Jana Boruta | Developer conferences and communities are about people and empathy
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Jana Boruta | Developer conferences and communities are about people and empathy
Jana Boruta explains how she pivoted Hashicorp from in-person to online events and shares her thinking about online communities
Lera forced me to rewrite this short essay because I lost the main point that Jana was putting together: communities are about people and empathy, not about some attention-retention mechanics, tools, automation or whatever CRM integration.
The whole episode sounds like a protopian future where the corps are not evil and the bosses care so much about their immediate team, the customers and do what is right in tough times. It sounds like it was staged even.
It was not!
Jana Boruta is a big boss at a big company and a person with a big heart. And it is the “big heart” part that makes this conversation so dramatically lovable.
There’s a special moment in this episode where Jana admits having an imposter syndrome and we all support her and then resonate about her Café Jana initiative being so similar in spirit to お早う - The Podcast.
This is a lovely-lovely episode fine-balanced to be both fun and useful. It is one of my favorite shows, competing with Jamie Cantrell Langskov.
Enjoy.
Later this week:
Tuesday at 9 AM PST/18:00 CET: creator hangout in raveyard
Wednesday at 7 AM PST/16:00 CET: live podcast with Ashley Friedlein - Founder, Guild & Econsultancy
More of us:
If you enjoyed this episode - you can buy us a coffee ☕.
Below is some context, links, and stuff that helps us get a coin for our work.
The Community Show Hosts:
Community builders and digital content creators. Available for contract work.
Lera: artist, full-time gen z, queen 👑
Anna: founder, writer, engineer 👩🏻🔬
Olle: product, devrel, tech 🎥
Upcoming episodes:
Premium subscribers have access to the calendar with all upcoming live shows and community events.
Here’s the Twitter thread if you want to follow our past and future guests
The community for community builders - Alex Angel - Commsor
Calculating ROI and putting business numbers to a community - Nick Dijkstra - Co-Founder & Product at Port
Developer communities and developer relations in 2021 - Alex Lakatos - Fidel API, Developer Avocados Weekly
Why businesses want to own communities in 2021 - Ashley Friedlein - Guild, Econsultancy
How to monetize community builders - Carmen Taubman - Unity, Community Coach
The Ultimate Community Building Guide - Tom Ross, Design Cuts
Can you fast-grow communities if you really need it? - Rick Turoczy, PIE
Can community be the core of a business? - David Spinks, CMX, Bevy
Does it make sense to monetize community and members through crypto? - Tristan Pollock, CTO.ai, 500 Startups
Building developer community as a product - Steph Smith, growth marketer, writer, and indie maker
Offer from the partners
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Thanks for supporting us!
Bonus for those who scrolled until the end
Lera’s vision that businesses should hire gen z to do marketing has resulted in a show that we produce for Luden.io and a Games For Change project.
The pilot episode borrows ideas from お早う - The Podcast and the older iteration of our corporate weeklog called The Worst Of Us.
It is 13 minutes long, has a geek teacher, a game developer and two characters whose purpose remains unknown for the time being. Enjoy.