TWiC in person: Pivots, pain sponges and purposeful pauses

In this in-person edition of This Week in Community, Rosie Sherry and Simon Tomes are joined in London by Andy Claremont. They explore a strange moment for community, with layoffs at familiar companies happening just as community is more widely talked about than ever, and how AI slop is pushing people towards smaller, high trust spaces and in-person gatherings. Rosie compares the hype around community to how test automation is talked about in quality engineering, which leads into whether community professionals are becoming more specialist, how to demonstrate business value, and why community now needs a second specialism alongside it. The conversation then turns to business pivots at Glide and Tana, and Salesforce moving its Trailblazer Community to Slack. Andy describes the role of the community pain sponge, helping members through change with empathy and clean off ramps. They also discuss culling community debt, from possibly retiring a long-running forum to handing activities back to members, and close on the value of seasons and breaks, so community activities can pause with purpose rather than end. Chapter timestamps 00:00 In Person Community Gathering 04:02 Community Layoffs and Industry Shifts 05:28 AI Impact on Community Trust 10:13 Comparing Community to Software Engineering 12:49 Evolving Into Community Specialists 15:36 Demonstrating Business Value and Metrics 18:01 Combining Community with Other Specialties 21:00 Aligning Community with Business Pivots 29:05 Being the Community Pain Sponge 39:50 Strategies for Culling Community Debt 43:58 Implementing Seasonality in Community Planning 51:13 In Person Episode Conclusion Additional resources Andy Claremont   / andymci   The Online Trailblazer Community: Reimagined Together and Coming Soon to Slack https://www.salesforce.com/blog/trail... Will 20 Years of Trailblazer Community Knowledge Survive the Move to Slack? https://www.salesforceben.com/will-20... HubSpot to lay off 660 employees https://www.boston.com/news/business/... Tana https://tana.inc/ Introducing GlideOS https://www.glideapps.com/blog/glideo... The Testing Planet https://www.ministryoftesting.com/sea... ----- This Week in Community (TWiC) is a weekly online call between community professionals, hosted by Rosie Sherry and Simon Tomes. Gather around the community fire for a live conversation as we connect with the people behind the practice, explore what's emerging, and share the passion of those shaping the future of community. Tune in for the latest news, discussions, and insights from across the world of community building, connection, and care. We meet every Wednesday at 4pm UK time. Join the stage and tell us about your week, share your hot takes, talk about what you're working on, celebrate your wins, or just listen in and join the chat. It's up to you. 🤝 Join the TWiC Chapter on the MoTaverse and 🗓️ Register for the next event: https://www.ministryoftesting.com/cha... ✍️ Rosie Sherry writes about community at https://rosie.land ✍️ Simon Tomes writes about community at https://simontomes.com In community we gather.