Switchboard Hearts Chicago Reedies!

This weekend we invited Chicago Reedies to join us in a room full of fabric scraps, googly eyes, and glitter (and other amazing odds and ends) to celebrate Reed Switchboard. The unusual setting was provided by Eleanor Ray ‘07, who gladly hosted us in her new creative reuse center, The WasteShed.

Before the party started, we scurried about, whipping up decorations out of things around the shop: balloons, streamers, construction paper, whatever we could find. At party o’clock, Reedies from across the last two decades (and possibly into future ones) joined us for beers, Banh Mi and BBQ wings. Good times were had by all, but especially the youngest of us, who could hardly believe all the treasures in the many bins and buckets.

The Reed Switchboard, now in its third year of existence, is home to more than 3500 helpful Reedies. Equal parts ask and offer, Reed Switchboard’s 2000+ posts yield success after success.

Some recent favorites from the Reed Switchboard success feed:

Greg B. ‘98 helped Joe W ‘09 connect with someone at Lego Foundation, resulting in an informational interview for his dream job!

Vasily is traveling cross-country connecting with Reedies for hosting and hangouts along the way.

Laura ‘14 and Yuka ‘17 both found people to help them improve their driving in Portland.

Kaori ‘15 found more than ten Reedies across multiple generations to help her answer a big question: whether to work or travel after graduation.

These successes and so many more certainly give us a lot to celebrate. 

We heard from attendees that they loved how flexible Reed Switchboard is, allowing mini-reunions like this one to spontaneously happen through a simple “Offer.” More importantly however, they valued Switchboard as an opportunity to connect with other Reedies over shared interests and needs. Where having gone to the same school alone is not always enough to establish a meaningful connection, it is often enough to push an interest-based connection into a more substantial realm. They also talked about how excited they are to engage on their on terms, and expand on the formal meetups and reunions that the college offers.

Our next Reed Switchboard Hearts party is in NYC, and it’s going to be awesome! If you’re in the area, we’d love to see you.

3 Traits That Prove You’re an Exceptional Community Builder

I wrote this piece as a guest post on CMX.

At the head of every great community is a leader who motivates and organizes people. They may inspire collective action or wrangle enthusiasts around a passion or purpose.

At Switchboard, a platform for communities, we have watched as three dozen thriving communities got off the ground this last year, from higher education communities to communities serving farmers and women cyclists.

While these communities may appear radically different on the outside, we have noticed that they all have something in common: their leaders share common traits that attract members and make their community successful.

And we’re not alone in seeing this trend. Tina Roth Eisenberg, founder of Creative Mornings, speaks of the lecture series’ hosts as having heart, being resourceful, and “getting shit done.” Those qualities are in turn modeled by the community members.

In this article, we’re going to explore each of these traits, how you can identify them, and how you can improve upon them.

Great Communities Need Great Leaders

Consistently, we’ve seen that for a community to be successful, it needs a stop-at-nothing community builder.  This charismatic organizer raises her hand to say, “There’s work to be done. I’m a trusted member of this community. I’ll lead the way!” and the community follows her lead.

The best leaders are almost invisible, doing their work so seamlessly that no one notices they’re doing the heavy lifting. As Lao Tzu says, “A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.”

You’re probably familiar with the personality traits of great community builders: they are empathetic, perceptive, and committed to the growth of their members. But how do these qualities manifest in the real world? Do you have what it takes to be an exceptional community leader? If you’re hiring a community professional, what is the visible evidence that someone possesses these traits?

Here are the three unique characteristics we have found in great community leaders:

1. They have existing distribution channels and a track-record of related success

The difference between “I want to build a community of poodle enthusiasts” and “I’ve built a community of poodle enthusiasts that I’d like to organize” is the difference between failure and success. In the first instance, someone imagines a community and sees Switchboard, or any platform, as the tool that will magically build it for them.

Platforms don’t build community; people do.

When someone requests a Switchboard, we look at the efforts they’ve already made to leverage existing tools. Have they used Meetup, Google, LinkedIn, or Facebook groups? Do they have a loyal Twitter following? Are they actively engaged with their community already? We often describe these people as “human Switchboards.” They are dedicated networkers who thrive helping people succeed.

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Rick Turoczy is the founder of the Portland Startups Switchboard. Between blogging about the Portland tech scene and co-founding a local incubator, tech conference, and online magazine, he’s the perfect person to get this community off the ground. Indeed, in just a few months, there are over 700 members in his daily active community.

It comes down to this: what distribution methods has the organizer already developed? If he hasn’t taken the time or effort to learn any, then the challenge of simultaneously building a following and building upon a platform will be almost insurmountable. Nothing conveys community-building competency more than being able to say, “I have built a community. Let me show you.”

What can you do to improve your skills in this area?

• Build up an audience in your area of interest online. Research influencers and people already working in this space and connect with them.
• Partner with an existing community builder to leverage an existing network.
• Take responsibility! Volunteer at or take on a leadership role in an organization that promotes the type of community you want to build.

How can you identify if someone has these skills?

• They demonstrate success building a community from scratch.
• They’ve forged partnerships that strengthen an existing community.
• They can articulate how content across different platforms leads to different types of engagement.
• They offer real world examples and outcomes to substantiate claims beyond just the number of likes or retweets content received.

2. They’re great offline organizers

There’s something to be said for community organizers who also know how to pound the pavement and hustle offline: distributing business cards, meeting prospective members, and throwing events and parties. This talent is overlooked and underestimated but a reliable indicator of that organizer’s ability to evangelize in the real world. It takes pluck, courage, and fearlessness.

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This is how the Switchboard for Reed College got off the ground: we spent a weekend handing out 1,000 business cards on campus with the website’s URL. We gave users flowers on Valentine’s day. We sent early supporters holiday cards and we held office hours in the library lobby to spread the word to current students. All of these personal touches meant users had a tactile or emotional memory tied to the site.

Elly Blue, the founder of a Switchboard that connects women cyclists, is a fantastic example of someone whose skills mesh the digital with the analog. In addition to maintaining an active online presence, she travels the country hosting a series of events, sells merchandise, authors books and zines on bikeconomics, made Switchboard business cards to distribute, and co-organized an ice cream social for her Switchboard users.

We see that the leaders at ProductHunt plan brunches for their community, Buffer hosts satellite meetups, Crowdtilt sent 1,000 thank you notes, and there are countless other examples of community builders pounding the pavement if you look outside the startup world to the grassroots movement.

What can you do to improve your skills in this area?

• Challenge yourself to engage with your community offline. One easy way is to take advantage of a holiday. Send community members an unexpected Valentine or New Year’s Card.
• Gather your online community offline. Host a party or meetup, like we did for the Portland startups community. Even better: co-host the event with a community member. Even if only a handful of people show up, they’ll invariably feel more connected to the community and to each other. At Switchboard, for example, our community manager Aria is touring the country meeting up with users in person.
• Seek out an organization recognized for in-person community building and apprentice yourself. For example, in Philadelphia, the Mural Arts Project brings communities together to create public art. In Portland, it’s the City Repair Project. This Creative Mornings talk by their director, Mark Lakeman, is a great place to start. The leaders of these organizations have incredible experience building grassroots communities and these lessons translate to any community, online or off.

How can you identify if someone has these skills?

• Bring them into a social situation and see how they behave. Are they a good listener? Do they ask open-ended questions? Do they create opportunities to strengthen relationships with new people by following up and continuing the conversation?
• It sounds silly, but ask when the last time was that they sent thank you note or postcard.
• Community building starts at home. Do they entertain or throw dinner parties? Have they coordinated trips for friends or family?

3. They get in the trenches to help the community 

The best organizers don’t do it for the fame, glory, or power. They do it because they are, in their hearts,servant leaders. They put the needs of their community first. This means getting down into the trenches and personally offering to meet users’ needs when they can.

Camas Davis’s Meat Collective Switchboard is a place where local farmers and consumers can buy and sell sustainably raised meat and share butchery resources. A while back, Lola, a woman new to the art of butchery, asked for advice on cutting ribs into pieces. Camas offered to let Lola borrow her hacksaw and invited her to stop by for an in-person tutorial.

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The best community organizers chime in on posts. They’ll thank the poster, point them to a resource they might not know about, or offer to help out. They put in the legwork and model behavior.

Camas’ activity exemplifies this type of stewardship. And, as you can see from the comment thread, her community appreciates it. Like a dinner party host, she keeps the conversation going and steps in to, metaphorically, top off the wine.

What can you do to improve your skills in this area?

• Instead of focusing on quantitative metrics such as “likes” or retweets, ask yourself a simple question: “Was this community member’s need met? If not, how can I help meet their need?” One of our Switchboard communities analyzed the number of questions and comments posted on a Facebook group. He realized that more often than not, these posts weren’t being responded to. As a result, community members felt unsupported. That motivated him to start a Switchboard and create a dedicated space for meeting their needs.
• Articulate the vision for the best case interaction for each community member. Imagine they were to leave a Yelp style review of their community. What would they say?
• Interview community members. Take them out to coffee and ask them how they’d strengthen the network. What can be done to make it top-of-mind?

How can you identify if someone has these skills?

• Nothing illustrates this quality more than anecdotal stories. Ask for specific examples of how they’ve helped people in large and small ways, from helping friends move to connecting peers with networking opportunities.
• Examine how they engage with their existing social media channels, beyond just sharing content. Do they frequently reply to requests from their community and proactively make suggestions and connect members that might not know one another?
• Ask to speak with someone in the community who benefitted from their help. What was their approach? How was their follow-up?

Bonus Tip for Aspiring Community Leaders…

Consider building a portfolio that documents your efforts and your community’s successes. An ideal portfolio is both quantitative (“I went from a community of 0 to 700 in three months) and, more importantly, qualitative (“Here are ten stories of how this community’s members connected and helped one another”).

The portfolio should convey creativity (“And so then I organized this crazy thing.”) and adaptability (“The first thing I tried didn’t work, so I did this instead.”). For example, before Switchboard, we tried a Storify page to meet our alumni community’s needs. The system failed, but we could articulate why and learned a lot in the process.

There’s Always Room to Learn New Skills

Even if you’ve been building community for 10+ years, you inevitably still have room to grow. What new initiative or gathering can you try with your community? How can you push the envelope? In what new ways can you experiment and learn?

A Switchboard for Oberlin

We’re happy to announce that we’re officially partnering with Oberlin College. Oberlin is a top-ranked liberal arts college and world-renowned conservatory (and they have an awesome library, as seen above). This is a big deal for us! We’ve harbored a liberal arts school crush on Oberlin for some time, and we’ve always admired their creative use of storytelling and social networks to engage the world and their own community.

We’re excited to see how Oberlin students and alumni use the Oberlin Switchboard. We hope that Switchboard will, by helping Obies help one another, make it clear to the world just how special the Oberlin community is. And more concretely, of course, we hope that Obies rack up as many Switchboard successes as possible.

Oberlin students and alumni are already posting asks, offers, and successes on the Oberlin Switchboard about jobs, internships, places to stay, and places for their chickens to stay. Yup, chickens. This is why we love Oberlin.

Ma’ayan Plaut, Oberlin’s Manager of Social Strategy and Projects, is as excited about this partnership as we are. “The most brilliant part of watching Switchboard take shape here in Oberlin is watching peoples’ faces as they begin to understand the potential of a committed helpful community. Simply put, it makes sense for a community that believes in each other to believe that in order to change the world, we have to be there for each other to make it happen,” Ma’ayan says. “We’ve only just begun our time with Switchboard and we’ve already seen connections forged over food, animals, travel, and art. That’s the Oberlin ethos is action, and we can’t wait to see where things go next!”

So thank you, Oberlin. You’re an ideal community for us to learn from. Every success on the Oberlin Switchboard makes us feel even more warm fuzzies than usual.

Mudd Library photo by istolethetv.

Switchboard Success: Community & Hosiery

When we highlight our users’ success stories, we tend to focus on the ones that seem the biggest—typically stories about someone landing a job or internship. Every now and then, though, a story too good to pass up comes along, and we have to share it. This story, about Lai and two pairs of American Apparel hosiery, is one of those.

First, a little background from Lai herself. Lai posted her Offer on the Reed Switchboard—she graduated from Reed College in 2013. For her, American Apparel hosiery bear a special association with her college experience. “First, I want to emphasize that this is American Apparel hosiery,” she says. “I was introduced to American Apparel via a Reed friend, who was a huge fan of their basics. Of course, I had the option of shoving them on to whoever is next to me in New York, but I felt like a Reedie would appreciate it more.”

At Reed, there’s an annual dance where students, many of them clad in tights, cover one another in glitter. “I wanted another Reedie who appreciates our tradition of tights and glitter to have my extra hosiery,” Lai says.

When a fellow Reedie contacted Lai, they arranged to meet in Bryant Park for the exchange.

There, in front of the Bryant Statue, Lai gave away the hosiery. “The handing over of the hosiery was over in a matter of seconds,” Lai says. “I gave them to her in a brown Zara bag and said she could check the contents if she wished. She said it was ok, and thanked me before rapidly walking off with her friend.”

If only for a moment, a spark of recognition passed between Lai and the recipient of the hosiery—the leggings, the memories of glitter. That spark reconnected Lai to her college community and made a small patch of Bryant Park feel, for an instant, like home.

Lai encourages other members of her community to reconnect with one another, as well. “I would encourage everyone to use Switchboard! Reed friendships are very special,” she says. “Give everything and anything! Rather than hoard something, pass it on.”

You don’t need to find a job or internship through a member of your community to feel gratitude, to feel that you’re a part of the whole. Sometimes it only takes a few pairs of tights.

Photo of Bryant Park by Dan DeLuca.

Teaching Skills Is Easy; Inspiring Future Mentors, Less So

The number of entrepreneurship programs offered by colleges in the US quintupled from 1975 to 2006, and the number of classes on entrepreneurship offered increased twenty-fold in the same period. While some contend that entrepreneurship can’t be taught, John Warner of Inside Higher Ed argues the opposite.

Regardless, any startup founder knows that mentorship is incredibly helpful, if not necessary, in the quest for success. Incubators, for example, are increasingly in demand in part because of the support networks they provide.

Many of Switchboard’s most active users are in the tech community, and that’s a good thing because the communities we serve are heavily interested in tech and startups in particular. These communities use Switchboard because it connects mentors to mentees in a public and inspiring way. Tools like incubators, if they can be loosely defined as tools, and Meetup and Switchboard help communities foster cultures of mentorship.

Changing curricula to meet demand—that’s easy. Inspiring people to help others—that’s hard[er]. But it’s exactly what we aspire to do.

Turn First Generation Alumni into Mentors for Students Who Are in Their Old Shoes

Nancy Cantor, chancellor of Rutgers University’s Newark campus, recently called on colleges to work to cultivate talent in prospective students rather than merely select for it. She proposed that institutions establish “farm teams” for high school students to help prepare them for college.

Syracuse University, where Cantor worked previously, is already working to diversify its campus racially and socioeconomically. Further, their Working Orange project connects alumni with current students. It would be great to see something like the Working Orange initiative connect first generation college students with alumni who were once in their shoes. Statistically, it could help increase the graduation rate of these students just as administrative and peer-to-peer initiatives are already. On the human level, it would ease the burden of being the first in one’s family to go to college and give alumni a powerful way to remain involved in their alma mater’s community.

At Switchboard, we’re deeply invested in making these connections possible. We’d love to see a college or university use Switchboard to help meet the needs of first generation college students.