why community matters w/ staff comm mgr at vercel, pauline narvas

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nd or in at home or whatever I just need that to signify that okay now it's the end of the year we're coming up to to to the end and actually these days I noticed that every time I get to that point I'm like oh no it's the end of the year have I done everything I wanted to and then the anxiety and Chaos starts to kick in before the end of the year but um it's starting to feel very christmy over good there's a Christmas tree go up like Thanksgiving morning or like like when does a Christmas tree go up so if you asked

me and I was back in the Philippines which is where I'm from um The Christmas Tree get like is up at like September October because it's I'm yeah I'm that's fully ser serious because a Christmas uh sorry like Christmas is such a big thing in the Philippines and so yes yes amazing we need to adopt that the states yes they start celebrating it very very early like early I've never seen it anywhere else in the world and then uh and then yeah so that's what happens but for me l ike now in the UK it's like usually end of November December early December yeah I

love it I love it love it well good morning everybody we got people tuning in this morning ta it's good to see you two times two times ta EMT it's good to see you Jeff Ricardo JC Luke from naptown everyone's a little sleepy working off the trip to fan if you had to also my hot take hit my hot take here I tweeted this and posted on Blue Sky is that turkeyy is actually good you just don't know how to cook it properl morning everybody and I say everybody I mean nobody won't take a minute to kind of get rolling um all right so Pauline

I gotta ask you a question though so so I I I still um we just finish Thanksgiving obviously coming up on Christmas um is there a tradition that you love is there a tradition that has to happen for it to feel like Christmas for you oh that's a really good question for me I just think as what needs to happen is someone needs to have Christmas tree like yeah whether that's my frie e of like Tech engineering podcasting so um definitely engage say Hey you know let me know where you're tuning into um uh oh nap naptown oh that's an actual place I thought he

was referring to like trip to fan and nap apps no no he was referring to a actual place did not know that my bad wow today I Le yeah yeah so umh so please say hey engage again this is this is a networking platform too um so you know please connect with every guest I've had some amazing guests on the show Pauline haven't ev en really chatted with her but I can already tell she's a badass go connect with her um she's awesome um and again please engage say hey um ask some questions G be great so nothing me run of my mouth telling let's

give the people what they want who are you what do you do and we'll go from there amazing well thank you so much for having me on your podcast Taylor I know we briefly just chatted but this is the these kinds of podcasts are really like aligned to what I love to do in like my professio nal life and also personal life so this is um this is all really good thank you so much for having Meely so um hi everyone uh I'm Pauline and I am I work in community and Community um means like a lot of different things to a lot of different

people and it was one of the I guess careers I had no idea you can go into and build and also you know find have a career where you kind of um uh can help other people uh did not know that was a thing uh like directly help people um but yeah I've been worki y um and so that is my hot take for this Monday morning my dad made a great turkey shout out to my dad it was fantastic really really enjoyed it um Chris it's good to see you this morning all right I'm very excited about this I want to dive in I

don't want to do too much RI oraro listen if you're tuning in it's a podcast I've been doing for four and a half years I want to help people in the job search I want to help people in their careers it's basically like a it's like a it's like a career sid t was a thing um and then getting into like um the sort of startup world and actually working in the industry I would say around like six seven years ago now um but I've had a very interesting career where I started as an engineer front-end engineer um specifically then I moved over to um

devops and platform engineering um and then went into devil and Community um for a small startup and now I'm staying in that kind of space um so yeah I've been kind of around um in the in the like Tech Communit y um and tech industry and yeah I am based out in the UK um and I travel a lot um I know this isn't a traveling podcast but I could talk about that for hours too so I so I may so uh HRI alvetica on Twitter I'm Blue Sky posted that he wants to give a talk on just how to travel to Tech conferences like

literally just how to travel better I said that's brilliant I said that's brilliant so I don't know maybe we have maybe we have a fall podcast I have several blog posts about oh do you really yes se riously yeah I've been blogging for a couple of years now and actually one of my topics top three travel hacks real fast go this is not part of the Pod but top three travel hacks go um maintain your same routine that you have at home I'm realizing that sleep and food as as you can 100% um you have to exercise do not skip on exercise I do that

I don't do that you you have to to like keep energy levels up um and then also bring a notebook everywhere um I started doing this recently and it's just t ng in Tech uh for a couple of years now um I never really know exactly the number because do you count the first time I wrote a line of code which was when I know some people would say yes some people would say no so yeah because I wasn't like in Tech then I was actually eight years old when I wrote my first line of code and that was all just from like playing around

on my on my like computer and then just creating random stuff um we can go into that but that's how I first got into Tech I knew i ver and over of rewriting your to-do list every day has allowed me to remember things so much better so that's my little productivity all right talk about Community it's not what we're not here to talk about travel and productivity hacks even though I think that' be a great podcast so we may need to do that um uh man where do we start like why should companies let's just let's just do high level why should companies like have

a Community First mindset moving forward really great question I feel like I can yeah on about this for hours but seriously like we're g to try to cram this in like 30 minutes and it's like yeah we'll we'll try our best um so yeah so the for me um obviously it feels like I'm very biased when I come when it comes to this question and why I think companies should push for Community First um sort of mindset but I have seen this happen in like previous companies I've been at current company I'm in and also in like um not even company but an organization and

movement I 've seen the impact of community in all of these different um like areas and from a company perspective um I think having this Community First mindset helps these companies build this strong loyal um community base and in the case um right now one thing I'm the thing I'm mostly building right now at Vel is creating a um customer community and um as part of that we build um as we build this community we build this uh platform where all of our customers can like connect with each other learn from he best way to capture quick notes and also my phone runs out of

battery and then I get stressed when I connect with someone and I don't know how to get their details oh I love that yeah yeah love that I love that so much I've actually listen We're not gonna We I we can do a productivity podcast session if we need to I've ditched Apple notes room I I do Apple notes reminder I do Apple reminders if I'm on the go but I write everything every day that I have to do and the repetition I've realized o you built it and then it really goes into this like mindset of like turning these customers into then Advocates because

that naturally happens as you keep showing up in these spaces and being like hey I can help you or hey like um this is what I built and this just like for me um I've seen it lead to like um brand awareness like very positive um brand awareness like organic growth through like word of mouth and um also once you have these like set Advocates I have seen this in like in my old job for example where they then become so into your community so into your company and its culture they go out and advocate for you to the point where they are like willing

to be like hey let me post this Meetup for you just give me like a budget or help me with something I just want to get other people excited because I really believe in what you're doing and um yeah I've seen that so happen so many times and especially in a smaller company it's just it does wonders really helps with the brand so yeah that's high level yeah high high level you know I won't necessarily I mean we can get into a little bit more weeds but I definitely want to keep it high level for people watching um but I definitely think we need to

torque needs to put on a virtual panel for importance of community and I definitely want you to have that part of that panel for for torque um so we'll we'll we'll definitely get a little bit more in death panel on this but for me I think you said it right I think I think it's t each other collaborate and then as a result of that this Fosters like a sense of like I belong here because I am connecting every day with other customers who face similar issues who's like um who seen uh who may be more um knowledgeable than me and I'm learning from them

and it just creates this like another sense of belonging and builds this trust because people come in and they're like oh thank you for helping me with my question or um this is a cool project thank you for sharing like um how us company because it's the one I've spent the most time doing this type of job but um in that role I was basically um building this community from the ground up it was a community mostly hanging out on Discord Discord Community all great and as part of Community Management it was more about managing that space making it friendly creating the culture etc etc

getting people to be um uh to turn into those super fans into that space But then on top of that I was also doing like developer relations type thing which is the traditional like educational piece like going on YouTube and giving these talks giving live streams about like that product and then getting our community to then be like oh that's cool Pauline like from that company did this and now I know how to do this and for me both of them just work so well handin hand because the educational part the technical education part which is a huge part of like Devil that needs to

flow into the community it needs to like kind of layer on t op if that makes sense so for me um Community Endeavor makes the most sense because you need to have that Synergy to um to then like you know the the content that you created so then pass it on to the to your community for them to like really absorb it and be like yeah I get you I understand what you're exactly what you're saying I get the mission they get excited and it just becomes this like place for user generated content or like um that community so yeah that's that's my my take

on it yeah urning people in from customers to Advocates or customers to super fans or whatever term you want to say um I am curious like your journey um like how did you get in the community I think a lot of people want to get into this and so my hot take I just came up with this my hot take is that Deval now is community I can talk about I totally totally agree totally okay yes explain I have thoughts but yeah it's your I have so many thoughts so in my previous company um I will always reference my previo ally be a head of

growth role and and and really if you read head of growth it's community and growth are kind of the same thing like if you really kind of look at yes I'm sure you can poke holes whatever it's job descriptions That Vary but at the end of the day growth is community and and I think what's happening is is that role is Shifting right now um and so I I love that you agree with that as well because that makes me feel not crazy um uh I I I I want I want to pull back out of this a litt le bit real fast um how

did you and again I see the comments it's we we have a ton of people tuning in uh this this this morning as well it's wonderful to see y'all um somebody nant comes in I mostly I mostly agree yeah yeah we're not speaking absolutes here Devall is all about Community what would you say uh but would you say it's just marketing many early stage startups see devalls way to boost numbers to drive growth and all I expect from it is another huge question you want to tackle this re al quick and then we can talk about how you got into the community yeah this is

a really interesting um point because for me like Community is one of those really it's one of the reasons I love this uh role it kind of touches on everything like if you look at the um like traditional marketing funnel like Topp of funnel bom funnel funnel U Middle funnel kind of content and you know things that happen in there Community kind of fits in every single one if you think really does really and so it's k it is interesting I hear you know a lot of a lot of posts I see on Blue Sky and and an X around you know devels going away

while I think it's while I the term is going away I think it's now shifting to community Centric roles you know I saw this early on I've seen a uh a few it was like six months ago and I was at my last job and I started to see some newsletters and some articles and blog post written from Founders going the most the most important role over the next few years is going to basic ry strongly about that you should not sit with marketing it should not no where where should it sit um um so wait I'm see go ahead I have thoughts but go

ahead I want to see I have two two places that could live but the one that makes most sense to me right now is in customer success interesting didn't expect that yeah or engineering but it really depends on the type of organization again and how they organize themselves my heart take is its own new Department oh I like that too it's because tha t's what we're doing at torque and I really truly believe that it is its own Department here's the reason for that is community in my in my neck of the woods touches platform growth so top of the funnel getting people onto the

platform it engages middle of the funnel what activities are we doing within the platform and then what type of content are we putting out to engage the community I don't know about you but that's a lot of stuff and what I do is I think and but and we interact with every s ingle Department I'm on calls with the product team I have a weekly standup with the product guy like hey here's what Ken Collins right shout out Ken Collins he's he's amazing head of product like we like talk about all this stuff right I'm on calls with engineering I'm on calls with like other

other divisions I mean all over the place and so for me I truly truly think in my opinion I think we're going to continue to see it I think community is going to be its own department and even hotter take ind of like yeah is it just marketing but I don't know for me I don't have a marketing background I I don't know like what the neither do I yeah so I'm kind of for me I don't think I wouldn't say it's just marketing and um in the roles I've done so far I've never really put two and two together and I actually have a

blog post about this I can share it afterwards but one of the things I learned um was that Community is just one of those uh it shouldn't actually sit under marketing and I I feel ve that's really really interesting actually itd be uh interested to see how if that kind of like develops in in the yeah I mean they'll probably won't I'm wrong a lot you can ask my wife but that's just what I think um H comes in yeah I believe that Community should be a brand new Department yeah again like if you don't agree like I totally get it I totally get it

so Pauline how did you get into Community right I think I think again a lot of people have asked me like how do I do I would love to do this yada y yada what do you look for maybe when you bring on people when you interview people and how did you get into it um amazing question oh again I'll try and make it really concise but essentially I actually have a degree I actually have a degree in biomedical Sciences okay um and I was um set to go into like um the medical kind of field not path but I knew it wasn't something that

really aligned to what I wanted to do but I didn't know what I wanted to do um so I've been coding and lear ning how to code like I said earlier um at the age of eight and that was mostly from like hobby projects um and um actually my blog now paul.com um is it was actually one of my first projects that I still have years later U and it's basically my my posts from over the years of thought random thoughts about random topics but mostly these days Community Building um and yeah as part of like just building my technical like knowledge I stumbled upon

a community course was called um code first girls a I think Community is now going to be marketing oh that is a hot take a very hot take I'm gonna this is a safe space this morning no judgment or all judgment I don't really care but in my opinion I think we're not GNA have marketing departments anymore we're gonna start having Community departments and marketing is going to start falling under Community now there's gonna be a lot of people especially the marketing folks going to disagree with me I don't care it's my show not yours so here we go inished the six weeks course I

volunteered to be an instructor and so for the next four years of my degree for like 12 hours a week I would dedicate um to teaching women at the University how to code and it mostly it was like front basics of frontend development and then also like an advanced python course I did that and it was the thing that really like lit me up and I just loved helping other people and seeing people's like light bulb moments so as I was doing that I was also getting involved in different like Tech communities and meetups in my area in Sheffield and um I gave a lot

of talks about this group about what we're doing and how it's really important for us to find connections with so the I have a talented pool of women in Tech right here and I want to connect them to people in Industry looking for their next software engineer and so for the next like four years in on top of my degree that's what I did I like wanted to connect these folks together and I did successfully it w as really fun it was like we really built this organic Community Based on a course and so when I graduated I decided I'm going to go into Tech

and luckily I ended up working at a big uh te telecommunications company in the UK uh called BT and at BT I had the opportunity to be a software engineer I did front back and then also like I said devop some platforms and it really gave me this like wow I know exactly what like I know the Tex stuff now I I have a good idea of how this all works but then l nd code first girls uh really changed my life and I will talk about that for the rest of my life probably but it's a course that runs in the UK non nonprofit

organization that helps bring um women into Tech by teaching them like different Tech skills and things and I discovered this group I um became a student myself I had known most of the basics of coding because I was building my own on the side but it was really nice to have a teacher tell you exactly what to do um so I did that and once I f se things kept going to these courses and then eventually the pandemic hit and that was you know you know slowed everyone down and I ended up building lots of online communities specific to like devops because um at that

time I was a devops engineer and there wasn't a lot of people who looked like me or like um who who like didn't even know that Devils was a thing and it's also like at that time it was really picking up the pace especially with like the cloud computing world with AWS certificati ons and Cloud native and things like that and I really wanted to tell people about this space so I created an online community um during the pandemic and we used to do like little virtual events together really connect every day to talk about different things we were doing in our day-to-day jobs um

and then yeah at the end of that I was like you know what I find more joy doing this whatever this is because I didn't know that was a name for it than coding even though like coding and then you know spinning up servers and on AWS was so fun like still I still find it useful now yeah I I find more um like purpose connecting people so then I went to Twitter where all good things happen and I tweeted hey everyone what is this role that I'm describing and I basically describe what it is I can probably find the Tweet again and it went

viral for my standards sure and people connected with me and they were like oh hey Pauline do you want to jump on a coffee chat and I will tell you about my job a ike as I was doing that I still did courses for code first SKS like teaching it now in a new city in the UK called leads and I was like um also going to London to the London HQ to like give like a few talks and give some ad hoc courses to some kids in London and it honestly was my purpose for like years I I I really lit up knowing that

every single day like I was enabling someone to learn how how to code to then be able to change like the course of their like future um and so I kept building the I resigned from my platform engineer role and I moved to very small team 20 team startup very risky doing a job that I think like I thought that I could be good at and I was like you know what life is about taking risks I'm gonna go and then I ended up here now and it's been like I think like almost o over three years since that tweet happened and made its rounds

and it really just changed changed my life and that's why I'm here now in community that's awesome man you G have to schedule part tw o we're have to schedule part two because we're kind of like already coming to an end and like sorry no no we're just sry what you already scratch this sir we'll we'll do part two um what is what is your biggest piece of advice for people who like tactical piece of advice because I feel like to get a job in community you have to do it before you do it 100% Can can someone take that cut and just put it

on a reel or something forever for me to share don't worry I will get my social media team to d o that it's like the only role I think it's a because so my buddy Brandon arve he he did a lot of my content for a long time and he said it best he goes content create community and content is kind of like giving somebody a ball and say go play and you're like what sport and you're like I don't know just figure it out like you're basically having to create a sport a game that has no rules because what you're probably doing community and

I want to have a call with you just one-onone to pick your nd a lot of these people were like um de de developer relations folks Community folks and I connected with them over the pandemic and I was like hey I am let's let's talk let's like connect and when they told me about their role I was like this is it this is what I want to do and luckily from that tweet it ended up being um like my um ex- colleague Mike found it and he was like Hey we're actually hiring at my old company and he was like do you want to chat

and yeah then literally later that week for a tiny team may not work very well here and right now that's what I'm trying to figure out and understand like what sticks um but but yeah like to answer your question around um like my like my advice for this for someone getting into Community exactly what you said you have to kind of do it before you get your gig and um if you I sorry I'm promoting so many links but if you want to have a look um at Pauline nar.com that's my portfolio website I need to clean it up to be honest but in that

is it Pauline again 2p awle Oh no just like my actual name like.com yeah um that showcases all of my work over the last couple of years and I I wish I I think I could find snapshots of um what it used to look like but I have had this domain for almost 10 years and I have I have added to it I have changed it so many times and every single time I added something like I did a talk or I did a podcast or I I talked I wrote a new blog post about Community or something technical I would put it on here

and then I would share it everywhere I was like my biggest Advocate I was like my own social media I was the person that was like look look what I did and look what um uh is possible in communities that I helps build and as you the more you put yourself out there and create this like personal brand I really don't like that word I try I kind of cringe every time I say it but honestly having this like personal brand has really helped like 10x my career and so whenever someone you asks me like how brain what you're doing univale because I want to

adopt it community but we're all doing it differently which is the crazy thing yes yes it it is really interesting I mean like when I was moving from um like my old company to Vel I tried to see what like I knew the things that stuck at my old company but then the scale was really well it was Tiny and then now I this bigger Community like big bigger brand and things like that it's like a lot more to think about and some things that kind of worked just like go out there and do it um and there was many times where I I read

my old posts I'm like oh my God that was so cringy why did why did I post that or why did I you know why did I share that um specifically and it's not a perfectly worded blog blog post but I'm so glad I did it consistently over the last couple of years because it definitely helped really pave my journey into into community so that would be my number one tactical advice if you don't you don't need to have a website you ca n just use LinkedIn you can use I've never had a website I've never had there you go there you go you really

don't need it but for me it's always like a good space to have because it's like oh this is mine you know yeah um golly so many thoughts again like I want to give a shout out to Jason Torres um I HED him he threw a virtual conference to raise money for a friend's wife who has cancer and he raided $10,000 over $10,000 and ran a two-day conference I don't know about you but I haven't done t hat so it was Jason's first job in Tech and I hired him because he did the work before I knew that he got it right uh a girl

I just hired hea down in Mexico she is a part of all the conferences and all the discords and all the meetups like literally I got a slack from her just now I'm live she goes hey we're she literally started today she's going to be at a conference with us on Saturday in Mexico she's like hey how can I help here's what I want to do I said go run with it like again you have t can I get into a role like yours how can people like start approaching me to like help lead their Community I'm like you need to put yourself out there

you need to be the one in people's like DMS in their LinkedIn comments in their like um on Twitter or blue sky or whatever you need to be out there talking and advocating for yourself the same way you would advocate for a community um because unfortunately like no one else is going to do that for you you really need to take the driver's seat and um basically being received from your customers right or or the community if you or individuals if you think about it the internet was the very first way we got information social media Instagram all that stuff Twitter whatever is was the

second wave on how to get information well now people are getting their information from creators and my thing I think creating your own bra if you want to do what we're doing if you want to do what Pauline and I do you have to do that you have I think Communit y is the influencer world of tech if you don't want to do it you don't have to do it don't worry about it if you don't want to do it don't do it but I think this community trend is mirroring that article I read let's be honest was an article I don't read it was

a Tik Tok post and and it just that's where it's going right it's where it's going so thoughts on that PA totally totally agree and at the end of the day like I will just say this like customers Community users they are more likely to um kind of buy and also um advocate for and use tools um especially in the dev Tool World from people that they trust it doesn't really like the brand is also very important the brand that you work for the brand that you're part of super important but like honestly at the end of the day we're all human and we just

want to connect with other humans and if a human that we like and who's very like personable who's out there who is like helpful they are more likely to be like oh yeah this person is par o know uh you got to do the job before you do it um another thought too what was it uh you were talking about community and oh so saw a very interesting Tik Tok post um and we'll kind of wrap up here and I'll ask uh Pauline some rapid fire questions that I have but I saw a Tik Tok post it was a fast name post about how there's

a new wave coming so the first wave was the internet the second wave was Mo uh social media apps the third wave is content creators and it's it's how information is being a second um I think actually um I would be uh like a fitness instructor or something I love it yeah like a boxing instructor Maybe I do boxing already and I would love to teach that yeah I love that I love that uh Second question um I and it kind of mirrors just the question I just asked what do you like to do outside of work just in general oh very good question um

so outside of work I love blogging exercising like I said I love boxing I do yoga I do pliles I do like weightlifting at one point I wanted to do powerlifting competition but then Co happened but anyway love all the fitness stuff and getting involved in those types of like sports communities um I also just love to travel and I know that sounds really cliche but I love just collecting Flags that's it I love it I love that um third thing um what's going on at versel that people need to know about well if you want to get involved in the versel community we had

um done like a soft launch on a community platform that we still bu ilding from like the ground up it's over at versel do community and like if you have any questions at all about like anything related to the versal ecosystem drop by there and then we're more than happy to help from the community team perspective we're also going to start launching uh soon some like live sessions and live shows where you can connect with the people behind versel as well as our community members and our customers uh to learn more about how folks are like utilizing ver vzer nextjs t of this thing I

trust that so I'm gonna take part in it exactly y That's it m that was great yeah we got to do a part two all right wraid fire questions here first question is if I if I told you uh that you woke up tomorrow morning you couldn't do anything in Tech you couldn't do your job now you had to get out of tech but I'd pay you the same amount or more money would not be a problem what would you do wow that's actually I I'm upset now I I love Tech I like go wait a minute I was like wait iddle school high school

and college but now as adults who don't really have anybody or anything to really turn to and just ask general advice from so what would be the biggest piece of career advice you would have told young Pauline oh the thing is all the things that I said earlier about like building personal brand taking the uh you know taking the driver's seat and just like rolling with it is stuff I would say and I did anyways but I would also just say like there were many moments in my ca reer where I was scared of being me and I was scared of being like authentic and

you know especially in a very male dominated like industry there were times where I was like okay can't you can't be too much today like everyone else is just like H you just can't be like over the top but I realized the more I kind of broke past that like and I became a bit more authentic the more these types of opportunities opened its doors to me so now I literally would say to Young me don't like be ashamed of w ho you are keep showing up and stop trying to pretend to be someone you're not because you are perfectly fine the way you are

and show up in these spaces people will welcome you and you just have to keep going and leading leading with that I love that that's awesome well y'all thank you again for hanging out guidance concert 2.0 this morning this is the only one for this week tomorrow I got something new tomorrow morning so I can't go live and then I leave for commit your code conference in Dall and all that good stuff so yeah please check it out also tor's doing the same thing we have Jason with his Tech commute we have me with guidance counselor 2.0 and hea's gonna have something as well down

in Mexico so love it there you go um last question and we'll wrap up here again thank you so much paing for coming on we'll definitely do a part two um stay on so I can say bye to you backstage by the way but um so the show is called guidance counselor 2.0 because we had guidance counselors in m use I'm live with her I'm saying because I've been following her for a bit um but y'all have a great one and we'll see y'all next week with lives otherwise see y on the social as I'm giving a two-hour Workshop um on the job search um

on Thursday so I'm leaving Wednesday to go be a part of Danny Danny Thompson's conference is what everyone's calling it but it's the commit your code conference and then back down in gu laar in Mexico uh on Friday um so or yeah Friday Saturday so really excited a lot of travel uh later this week so the Vlog will be back content will be flowing um so again uh everybody go connect with Pauline she's she's a gem I'm not just saying that beca