Season 5 Wrap-Up: Working to Empower the Virtual Coffee Community

My name is Bekah. I'm a technical community builder from a small town in Ohio, and my favorite game to play as a child -- I mean, like, due to I grew up to -- here, I really loved Othello, so I played a lot of Othello with my dad. And then I'm gonna go outdoor games. We also played a lot of kickball and badminton in my backyard. So I can't really decide between kickball and badminton, but I have very fond memories of all of those things.

played that a lot. And I won a lot, like, "Just get to finish your food," and I'm like, "I'm just gonna read until we get bored, and I'm gonna go [chuckles]". Okay.

glorified, like, Pong. It was like super Pong. And if I, like, get 200 levels, there were explosions and it was like a real -- there's a lot going on there. I really liked that. That was really fun. And I also remember at the age of seven, my mom got me like a Reader Rabbit. Learn math on the computer CD cuz that seemed like a great idea. And it immediately crashed our computer and it like never turned back on. So, I don't know what the life lesson there is. Don't [unintelligible]-

played chess. I did what I set out to accomplish.

the future. So, Kirk, do you wanna give a little bit of a recap of where we're at?

desired outcomes. But I think we just realized, the only way we were gonna sort of keep things okay for our volunteers, and also just like give us the bandwidth to make things better for incoming members, was to take a pause, right? And it's- it's like one of those real -- you know, sometimes like you just have to make priorities when you do not have internet resources. And that was a decision we made, and I think it was the right one. I think -- we think it was the

right one. As it's given us a lot of space to really go with like, "Hey, when we open back up, what do we wanna do? What do we want this to be?" Think back to what our mission is. Think back to like what's working well, what's not working well, how can we empower the parts that are, like, really valuable for people, one of the stress points or the pain points that we can, like, reduce. So, I

think that's been good. And I guess there's a little bit there about having the ability to do that type of thing, being just like a friendly community, but also, you know, not- not a service or a product or something. It- it makes it easier for us to say like, "Yeah. We can- we can still just like be us for a little bit before we start be in -- out of cast, be with people again."

really fun. But I- I know that that was, you know, there- there's probably a hesitancy, like, "How can you be the most welcoming community and not be having new members at this point?" And for me, I felt like it further ensured that we are a welcoming community because we're taking the time to figure out how we can best welcome people, how we can continue to welcome our existing

members. And in the last year, I've talked to a lot of different, small community builders, and I've seen them, you know, fold or say like, "Hey, we're gonna stop doing this because we're burnt out and we're just gonna send everybody to Virtual Coffee. And it's- it's like a house of cards, right? Like, one small community folds and then all of the people go to the next small community, into the

next. And so, we wanted to make sure that- that we weren't falling with- with those other small communities, which I- I don't think that we felt that we were, but you can definitely see that coming down the line. So, for us, it was super important to be able to think through all of these processes, exactly like what Kirk said, like, you know, what makes Virtual Coffee special? How do we preserve that intimacy and how do we scale that?

one part. And we- we all very much want more people to be joining again. Like, we're all, I think, very excited about getting back to the place where we can open membership again. And that's just a matter of building up our ... you know, different resources, building up our processes, and- and figuring out some- some paths for, you know, how we wanna handle things. We have -- just recently, we took two

steps. We- we did one thing where we were able to highlight our members that are, you know, giving back to the community by volunteering and in leadership positions or- or just helping out in different roles on our website. So, on virtualcoffee.io/members now, anybody who's -- who has ... you know, who's- who's actively helping with the community has- has a little tag, you know, based on what they're

doing. Things like room leaders, and note takers, and, you know, the -- our-our monthly challenge team, and everybody else. And then after that, we have been working last a little bit ... I dunno, the last couple months, I guess, on describing better ways that people can- can join to help. Because we've been kind of just grabbing people [laughs], mostly, to- to help. And they've been, you know -- everybody has been amazing.

But to support more and more people, like, we need -- like, if we're going to scale, the volunteers need to scale first before the- before the members. Do -- you know, the- the -- if you just take our- our coffee meetings, for example, we have awesome team of room leaders and note takers, and they do a great job, but there's a limited amount of them, right? And so, that means there's a limited amount of people that we can actually have at the meetings. And it's not that high [laughs], honestly.

And so, the -- so, what we wanted to do, okay. How do we get more room leaders and- and also hosts? So up until ... yesterday -- so, we're recording on- on Friday the 13th, and so yesterday was the first day that we had -- not a maintainer. Host, one of our coffees.

are. But they -- that- that- that's because we put a lot of thought into the MC stuff, and the room leaders, and all -- everything like that. And so, we need to make sure that people are supported and have what they need to, you know, bring good- good experiences to all the other people. And so -- as sort of like a top-down scaling situation [chuckles] for us. And so, that's one of the, like, big reasons we needed to -- we- we felt we- we should- we should be pausing membership was- was

that. And it's been -- we've gotten a lot of good responses from people. Yeah. I don't know if I actually said this out loud [chuckles], but we made some- some ... like documents, and forms, and stuffs to- to make it easier for people to- to- to volunteer for us and -- for Virtual Coffee. So, that was the- that was the -- our next step. And that's been going well. I don't know.

things. And I think we've done a pretty good job of keeping up with processes, but things like that, like what- what do we need help with? And I don't think that's something that's particularly a Virtual Coffee problem. I think that anybody who's running a community, if- if you don't have things set up, you -- like, you know that you need help [chuckles], but it's like, "How do I get people -- how do I onboard them?

What do- what do I really need here?" And so, like, pausing to take the time to think through what do I need, what are the processes that need to be updated, those are the things that are going to help you to scale down the road because it's set up. I can bring in a new, like, four new note takers this morning. I added to our organization and set them up with the documentation that they need, and walk through the processes.

And I've -- we've got a couple more volunteers that I reached out to as well, but all of that needed to be set up in advance. So when somebody says, "I would like to help, where can I help?" there's a place to send them to.

willy-nilly. So, like -- just like Bekah was saying this, having all that stuff written down and having clear paths for people, it's turned out very important [chuckles].

Kirk, do you wanna talk a little bit about the results of those surveys? Some of the key takeaways that we had?

about this. Like, "If I wanna volunteer, how do I do that?" So, there are a lot of people who weren't like -- or they're new, or they're still sort of getting into things like, "How do I do more?" And making that really, really transparent with people, with something that seemed to resonate. Right now, we have a few sort of like key events that

happen in the community. We have our Lunch & Learns, we have the Lightning Talks, but we also have -- I guess this concept that wouldn't be about -- like, this Coffee Table groups, which are really just things started by the members where they saw like a need or a space for something they were interested in and they just self-organized. And that's super great. And we, like, we like those things, so there's a question. Okay. How do we support people who wanna do this?

How do we, again, like, avoid some of the pitfalls or some of the dangers of like doing a lot of volunteer work, right? So it's like, if you wanna do this group, what can we help you with? Like, what support can we give you? What support do you need?

Can we equip you to kind of like, have an idea of like how much effort it's gonna take, if you need to stop — I think it is like most important that — if you need to stop performing a role, can you do that -- communicate that in a way that, like, is safe for you, comfortable for you, like, minimal pain points. So there's been a lot of things like that, you know? Basically just people saying like, "This stuff is going on here. I really like it.

How can I get more involved?" And then us figuring out a way to, like, take people's enthusiasm and then like put them on a path to success for what they're gonna do, which I think is super important, you know? Like a lot of ... I don't know. When I think of like what it comes down to with like these types of initiatives, it's ... you find two issues. Sometimes someone has a great idea, but a system's not set up for it so they can execute it and they get

bummed out. Or they have an idea and they sort of like go headlong into it and, you know, kind of like burn through their life force like a Phoenix. And neither of those is great. So, a nice middle ground and it, you know, I think this idea of sustainable leadership, I think is something

is really important to us. If you wanna lead something, we wanna help you do it, but in a way where you can keep doing it on your own terms and not feel like you have to because of other people, or you have to because it's like, you know, just ... I wanna do this while it provides value and joy for me, and then when I'm ready to stop, you can stop. And that's okay. And I think that's the thing we've- we've kind of gone over

this community. We like the fact this is not a space where you have to come in perfect, you know? We like the fact that people can grow here, there was this little space to grow here, there's a space to make mistakes within reason, there's a space to practice things that you're not

perfect at, you know? A lot of times people hesitate, I mean even things like, why don't you learn -- just like, "I've never," you know, "I've never done speaking before," but like, if you haven't, this is probably the best space to give it a try. It's a non-hostile audience who only is interested in just like supporting you as much as possible, you know? So,

yeah. It- it -- the -- well, I was really validated by a lot of the survey responses kind of echo what we were feeling as maintainers and everyone seems to kind of be on board, like making this even more awesome.

know. So, one of the things was- was setting up a calendar system so that I, you know, people can log in -- our- our members -- I mean, our -- the- the group leaders can log in and add their events, you know, recurring events or one off events. And then those events get filter back out through our website and, you know, onto our events' page. And they also -- I added a Slack bot sort of thing that, well, we'll- we'll send reminders from

that. So we moved on from Meeting Place and are using that for our events now too, and not just the special interest group stuff -- Coffee Table groups [chuckles]. Sorry. We call them the special interest groups for a long time. But -- so- so- so, yeah. So that was like, this is like kind of step one, is- is allowing our group leaders to sort of roll their own stuff, you know?

So they don't have to ask us to add things to the calendar, ask us to add things to Slack -- in Slack, you know, Slack reminders, and things like that. And- and with -- along with that, sort of copied the co-working room experience and [chuckles] made it -- so that we could -- so our group leaders could use our Zoom for events, which was another sticking point because if you don't have a paid Zoom account, then I think you were still limited to 40 minutes or

something like that. You know, there's limitations for- for free accounts. And so, having a central place that you can trust that we will have things to get taken care of and have some moderation tools in place, things like that. So- so, yeah. And then I think I have, you know, next is gonna be some things more for general users to log in and be able to maybe RSVP for events or add things to calendars, things like that. So, that's coming down the

line. But- but, yeah. That's -- all the- the- the group membership stuff is in place right now. So it's kind of- kind of exciting.

and things like that. Meg — who you heard from this season — is running the accountability buddies sessions, where it's, again, I think job focused or- or working on projects, that kind of thing. We have the React group as well. We have ... let's see. Indie hackers, and we've got a new one, which is like a Virtual Coffee speaking group where -- actually Kirk, you and I are up first, next week. Is that next week, or the week after? Well,

we're giving short speeches. So we should prepare for those, right?

all kind of blend together. So [chuckles], we- we met fairly recently for the first time, and kind of plan things out, and things are growing from there. So, there's always something that there's a need that can be filled or there's an interest like, honestly, I- I was thinking about like, "Okay, what Coffee Table groups would I like to see?" And I don't know if this fits into a Coffee Table group, but, like, I don't know what to call it. Happy Hour- Happy Hour Special Interest

group? I -- it kind of like falls outside of there, but like something low-key, let's get together, and hang out. We've done some happy hours or social hours before. And- and just like seeing the community interact in those ways has been a lot of fun. But are there other groups that you two would like to see at Virtual Coffee?

poetry. And we were like, where -- if you were gonna share your poetry and music, like, where do you put -- content creation is slightly different. It's not necessarily content, right? Like, it's just like -- it's like art, that for me -- that I'm sharing with, like, friends. So then it's like, "Hmm. Maybe that goes into --" I think we have a -- so -- do we have a channel about crafts? Is it craft --

judicious about them. We made a channel for making channels, which I actually think has worked out pretty well, as like giving people like a clear space to discuss wanting certain channels. The -- yeah. What I like about the special interest groups is like, it -- we don't predict them, right? The members -- someone has an idea, they will typically like find some way to poll the

community, you know? Get feedback, and like, general random, if there's enough interest and people like hype enough, they give it a try. And then, like, we, as the maintainers, only come in like, "Hey, you're doing an awesome thing," you know, "Let's see if we can, like, help out with it." Yeah. I mean, having a process to that is good [??], too.

it's not. So -- you know.

community? Is the priority of everything that we're doing?

you know? Like, consistent guest speakers, great quality talks, like, that's something to takes a whole team to organize and through all that consistent basis. We, you and I, have the bandwidth for that if he does. And so, like, letting members like, "Hey, every two weeks, you're getting like a high quality thing that you can just check out," feels good. Like, everyone seems -- both sides are sort of like getting something out of it. So, if there's ways to do more of

that, it's great. Yeah. But those do always require like extended -- you just have to like work them out more because now, you have to like check in that this other group are aligned with you, you gotta figure out timing, you gotta -- you have your own cadence of work, they have their own cadence work, it becomes this thing, you know, but -- or not. I don't think we're opposed to like anything that doesn't bring value for them in.

incoming members, right? So I- I think probably a lot of people have had the experience of joining some community at this quarter, Slack, or whatever, and being just overwhelmed [chuckles], or not having any idea what to do, or- or maybe it's a little clear, but it's still just a huge community with a million channels a-a-and no, you know, personal

connection for you. And so, you put your name in [chuckles], you know, you fill out the intro thing and say, "Hello everybody," and, you know, some people react and say hi and stuff, and then- and then it's kinda ... right [chuckles]? I wouldn't want that to be -- I mean, if peep- if that's what happens in Virtual Coffee, that, you know, so be it for- for a person, but in general, we don't want that to be that case,

right? And so our -- and this is why we've stuck pretty hard with our- our -- how you join Virtual Coffee is by coming to one of our coffees, right? First. Before any Slack invites happen, things like that. [Clear-throat] One of the difficulties with that is- is -- it was a very manual process, right? The -- you know, Zoom has its own authentication stuff, and there's no way to have people signed into like a Zoom account, all of the

same account. Otherwise -- I mean, it -- or- or unless they were paid members, right? So if you are on a work Zoom or something, you know, that- that your work is paying for every single seat [chuckles]. And so, that's obviously not a- a solution for us. So when you join a Virtual Coffee's Zoom, you're just joining on your own account, and you can fill out whatever details you want. There's no way for us to manage

any of that. What that means is there's no auto- there's -- it's very complicated, and possibly sometimes impossible to connect a Zoom account with a person, you know? And whether they've joined or not before, and things like

that. And so, our solution was just to have people fill out the membership form and, you know, we'd have a little link after coffees, and they would fill out the form, and then we would essentially go and make sure that they actually came, and then send them a Slack invite, sort of all manually. We -- wait, peep- just -- maintainers were just doing that. And that was hard too, you

know? I mean, that was time consuming even when there was just five people that, you know, joined that week, it took up time. And we have more and more people coming, things like that. And, so, that's one of the challenges that I'd like to nail down i-is just like what- what it means to be a member? How to- how to join things, you know? Those sorts of topics, right?

And then how can we- how can we keep the sort of intimate nature of- of joining Virtual Coffee while supporting multiple members, you know, more and more, large and larger group of people. And then also how to onboard them gracefully and things like that, not overwhelm people, and not call with them with, you know, a million channels and huge group of people that they don't know anything about. So, that's -- we -- we've- we've been talking a lot about that too over the past few months.

information that they need. Not everybody needs access to all of the information. And so, providing each group of volunteers with that information, making sure that they're up to date and can communicate openly with each other when something needs to be updated or changed is -- those are also, you know, priorities and pain points that we're trying to work through. Kirk, do you have anything to add?

need to have a plan. Yeah. And it's- it's- it's just us sort of being a lot more thoughtful about stuff, and kind of stepping back, and saying, "Okay, if something works now, why does it work? Is there a way to like, clarify that so we can reference why, new people can reference why," and like, we start, you know, building that up.

You know, we recently had like something that make -- the maintainers were discussing and were like, "Hey, is this in the Code of Conduct?" And we were like, "No," like, "We should probably, like, put it in there, right?" Just so like we don't forget later if it happens again, there's like something that we can reference and go, "Well, we're not just making it up on the fly as we go along."

Or, I mean, we are, but like, the things that we wanna keep [chuckles], we're putting it somewhere where it- it can, you know, stay. Yeah, I don't know. And there's something about like habits and traditions. If something is good and provides good value for you, you should like find a way to keep it. And if something is not providing good value for you, then, like, you should set it free. But you -- it's hard to do that if you're not keeping track of those things. So, yeah.

There -- we would love to have as many people as we can, if we can replicate that same intimacy. And so trying to figure out how do you do that? If you add another coffee chat, are- are 500 people just going to suddenly appear in Slack? I mean, they wouldn't suddenly appear right there. We'll be [chuckles] -- we're not going to get 500 new people overnight. But that's something that we have to think about. I don't think it's bad to have another pause and membership in the future.

Now there are some communities that have opened membership as one- one month during a quarter or something. Or one week they onboard new folks who are coming into the community and otherwise they're closed. So, there are a lot of different ways that you can build that into the process, give everybody a break, kind of like a vacation to pause, breathe, think things through.

But, you know, ultimately we have to be thinking about how do we replicate — exactly what Kirk was saying — is- is good about this community as we scale as well.

things. But if you know what it is and you're prepared for it, I don't think it's like -- so, like, obviously suddenly having 500 members would probably be a bad thing, you know? But I guess if there was an increase in 500 members over the course of like 10 years, like, I don't know. That's a bad thing. So the problem might not be the 500 members. It's just like, what is it mean when new people enter the group, right? And we found ... too many people in at once, it starts to get a little-

People enter, people leave, people return. And like, being able to like handle all those steps of your journey as a community member is really important for like having a good community, you know? So, yeah. Let's say we have like a thousand members, but we're probably not gonna have like a thousand people active at the same time. They'll come in waves, they'll come and go, and it- it, you know, there's -- I think there's a way of like living in that space that can

feel really good. Like, very quickly you figured out, "Oh, it's not so much." Zooms can have lots of people. As long as when people finally start talking, they're in like a small enough space that it feels comfortable. And that's how the breakout room started. So -- and I think there's like similar techniques, so we can grow, and not necessarily it's like ... I don't know. This will become like a thesis at some

point. But the key metric may not be total numbers, but sort of like, how are the people interacting with other people? Are they still getting a chance for, like, intimate moments with a few members at any given time, and we can make that work? And we think we can make that work. We also think we can have like the greatest conference of all time. We have big thoughts.

people per room. And I think that- that is- that is good. But I also think that having that small experience where you know people in Slack is important. And it is tricky for the reasons that you say. Because people come in and they come out all of the time, you know? Somebody has -- is super active, and then they get a new job, and then you don't hear from them as much, right? Or they can't participate anymore, which

is totally fine. So it's a -- this like constant flow of people coming in, so, you know, we might have -- might say we have 500 people in Slack, but we certainly don't have 500 active people in Slack. But I do think that that idea of having 150 people says something for the intimacy of the group. It's like their extended network

of people. You can go to an in-person conference and be like, "Oh, I know that person there from Virtual Coffee, so I'm going to talk to them because I'm standing in this corner alone by myself." Maybe that was me [chuckles]. But I- I would like to figure out, or I, you know, I think that we're making progress towards figuring out how to maintain that

intimacy in both places. So I think that maybe there is a world where we do have 500 people in what- whatever platform we're on, but can still maintain that, like, 150 person asynchronous communication intimacy, as well as those breakout room communications.

thing to measure on, right? Is -- like, are our members making intimate connections, you know? Are our members, like, part- part of a group, you know- you know what I mean? And so -- and I totally agree with you, Bekah. Like, i-it's like, it- it -- when you say, oh, it -- the number, it doesn't matter, you know? It's -- you're gonna -- like, the number does matter, right? And whether that 150 numbers is- is, you know, feels right or not is- is probably up in the

air. But like, it's- it's one of those things where it's -- and this is why we pause membership. And this is why we're like thinking so hard, is because we want to be able to keep the- to keep the ... intimacy, and the -- sort of shape of our [chuckles] community while growing. And that's hard and not a lot of people have done it. And we think we can crack it, and I think we're pretty close, honestly. And -- but, yeah. It's- it's -- and it's very

important to us, I think. And I think it's important to our community members as well. So I, you know, when you are on out- outside of the community of Virtual Coffee, or maybe you're brand new member, it might not be as clear. Or maybe if you haven't thought about it [laughs], you know, and- and you just kind of along for the ride. I know for- for my, at least personally, like, sometimes I just don't -- I don't think about why something feels great, or like why something is, because I enjoy

it, you know what I mean? And it -- that's okay too [laughs]. Like, it's okay to just enjoy things. But like, this is why we wanted to talk about this. This is- this is the other side of the coin. And it's like [clear-throat] we use it so that we can help support it. We are thinking very hard about why, you know? And- and- and how we can do more. So, yeah. And it's- it's hard, but it's fun. It's also fun and very gratifying too. So --

But nice. It's- it's sort of -- it's- it's the same -- it's- it's a similar concept of ... there is a thing that you are a part of and you're working on, and, you know, if- if that big core concept is there, and like the people are there, and the energy is there, it grows. And that's good. But there are different problems

at different sizes. And like, part of keeping something going is knowing like, not just how to be the like plucky up and coming thing, but also how to be this sort of like mature, ongoing thing. And we're- we're at that point. Which is a good point to be, you know? I don't know what the- the tech equivalent is. Series C ... I don't know the words.

those two. So if we have related topics, then what might work in the future is having an intro question for people to get to know each other and including both of those conversations. And, you know, both of our- our members who weren't able to attend can engage in those and the external community as well. So, we'll try it out for a while, see how it goes. And hopefully people will find value in it.

website, virtualcoffee.io. If you're interested in sponsoring Virtual Coffee, you can find out more information on our website at virtualcoffee.io/sponsorship. Please subscribe to our podcast, and be sure to leave us a review. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.