Alex de Carvalho, Community Guy
First of all, thanks to everyone who commented to help define the title and role of Scrapblog’s community person. It is an honor that Alex de Carvalho has accepted the position of Community Guy. Here is an excerpt from what I wrote in his contract to explain the title and role:
“The title of “Community Guy” corresponds to the new imperative of building and maintaining authentic relationships with and among members of a service. The user rules. And, collectively, the community of users is the authority in defining and directing the continued development of a service.
The goal of the Community Guy is to build a vibrant and engaged community around the scrapblogs that users create. To do so, he must listen to members, understand their needs, be their peer, be their advocate, respond to their requests, and identify features that will make Scrapblog more inviting to new and existing members. The Community Guy is also responsible for extending the Scrapblog service to existing online communities through strategic partnerships. Such partnerships must be evaluated based on their value to existing members of Scrapblog.
The Community Guy is not alone. Every member of the Scrapblog team is also responsible for making Scrapblog inviting to all its members. It is the responsibility of the Community Guy to evangelize to the rest of the internal team about the importance of interacting with the community and keeping good community ethics when doing so.”
As we have discussed in this blog, there is no playbook for building online communities. So, how do you find a great community guy for a consumer Internet startup? Here’s what I did:
Hire from within the community
Before I even mentioned to Alex the possibility of working together, he had joined our group of beta testers. He had created and shared a couple of scrapblogs and had written me a long email explaining his thoughts on how to improve the service.Has to be someone social
Alex is a very social person online and offline. Here are some metrics that may mean something:1,100+ connections in Linked-In
1,000+ great photos in Flickr / 242 contacts
Blogging since 2004He gets the importance of being authentic
If the person has not read the Cluetrain Manifesto, don’t even consider them. If you haven’t, stop reading this blog and do it.Finally, there are some other things that take Alex above and beyond the basic qualifications to be our Community Guy. He is fluent in five languages and has lived around the world. He also has unique views around social media and what he calls “social objects”. Plus, for building relationships with and among our community members it doesn’t hurt that he is the son of an international diplomat.
Please, help me welcome Alex to the team by dropping in a comment.
What are people saying?
Congratulations to all of you. I think Alex is going to be a great fit over at Scrapblog. Glad to see that the local community is growing, and the seeds we are all sowing in the online and offline communities are beginning to bear fruit.
p.s. I’m glad you’re blogging again Carlos. We missed you.
Thanks Brian!
Awesome job! congratulations.
Nice!
Congratulations to both Alex and Scrapblog.
I’ll echo Brian’s sentiment and just say that it’s great to see people making connections through local initiatives like Refresh and Scrapblog reaping the rewards of those connections, it makes it all worth it.
Looking forward to seeing Alex and Scrapblog grow this year.
So…if Alex would have been a woman, would have he been ‘Community Gal’?
You have a great attitude when it comes to serving your community and being part of their experience. It sounds like Alex really understands that as well (although I don’t know if 1,100 connections on LinkedIN says it - heck, I know someone with 23,000 MySpace friends and only 100 of those he can truly call friends).
Sounds like he will be a good fit. Welcome Alex!
Amazing choice Carlos. You’re building an amazing team for an amazing company. Can’t wait until next month!
-JLB
Tara, Yes, the vision is that the world (at least the online world) will be a better place with a bunch of passionate Community Guys and Community Gals around. We are setting the standard and coining the name. I can already envision VCs asking CEOs, “who is your CG?”
Thank you for the welcome and for having me in your community. And as Carlos mentioned, I hope to see more community guys and gals around.
@Tara: thank you, this is a great team and I look forward to working with you. Oh, and aren’t we connected on LinkedIn yet?
Tara,
When we settled on Alex’ title, I remember wondering what Tara would say. I figured she would say, “If it had been a woman, would you have named her a Community Gal?” Thanks for being predictable for the first time since I met you. Besides the more politically neutral “Community Person” is really goofus, don’t you think?
[...] Two excellent hires at Scrapblog, for starters David Parmet will be managing PR, who has the experience and connections to make ti work and Alex de Carvalho, will expand scrapblog by reading to the Community. For a product as unique and creative as Scrapblog, kick starting usage among the influential is going to be key. [...]
Welcome Alex!
If is there anything I can help you with just let me know.
Cheers!
Thanks, Corally!
@Jeremiah: I look forward to meeting you at We Media.
I love your title Alex. I’m gussing that’s becasue I’m a copywriter. Welcome to a great company! I’m sure SB will be huge in 07′. Great work comes from a great team and Carlos certainly knows how to make it work
What do you have to say?