overarching business models. There has to be compatibility between the general business model and the purpose behind the community, and the most common problems arise when business models are not compatible with community building. For some businesses, if you create a thriving community, you are going to hurt revenue streams — this is avoidable thanks to prior planning and to incorporating communities inside the general business model.

In marketing research, reactance to commercially-oriented content is a known phenomenon. It is observed, for example, when people purposefully skip the commercials while watching TV (see Teixeira et al 2010). It is a phenomenon linked to persuasion knowledge — the consumers’ strategies to cope with marketers’ sales presentations and advertising (see Friestad and Wright 1994). In online communities, companies can achieve positive engagement by, for example, influencing consumers’ sentiment or balancing the firm’s engagement (see Homburg et al 2015).

How is community building going to change after this crisis? This question reminded both David and Anil of the events unfolding during and after the tragedy of 9/11. Both of them were in the area on the day of the events, and still vividly remember how resorting to communities was a life-saver for many of the affected victims.
Anil and David reflect that some lessons from back then can apply to today’s crisis. First, some problems cannot be anticipated, even if the actions/solutions are well intended. During times of crisis, people may tend to react defensively, no matter what solutions are presented to them. It takes time, compassion, and patience.
Community is often the answer in crisis situations. People make themselves vulnerable, available, to make others strong in times of crisis. And when people show humanity, others reciprocate. This is also true in business communities.

I will conclude this report with one quote from Anil and David:

Our lives will be more and more mediated through technology. We were spending already a long time behind screens before, and we will be spending even more time after this event. This also means that our choices on technology - and on enabling community online — will impact what human connection will look like and what community will mean in the future.

Some Meta Comments on the Event

Talks were organized such that 20 people could request access and share their video on the screen, as if they were “attendees” in a meeting room. This made the “conference room” environment feel more realistic.
Great balance between breaks and talks. The breaks were very creative: a stretching session, livestreams of puppy dogs playing together, music, vendors and commercial stands.
The closing “after party” featured an ACTUAL DJ with headphones and all! The chat panel showed that people were really happy at the end of the conference.
The sessions screen was not very intuitive and unfortunately there was no option to convert time zones — so it was confusing outside of PST.
There was an amazing, positive energy, and a willingness to promote interactivity (but I wouldn’t expect less from community building experts)
Social media feeds were integrated in the event and advertised as a way to show to each other that there are real people behind the screens and the attendance numbers. Attendees were encouraged to share selfies, screenshots, and other material on their social media profiles.
There was a networking panel — people in the networking panel could be randomly paired with others and exchange a few words via videochat
There were stage managers, moderators, and IT “helpdesks”. The labor intensity is a challenge for such large events. Moderators need to be very active to prevent harassment. People may not be at best behavior when behind a screen, and leave inappropriate comments (for example, in the live chat or in the networking videochats).

Hope this all was useful to some of you, see you at the next conference!

References

Friestad, M., & Wright, P. (1994). The persuasion knowledge model: How people cope with persuasion attempts. Journal of consumer research, 21(1), 1–31.

Homburg, C., Ehm, L., & Artz, M. (2015). Measuring and managing consumer sentiment in an online community environment. Journal of Marketing Research, 52(5), 629–641.

Kang, J., Tang, L., & Fiore, A. M. (2014). Enhancing consumer–brand relationships on restaurant Facebook fan pages: Maximizing consumer benefits and increasing active participation. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 36, 145–155.

Teixeira, T. S., Wedel, M., & Pieters, R. (2010). Moment-to-moment optimal branding in TV commercials: Preventing avoidance by pulsing. Marketing Science, 29(5), 783–804.

Walther, J. B. (1996). Computer-mediated communication: Impersonal, interpersonal, and hyperpersonal interaction. Communication research, 23(1), 3–43.

Wang, Y., & Fesenmaier, D. R. (2004). Towards understanding members’ general participation in and active contribution to an online travel community. Tourism management, 25(6), 709–722.