Building your community: a person centered approach

Speaker 1: Deborah gone deep dives. Yar.

Speaker 2: Alright. Thanks so much. So I am Becca and I'm going to be talking about a person centered approach to building community today. It's something that I feel very strongly about. So I do appreciate being here to talk about this.

Speaker 2: After I had my fourth kid oh, look. It I hope that not all of my images are gone. There's supposed to be a picture of my face here. So you can just imagine my face moving over. So after I had my fourth kid, I went through a trauma.

Speaker 2: And I didn't know it at the time, but when I got up to move rooms in the hospital, two of my organs ruptured into each other. And this is a complication at the time, I believe was documented to only happen to fewer than one percent of women in the world. The doctors and the nurses told me that this horrific pain that I was feeling in these symptoms, they're they're probably normal for a mom of four. A week later, I was still having these constant symptoms and I went into the OB GYN and she said, I wasn't her problem. Now I'm gonna take a step back from my personal experience for a second, and I'm gonna generalize here.

Speaker 2: And I wanna see if anyone else can relate to this experience. I was a problem and not a person. I trusted someone who had all the power in the room, and that person treated me like I wasn't a person. They didn't listen. They discounted my feedback.

Speaker 2: They didn't answer my questions. They dehumanized me, made me feel like I was a burden and a nuisance, and that my thoughts were irrelevant. They weren't invested in my success. They were invested in getting getting done with the things on their to do list. And they saw me as an obstacle that they were gonna pass off to someone else.

Speaker 2: Have you heard a story like that in tech? Have you heard about managers or mentors or teammates who are so focused on numbers and products or placements that they ignore the well-being of the people in front of them? I bet that sounds familiar to most of us. And so I wanna change this narrative, starting today. Let's value people more than hitting goals.

Speaker 2: Let's use positivity to motivate others. Let's look people in the eye and give them our attention and our understanding. I'm increasingly convinced that it doesn't matter what profession you're in. If you take a person centered approach, it provides value to everyone and should be applied in every industry. As we talk through using this approach, I wanna acknowledge that your DevRel team is like a small community.

Speaker 2: So a lot of this information can be applied both ways. I've adapted this person centered approach from the medical community. Years after I went through that trauma, I met through I met with hospital officials. And I wanted to go there not just to tell my story, but to help prevent it from happening to anyone else. And so I dove into this research about, know, how do we change the healthcare system?

Speaker 2: How do we change the way that doctors treat their patients? And what I found was the person centered care philosophy. And this is what I've taken and adapted to the person centered approach to community building and to tech in general. So when we talk about the person centered approach, I'm looking at it from four different aspects. So each person is unique and complex.

Speaker 2: We all have a right to a supportive environment. We all deserve to be involved in our teams and our communities in ways that we feel comfortable. And we should be encouraged to participate and grow in ways that are unique to us. We all deserve to have a safe community and clear paths of communication. And we should all be treated with dignity, compassion, and respect.

Speaker 2: So we're gonna go through and we're going to look at how do we apply these things. It's a starting point for every team and every community. Are you able to provide this experience for those on your team or community? Can you see them as human beings first before seeing them as members, users, ambassadors, advocates, or teammates? In so many efforts to move fast and break things, we often lose the humanity that comes with it.

Speaker 2: How many humans are we breaking along the way? Whether that's on our own team, or it's our volunteers, or our community members. Today, we're going to apply this approach so we can better support the people in front of us. Communities serve the needs of people and they provide value in people's lives. But to do that, it's useful to start with a clear purpose.

Speaker 2: The purpose of virtual coffee stems from my experience in that doctor's office. I never wanted anyone to feel feel as alone as I felt. And I would later learn during my transition into tech that having community allows you to share your story and to build a richer connection, healing, and growth. So if we think about the purpose of our communities, think about what need we are filling. Are you solving a problem?

Speaker 2: Virtual coffee wasn't intentionally started to be a community, but it did fill a need. There is an a need to embrace a small group conversation in contrast to the vast online space. A need to grow and learn together in a time of opinionated 10 x developers and toxic workspaces, and a need for continued conversation in the midst of transactional interactions. And from that experience, we were able to define our mission to be a welcoming tech community that allows room for growth and mentorship at all levels, and to create meaningful opportunities for learning, leadership, and contribution for everyone. We have a newsletter we've been putting out for a while now, and we highlight community kindness as part of that newsletter.

Speaker 2: These are some of the entries that I've taken to share with you today. And I think that if we reflect on how the, on how our community members see the community, and if you compare that to your purpose, it gives you a good tool to evaluate whether or not the perspectives align to your purpose. So you've seen our mission. I'll let you judge how we're doing based on this feedback. Now when you're creating a community for your DevRel team or your company, it's not just about the needs of the community.

Speaker 2: Right? You have to look at the purpose of your team or your company and determine how that overlaps with the purpose of the community. Demonstrating that connection is going to help you balance the needs of your company with the needs of your community. If there's a disconnect, that's going to lead to challenges ahead. So that's something to be aware of.

Speaker 2: If we use a person centered approach, it will help us to balance those needs. It will help us to be more likely to provide value and to establish a community of members who continue to return and support your team. If you don't have a community yet, or you're not sure what it looks like and you're moving in that direction, and you're not sure whether or not your team needs a community, that's great. That's a really good place to start. This means that you have time to think through the purpose of your team and the purpose of the community and how those things will overlap.

Speaker 2: I think that starting with communities you spent time with in the past and thinking about what's worked for them and what hasn't worked for them, is a really great way to start start understanding what you want to see from your community. What's the magic that keeps people coming back? I will say that one of my favorite communities was a club that I was part of in college. And that community didn't have a name, but we had a Speakeasy. And we would get together one or two nights a month on our stage and we would share poetry or essays or read other people's works.

Speaker 2: And we shared this with vulnerability. And what was so special about this group was it wasn't a group of people that ever hung out together outside of that space. But what it made it special was that everyone was welcome. We all supported each other, and we felt safe taking risks with the language we used, the essays we read, and with sharing ourselves. So for me, the magic of that group was the safe space and the supportiveness that we shared.

Speaker 2: Now if you don't have any good memories of communities that you've been a part of or those are really limited, it's also a great time to learn from other communities. Spend time in those communities. That allows you to gain ideas for best practices, insights, learning from other communities' mistakes. And one of my favorite things that we do at Virtual Coffee is on Fridays, we do a gratitude post. What are you grateful for this week?

Speaker 2: And I don't think that I made that up. I'm pretty sure I saw it in another community and I thought that's a really great way to, you know, help to continue create the space that's really positive for our members. And so now we do it every Friday as well. So looking at those things, identifying the parts that you wanna bring with you to your community can be really a great way to get started once your community is going. Think about what the purpose of your team is.

Speaker 2: So if you are on a DevRel team and your primary goal is to create awareness, it doesn't mean that you have to have your own community to do that. In fact, if you start a community, it's going to require a lot of time and effort, and it can be harder to create awareness in the outside of that community. So go into those community and create awareness. I'm not saying to pedal your product in those communities, but I'm saying be you, be personal, gain the trust of other people, deepen those relationships, and that will allow you to create awareness because you are associated with your team. So often when we find ourselves deep in our communities too, it can be really easy to fall into that checkbox mode, especially when you're busy.

Speaker 2: So when you're are in other communities, there's less pressure to do all of those things that need to be done. As you define your purpose, this allows you to think intentionally about your community. So remember that communities are living and breathing. And as long as we're invested in a growth mindset, we need to engage in both self and community reflection and evaluation. We need to build that into our process to make sure that we are continually working to fulfill our mission to use a person centered approach when we are talking about our community.

Speaker 2: As you go through that process, just keep reminding yourself to see people before you see a user or a teammate. We are not all the same, and that's an asset. But it's only an asset if we allow our teammates to be unique. And if we recognize that by bringing their uniqueness to the team, it means that they have needs that we need to support as well. So some ways of supporting that unique the uniqueness of our community members and team is one, recognize that we have differences.

Speaker 2: And as part of that, listen and learn to the person who is sharing that with you. You if you don't listen, you're not going to be able to support your team's needs or your community's needs. Provide support in terms of mentors and community spaces. Keep finding ways to make it safe for others to share. Ask questions, but also be willing to put in the work.

Speaker 2: So if you have feedback that you need to make changes, figure out what the process looks like for that and do it. Don't just sit with that feedback. At Virtual Coffee, we believe strongly in horizontal mentorship. And what that means is that anyone, it doesn't matter what stage of their journey or what their job title is, anyone has the ability to support and help each other. And we emphasize the importance of transferable skills.

Speaker 2: If we're valuing the people on our teams and in our communities, there's more than technical knowledge that's valuable. Find a way to embrace that. Along with valuing our teammates and community members, we also need to support their growth in ways that they feel comfortable. Focusing on supporting each person where they are with their abilities and in recognition of their lives and responsibilities outside of work allows growth for both on the individual level and on the team level. Anytime you can build trust, you're going to be allowing a clearer path for growth.

Speaker 2: Don't force people to collaborate. So introverts be introverts. Accept people where they are on their journey and allow them opportunities for growth or invitations to push themselves outside of their comfort zones. But don't force people to do things that aren't an expectation at the onset. Allow them to feel comfortable making those choices on their own.

Speaker 2: This is where you always need to think about the person in front of you before making decisions. So at Virtual Coffee, we build this into our Zoom breakout room announcements. Our room leaders share participation expectations, and they say we want this to be a welcoming space for everyone to participate in the ways that are most comfortable for you. It's perfectly acceptable to be quiet, to be more of a listener, to keep your camera off, or to participate in the chat. And for us, this this sets up those expectations, but it also allows people to feel comfortable.

Speaker 2: We've had a number of people who have come and they've listened for many sessions, and then they start to share with us. They start to engage in the conversation. And I think that it's important to remember that everybody is providing value in those positions. We also have room leaders and note takers. And we're really lucky to have such a large group of volunteers to support us when we get together twice a week.

Speaker 2: And it doesn't matter what stage they are in their coding journey. What matters is that they're comfortable taking on the role. So for example, many of our repeat room leaders are new to the tech industry, but they bring a rich understanding of other industries because they are career changers. One of their strengths is being able to lead a room that has a conversation that anyone can jump into. And so for us, embracing that idea of our community as being people at all stages of the journey, we need to make sure that we can replicate that in the spaces so they feel comfortable and safe sharing.

Speaker 2: Also, many of our note takers are identified would be identified as quiet members. But their involvement during our coffees allow us to gather resources and to share this with community members who can't be there. And by participating in this way which they feel comfortable, the whole community benefits. Clear communication is both honest and direct. It's also implicit.

Speaker 2: So we talk a lot about work life balance and focusing on mental health at Virtual Coffee. And we have these monthly challenges. At some point, Kirk, who is one of our community maintainers, suggested that we apply our philosophy to the challenges. So once a quarter, we do a challenge that's not tech focused, allowing people to recharge and connect. So right now, we're wrapping up community kindness.

Speaker 2: In December, we did the creative community challenge where we dove into our creative sides and showcased our creations. And we also have the healthy habits for healthy devs, which is about nourishing our minds and our bodies. So if if you want to share a philosophy of avoiding the hustle culture of not diving into toxic work culture, create spaces for that. I I also think that having a code of conduct is incredibly important. This is one of the first things that we did, and we share our code of conduct at all of our events.

Speaker 2: Our MCs say, if things feel uncomfortable in any way, reach out or use our code of conduct violation form. Our goal is to provide a safe space for everyone here and to help ensure that we have a code of conduct that we take seriously. We expect everyone to abide by the code of conduct whether that's during an event, in Slack, or in DMs. And I think that it's important that we say this because you can drop a bunch of links in a chat, but that doesn't invite people to understand that it's an important part of what you're doing. So to signify that it is something that we find to be very important, we build that into our script for all of our events.

Speaker 2: So find ways to to show your community members what you feel is really important. As part of a coherent environment, there's also an expectation of honesty and of knowing what's going to happen. So I recently talked to an owner of a tech consultancy. Their employees have a longer than average tenure at the company. And so I wanted to know, you know, why do you think people stick around at your company?

Speaker 2: And so they they reached out to their employees and and asked them, you know, what do you enjoy about working there? And many of the responses were that they appreciated the transparency and the honesty, and that that's something that they could reasonably expect from the owners. They the owner went on to say to me that during the pandemic, there were some financial issues, and they talked to the community about it, and they were honest. They were able to work things out, and so nobody lost their job, but they appreciated the employees appreciated the heads up rather than hearing, hey, today is your last day. You're you're being laid off like we saw so many times during the pandemic.

Speaker 2: So think about how you can be transparent. Where is that balance there? And provide your members or your teammates with clear feedback. Clear communication starts at the top, and it starts at the beginning. And so I'm new.

Speaker 2: I I think I just graduated my third month at Deepgram. And I'm I I I have a love of onboarding that is maybe not normal. I was recently at a meeting for my kid's school, and I and I think I asked the question, like, well, how do we onboard new families? And they're like, onboard? Are we onboarding people into school?

Speaker 2: Like, is that is that not something that we do? Or is there another way of saying that? But but why? Why am I obsessed with onboarding? Because it helps to establish a coherent environment.

Speaker 2: It helps you to understand what the structure of the organization is, who the people are that they need to know. So the purpose of onboarding, the goal here in creating a coherent environment is to reduce uncertainty. And so you can apply your energy and allow it to be spent on forming and developing trusting relationships instead. If you want your employees to hit the ground running, you have to set them up for success. This is one way to do that.

Speaker 2: For those taking on a first or new job, this can mean a clear breakdown of the organization, the processes, the structures, the tools. Where where is the source of truth that they should be looking for things? Where should they go when they have questions? If they can't navigate their way through organizational challenges, you're setting them up for failure. This is also an opportunity for new employees to communicate with you.

Speaker 2: New employees are uniquely suited and new community members are to provide feedback on onboarding and documentation because they're experiencing it for the first time. This is not somebody who's gone over the documentation again and again. This is somebody who if they have a question, then then there's probably something there's a need there that needs be filled. So don't expect them to come to you in this situation. You want to provide a clear path to give you feedback and suggestions.

Speaker 2: If you're waiting three months to get feedback on your onboarding, your employee or your community member is likely to forget about what suggestions that they might have or things don't feel fresh and maybe things have resolved in their head. But when that happens, you're probably also losing other community members who didn't have the opportunity to continue working through that. And this also shows where there's a need for something. So one of our virtual coffee members, Ayu, was frequently on top of adding additions to our site. She anticipated things that needed to be updated, lines of communication.

Speaker 2: She's now our documentation lead for a reason. She she worked on finding these clear lines of communication and figuring out how we needed to implement them and doing that in a manner that helps support the whole community. So so think about where are needs being filled. We often hear this idea of there are some people who are glue. Like, they're holding things together.

Speaker 2: That's not necessarily their job. And so if you see somebody who's often the glue, then that might be a good indication that there are things that need updated. There are people who need to be assigned to do different things. There are processes that you can make to avoid forcing somebody to be the glue of your organization. Sometimes we do lose sight of the most important thing in front of us.

Speaker 2: We think about the product and not the people. But there's always an opportunity to recalibrate. Part of that could and should include apologizing and making efforts to ensure that dignity, compassion, and respect guide all of our efforts. That when we recognize the full person, we see the person at home, at work, the person outside of the role that you know them in. We see learning about others as just as valuable, if not more valuable, as talking about the projects or the purpose of the community or the things that the community is doing.

Speaker 2: As a result, when you do this, it allows a place for respect, understanding, and growing together. When we treat people in this way, it's not just about talking. It's about listening too. Listening it to understand what other people are saying. This is hard.

Speaker 2: This is often hard for me. I'm trying to think of the next thing that I'm going to say, or what I'm going to respond to, or that item on the to do list that I forgot to write on there, so I need to remember it right now rather than engaging with this person. It's not easy. But I think that if we approach with this idea that empathy is a key element of dignity, that we do have the opportunity to apologize or to recalibrate, that we keep moving forward and we establish what is good in recognizing that person in front of us. I wanna make a note here to say that this doesn't mean protecting people by being nice to them.

Speaker 2: It means acknowledging their experiences and their feelings and recognizing that every person deserves respect and compassion. It also means that that you're being honest with people too. So a a couple of days ago, on Monday, I gave a fifteen minute version of this talk at our virtual coffee speakers club. And so the purpose of the club is to get practice in public speaking and to improve. And one incredibly poignant piece of feedback was something like, you can tell that your experience has caused you to feel rage and that you've been driven to action by that rage.

Speaker 2: But you don't want your audience to be pulled into that rage. How can you highlight the good and the positivity that came from your trauma and bring the audience along for that ride? And and that was the kind of honest feedback I needed. It had not occurred to me that I was focusing a lot on the negative things that were happening rather than seeking what the positive things are. And yes, we need to address those negative things, but it's important to not focus on those all the time, to not let it pull us down into that rage.

Speaker 2: And for sure, I hope that I've not pulled anybody in this talk into my my rage that that I need to resolve. Can it be hard to hear this honest feedback? Yes. When I heard it, I was like, oh, mhmm. Yep.

Speaker 2: Yep. I could see that. I didn't feel good about myself, but I I learned from that experience. So being open to that feedback is incredibly useful. And I know for me, it's changed my perspective on the talk that I'm giving today, on other talks that I'm giving, how I approach problems that I see in life, and how I communicate to other people.

Speaker 2: So for me, this honest, direct feedback was incredibly useful for what I'm doing. So when you use a person centered approach, it leads to a repetitive process of evaluation. And as part of that, it allows you to make hard decisions when it's necessary. We often have this idea that bigger means better or that if you stop momentum, that it's a failure. But this when we think this way, we lose sight of the purpose of what we're doing and how we're communicating.

Speaker 2: And we don't evaluate, and we forget to evaluate the health of our communities and the health of our teams. So at Virtual Coffee, we have long felt that the intimacy of the group was one of the primary things that made our community special, part of that purpose. And when we began to grow really quickly, we recognized that a couple of things were happening. We were starting to lose that intimacy. We were putting more pressure on our small group of volunteers to support the large influx of new members.

Speaker 2: And that we were we were reacting more than planning for ways to support the community. And so we made a hard decision. We put a pause on virtual coffee membership. We we wanted to allow our side ourselves the time to update structures and processes to create clearer lines of communication with our members, and to engage new volunteers and support them in the way that our other community members have had in the past. This also allows our volunteers the time to recharge and to plan for the future.

Speaker 2: So for us, although it was a really hard decision, it was a decision that we made because we felt that it would support our community overall in the long run. You might not need something this drastic. Maybe you are really good at having an evaluative process. I think I used that word twice and it's really hard to say out loud. So maybe that's something that needs removed from my talk.

Speaker 2: Do you have a process for receiving, sorting, and applying feedback? Can you look at the big picture and the strategy that you're using? Is it effective, and is it sustainable? If you have those things in place, then you might be able to continue to move forward without having to make very hard decisions. When we do this, when we think about our community, when we think about our team, when we think about each person as a dynamic human being with multiple responsibilities who both succeeds and fails daily, we can do a better job of avoiding becoming gatekeepers.

Speaker 2: And this also allows us to create stronger teams and communities. One of my very favorite quote quotes from our members in that community kindness section is this one from Mike Rogers who passed away in an accident last year. And I think that that this is the goal that we're going for. When we take a person centered approach, you're applying this philosophy to your team, your company, and your community. It includes recognizing unique individuals, supporting people where they are in their journey, allowing them active participation in their growth, creating those clear paths of communication.

Speaker 2: This allows for transparency, vulnerability, support, empowers them, and it empowers empowers you so you can optimize the community experience both for your DevRel team and for your community. So I'm gonna leave you today with this challenge. I want you to ask a teammate or community member how they're doing. And I don't want you to listen to respond. I want you to listen and hear what they have to say.

Speaker 2: Because so many times we see each other in passing, and we're doing fine. But really learn about that person in front of you and understand where they are today. Thank you for listening to my talk.

Speaker 1: We've got a couple of questions for you. My first question is, so you said that Virtual Coffee is going into its third year now. And so there were gonna be folks that were there at the beginning that are still there now because they love it so much and you know, like you say, you know, the quote from Mike that said that it it makes him feel like 10 times the person that he was before he joined. It can be really hard, especially if you're introverted or just generally, going into a new group which looks like it's established and looks like everybody already knows each other and it's in full flow. It's like going to a party and you only know like the host or something like that.

Speaker 1: How do you make sure that people feel like they can join in right from the beginning? Because, you know, you're holding these coffees, you go into Zoom and there's all these people there, it's like, can I speak? Or you go into the Slack and you know, there seems to be so many conversations going on. Everybody knows what's going on and you're new. How do you make people feel like they can actually join in straight away without really knowing anybody else?

Speaker 2: I think that there's a couple of different ways to do that. First of all, it in our when you come into virtual coffee, we have announcements in the beginning. That kind of sets the expectations, what's going to go on. And then when we move into the breakout rooms, there's another set. We're all going to give our introductions, our name, where we're from, what we do, and our random check-in question.

Speaker 2: So we're automatically inviting people to participate in that. But then also that bit about it's okay to be quiet, it's okay to have your camera off, I think makes especially introverted people feel comfortable, like, okay, I can just hang back and listen. But also, we do utilize that hand raise function a lot in Zoom. And for us, that invites people to it makes space for people who might not be able to jump in. It allows for people to not control conversations, and it it decreases that barrier to entry.

Speaker 2: So I think that anytime you can find ways to decrease that participation barrier, then that's a good way to do it. In Slack, we have when a new member joins, we I think we send an email and a Slack message that gives them some tips and tricks. Like, here are some places to get started. We invite them to give their their introduction in our welcome channel. And we also include the notes from virtual coffee and tag everybody who's responded to our intro question in the general channel.

Speaker 2: So those are a couple of ways to just kind of like invite some easier ways of participation, and I think it's it's easier to tell your own story than to maybe ask questions or explore other channels. So if you invite that like, hey, tell us a fun fact about yourself or, you know, answer this random question. It it allows them to kind of control the narrative for who they are in that space.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Definitely. And I think, you know, Zoom's got its faults. It's also got a lot of advantages. And one of the good things that it's brought to meetings is the raise hand function.

Speaker 1: Yes. Like you say, because it's a great leveler. If you are in a meeting at work in a physical room, there's always gonna be people that are the loudest and, you know, that talk over everybody else. Or they don't feel any any hesitance in just starting to talk. Whereas, on Zoom, if you are using the raise hand function and everybody knows that, then everybody gets a chance to get in the queue and speak.

Speaker 1: They don't have to have that extra kind of stress of how am I gonna get to speak and I'm already stressed about what I'm gonna say. So so, yeah, it's definitely a great leveler. We've got a couple of questions from the chat from Andy. So they would like to know, how do you approach educating, especially new joiners to the community around some of the behaviors that you want people to exhibit, like direct feedback and the corresponding need for learning and understanding. So how do we educate your new joiners especially?

Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that that is it depends a lot on how your community is set up. And so we have a couple of different things that we do. We have the contributors guide, and that's mostly code based in our GitHub repos, which were open source. And so that establishes different steps and processes for doing things.

Speaker 2: But as part of that onboarding experience, we kind of set up different resources for folks. IU, our documentation lead, has been adding a lot of resources to our site, which we also drop when you come to Virtual Coffee. Here's a list of links and resources, you know. And one of the latest ones we have is how to ask coding questions. So it kind of provides some guideline or framework for how to do things.

Speaker 2: And I think that we've been really lucky in that most of our members have been really positive and set the example for what those expectations are. And I think that, you know, if you can find a way when you're starting your community or if you're revamping a community to to reward positive interactions in the the way that you want people to engage with each other, then then that can also be incentive. I don't I don't think you necessarily need to reward people, but, you know, we have a gratitude channel where people are thankful for things. We have a help impairing channel, which I I do think that there are some tips and tricks for how to interact with others pinned to that channel. But you can see how people are interacting with each other when people are thanking each other, and I think that's also part of the asking for help guide.

Speaker 2: Like, make sure that you say thank you to someone. If you schedule a meeting, show up for that meeting. So it it's kind of built into the process of our community and and how we interact with each other. So it's almost set from from the very the very first time that we get together and we share those resources.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And definitely modeling those behaviors is really important as well. So Andy's got another question. They are curious because, you know, your whole talk is about being doing it in a person centric way.

Speaker 1: But how has this influenced your choices of tools or spaces to host your community? Because you you brought this thing into being during the pandemic. So you you couldn't do anything in person. You had to do it online and you have some make some choices about tooling. So how did you make those choices?

Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that's a a really really great question. And I think for us, you know, there's kind of like this this two tenant approach to virtual coffee where you take that person centered approach and then you support it with tools and structures. Right? I I think that those two things go hand in hand.

Speaker 2: And so their Zoom makes the most sense for us to use because most people have it, but it does have the hand raise function. It does allow us to do breakout rooms. I'm a huge fan of emojis, so you can respond with emojis. So it makes sense for us. Now we've had a couple of updates to the site recently.

Speaker 2: Well, I think in this is not that recently, but we do have a coworking room in Slack. And what that is, it's a Zoom room that is open at all times. Anybody can go in there and participate. When you start a new Zoom session, I think there's a link to the code of conduct that shows up. But this has been we I actually just did a podcast interview right before this, and one of our members was talking about his experience in that coworking room.

Speaker 2: He goes in there, he supports a lot of people by answering questions, by mentoring, and he said it's been great because in the pandemic when we are all so isolated, this was just a space that he could virtually join at any time and see different interactions with people happening. And so this has become a hangout place that we always have open. We're a virtual space, and it makes sense for us to encourage those conversations, things that aren't structured. So, you know, as much as we do structured things like Tuesdays and Thursdays meetings and lunch and learns, having that space to just, like, be whoever you wanna be, within the within the code of conduct, is is really important. And then I would say the the last thing I wanna mention is, we were recently using, a service to share all of our events.

Speaker 2: And it didn't really quite work for us, and so we spent a lot of time exploring different ways. How do our members know what events are going on? Well, we always have our Tuesday and Thursday coffees. We frequently have lunch and learns on Fridays. But we have these small coffee table groups that we call them that are run by members for members.

Speaker 2: We've got, you know, the the speech club. We've got a react group, an interview group, an accountability group. So how do our members discover those things? So Dan, who is one of our organizational maintainers at Virtual Coffee, worked on a solution for that. So we have a CMS where those group leaders can put the information into the the CMS.

Speaker 2: And then every Monday, there we get a list of all of our events dropped there in announcements. And then every day, there's a list of what those events are with the descriptions and the time, and then there's a button where you can join. And so at that, there's one place. Where do you go to join our events? You go to announcements, and it's there.

Speaker 2: And so I think, you know, providing that direction and making that path clear, it took a little while for people, you know, who maybe weren't in Slack for a while and they're like, what happened? But just constantly, you know, redirecting, I think that we've gotten it down to a flow where it makes it much easier for people to discover how our members are supporting each other.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's there's definitely a lot of thought that needed to go into that. And as it evolved, you needed to think about how the journey evolved as well.

Speaker 1: Matthew, we've got like a few more seconds. Is there anything else you wanted to add to that?

Speaker 3: Yeah. I'm really interested in how you took inspiration from kind of healthcare patient advocacy. And I was wondering if you'd looked at other areas of expertise or interest that had influenced your approach.

Speaker 2: Well, I think right now, I'm kind of on this journey of city planning and how that impacts what communities look like, access to resources, what defines those communities. So for me, that's another important aspect of this. But, you know, also my background is in teaching. It's in pedagogy, it is in I I worked as a community organizer. So I feel like all of these things have fed into the approach, but understanding that person centered care approach really clicked with me because, you know, these are these are tenants that that might seem like we should understand.

Speaker 2: Everybody should should already know this, but sometimes we do need to be reminded because we're so overwhelmed by all of the other things. And I'm like, okay. This is the framework that helps me understand what I need to do and to evaluate myself as I go through this process. So, yeah, for sure, I've taken what I've learned in in other places and spaces, but this this is the framework that works for me.

Speaker 3: Alright. Well, Becca, it's been wonderful having you with us. Thank you for for sharing, your your takeaways and your your journey with Virtual Coffee.

Speaker 2: Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 3: So just as a reminder though, where can people find you on the internet if they wanna connect?

Speaker 2: Twitter. I am on Twitter too much. You can find me at beka h w. So it's b e k a h, another h, and then a w. And I'm pretty much that same handle everywhere.

Speaker 2: So Instagram, dev, other there I'm sure there are other places I am.

Speaker 1: DevRelcon deep dives. Yar.