Community Connection 👋🏻

[Karthikk]

Yes I have noted this done already and goes perfectly with the plans that I have laid down for the near future as well.
I will be hosting these community calls regularly (hoping to start from the coming week) and will definitely try to pull in the others from time to time as well

I completely agree that we are not using discord to the fullest at all, it definitely needs some icebreaking asap.

Apart from Q&As and AMAs, what kind of community calls do you think will benefit the most immediately?
I can think of a few:

1. Workflow sharing between users
2. Study together channels
3. Brainstorm sessions to build workflows/ templates together

Quick tease :
Book clubs and journal reading clubs are in the plans especially great to have once the shared knowledge bases are out

[Finn_Lobsien]

All three of those would be fantastic! Maybe there’s even space for all three?

1. Workflow sharing could be a sub-forum, especially if it’s incentivized to share things and if users can request workflows to see if others have already built them.

2. Coworking/studying channels could just be a public Zoom room with intervals (e.g. 60 minutes of work, 10 minute breaks). Moderation is an issue, but perhaps community leaders or RN team members could lead the rooms.

3. These could be regular Zoom calls led by RN team members.

I’d love all three! But if you have to prioritize one, I’d love to see organized and incentivized workflow sharing!

[Finn_Lobsien]

There have been a lot of requests in terms of customer support, public roadmap and what RemNote can learn from Roam.

I think one thing which would really move the community forward (and grow it at the same time) would be highlighting and/or interviewing notable users and how they use RemNote on social media, a Blog, YouTube channel etc.

That would help the current community see how to use RemNote productively (which isn’t a given for most new users). It would also incentivize what you’ve created for/in RemNote and make the most passionate community members feel valued by the team and community.

Plus, if someone is featured as an expert somewhere in public, they’re likely to tell others and share it with their friends, which could help the app grow without a giant marketing offensive.

[Badjer]

@marcothesis

To be clear, hand holding is not a bad thing. It’s a matter of who is available to help hand hold someone new and clear their doubts

Helping is more than acceptable. Calling it hand holding has negative connotations & would not be the best way to describe such an approach in a thread that is supposed to help with community building. It does not come across as building but TY for the clarification

Helping out is needed for sure. In an app that is the main reason in having a community. I firmly believe in the power of a community as I don’t normally waste time with locked in apps that have no care for community spirit

@marcothesis

But for the founder to hand hold / address each email would be a misuse of his time, IMHO

Not trying to suggest that the founder/ co-founders address each email personally & realize they do provide 1 on 1 support when requested. I am all for the community jumping in. I find this as a most important factor in building a community.

The context in which I mentioned this, in the vein of community building, is that in the Discord there are often Team Members logged in. Often users are asking questions. The community helps out often but there are times when no one knows the answer or at least don’t reply.

At this point in time a team member should help out/ guide them in the right direction. This might not be something they need to do but in the vein of community building this would be one possible factor to help build a community

If a new user dives into the tutorials, cannot find an answer, asks questions & receives no help even when team members are around this does not provide a community feel. I am not saying that the team needs to answer instead of the community but rather if the community has no replies on the given question. Leave no open loops so to speak. Allow community to help out first but ensure they have some kind of help if none was provided by the community. As a community we want to build all users up. They do not need to email personally so long as help is provided even if this help is passed onto someone else.

Often I try helping out when no one is around on this basis so that they feel the community spirit. I do not have the most experience in this app but due to my experience with bi-directional apps & various approaches to PKM I have been able to help out on certain topics within Discord. I am not obligated but want to help build a better community.

I was also referring to the team just chatting some times on no specific topic. Lounge talk if you will.
I have talked to Martin before & find him quite a solid & well intentioned person though I doubt he recalls who I am. Building a community requires both the users & team getting to know each other, not just the users.

These are not should be doing items but some thoughts to help build the community spirit

I should point out when I first posted this the Team had just barely started to shift their focus more to the community as well as other things so if a reader is reading this be aware these things are being worked on. Not sure if there is a solution yet but the fact that it is being worked on is something

@marcothesis

People still can schedule 1:1 demo with them, I mean who else does this??

Agree with this. Some claim this but in actuality I don’t find it so. Martin does for sure. Not sure if other Team members offer this but I can verify Martin does. On top of that he will go beyond the 15 min time slot if there is not a scheduling conflict

Kudos on that end
I think this is a great team that is learning their way around & will get there

@Karthikk

I think no one here feels that helping each other is similar to hand-holding

It was actually in regards to a reply so was actually the case. They have expanded on their idea which is appreciated but this is why I don’t think that is the best way to describe it

Thanks for your comment, though

@Karthikk

The community here is one of the friendliest and we only hope to nourish it as much as possible

Agree community is friendly & helpful
Nourishing as much as possible is still a work in progress IMHO
However, the fact that the team is aware this is something that needs to be worked on & have said so means a lot. Willing to admit short comings is a huge step

To wrap things up let me say I think this is a great community that is willing to evolve & learn. That in itself is great. Although I was requested to look at RN at the bequest of others I do find that there are many good things, the evolving community spirit & willingness to learn/ build on it being one of those good things.

Hopefully this clears things up & I leave you all in a space of positivity which was my original intention. Seems I missed that mark some how & apologize if I did. My intention was only to provide some thoughts for community building not how the app should operate behind the scenes

[waynelin]

@Badjer

The app is nice as it is depending upon a user’s use case. However, there are some features for some users where they need it for their workflow, not just want it. If they see app as it is they may just move on. If they see it is on roadmap they may look at things differently as they realize it is in the cross hairs

Right.
Because there’s no roadmap and no other type of workflow examples, I always presume RemNote would only care about the spaced-repetition users.
(looking for alt options since the promoted workflow isn’t mine)

[Karthikk]

Hey Finn I see this is your first post here, welcome to the community!

@Finn_Lobsien

Workflow sharing could be a sub-forum,

Good point, I agree having a separate category/sub category to document user workflows will be very helpful.

@Finn_Lobsien

Coworking/studying channels could just be a public Zoom room with intervals (e.g. 60 minutes of work, 10 minute breaks).

I think we could use our existing Discord community for this, they have really good audio and video channels for this.

@Finn_Lobsien

1. These could be regular Zoom calls led by RN team members.

The problem with team members sharing workflows is that, it could end up being prescribed workflows. Users could easily get influenced by certain limited workflows that the team members practise and it could limit the creativity of users coming up with just theirs.
Moreover, it is always the case with many tools that power users have better workflows in place than the team members themselves
My idea is to help bring such powerful/creative workflows out to the public by encouraging and incentivising users to share them with others. Our role as a team would be at best, to facilitate, moderate, reward and empower such behaviours.
Any thoughts on that?

Also, I think we can definitely start with all of those, no reason to limit other than just wanting to build up slowly, wouldn’t want to spread ourselves and the users thin too much.

@Finn_Lobsien

I think one thing which would really move the community forward (and grow it at the same time) would be highlighting and/or interviewing notable users and how they use RemNote on social media, a Blog, YouTube channel etc

Good point, thanks for the suggestion.

[Karthikk]

@Badjer

At this point in time a team member should help out/ guide them in the right direction. This might not be something they need to do but in the vein of community building this would be one possible factor to help build a community

Just to share the perspective from the inside (as I have been there on your side and shared similar emotions as well), at this stage of bootstrapping with a very small team, it’s can be quite overwhelming to catch up with all the discussions happening on multiple platforms for the lead dev/ founder team. Sporadically answering to only certain posts might leave a wrong impression that the team could be relied on for support and might discourage other users from helping out with what they know, hence might not be best to just help out when available.

Hence, the decision to have someone who is entirely focussed on the community experience (me?) and I have been slowly trying to catch up everywhere, trying to understand the problems and the emotions of the community. Moving forward, I should be able to handle such queries even better.

I have also been thinking about having certain systems in place which would elevate certain kind of issues/queries to the dev team (triaged communication?) and they could focus on tackling them alone. Would that solve or satisfy the criteria ?

@Badjer

Often I try helping out when no one is around on this basis so that they feel the community spirit. I do not have the most experience in this app but due to my experience with bi-directional apps & various approaches to PKM I have been able to help out on certain topics within Discord. I am not obligated but want to help build a better community.

Yes, we have noticed your active participation everywhere and highly appreciate the spirit and enthusiasm

@Badjer

Not sure if other Team members offer this but I can verify Martin does.

Currently Martin and Moritz take 1:1 scheduled calls I will soon be opening up my slots for a more direct interaction, as well.

@Badjer

To wrap things up let me say I think this is a great community that is willing to evolve & learn.

thank you for the kind words

[Badjer]

@Karthikk

it can be quite overwhelming to catch up with all the discussions happening on multiple platforms for the lead dev/ founder team

I agree with this. It is one of the reasons that a small team needs to be cautious how many platforms they spread the community over

@Karthikk

have someone who is entirely focussed on the community experience (me?) and I have been slowly trying to catch up everywhere, trying to understand the problems and the emotions of the community

I can understand your dilemma. I specifically see difficulties with Discord as there is an infinite scroll so you have to really manually search thru everything. I can see where Discourse is easier in that regard

@Karthikk

I have also been thinking about having certain systems in place which would elevate certain kind of issues/queries to the dev team (triaged communication?) and they could focus on tackling them alone. Would that solve or satisfy the criteria ?

I believe so. The main thing I am trying to get at is with what ever system is used to make sure if someone has not received a reply within a 24 hr period (or some reasonable number) it is followed thru. Even if there is not an answer make sure they know someone is looking into it. Focusing on them alone or not would be the discretion of the team. I see no conflict in even getting people within the community that have certain expertise to help with a given question if the user is open to it. No reason why 1 person needs to answer all the questions as long as they make sure someone is taking care of a specific question

@Karthikk

Yes, we have noticed your active participation everywhere and highly appreciate the spirit and enthusiasm

Well thanks. Didn’t think anyone noticed but it is nice of you to say so

Thanks for the feedback

[Karthikk]

@Badjer

The main thing I am trying to get at is with what ever system is used to make sure if someone has not received a reply within a 24 hr period (or some reasonable number) it is followed thru. Even if there is not an answer make sure they know someone is looking into it. Focusing on them alone or not would be the discretion of the team. I see no conflict in even getting people within the community that have certain expertise to help with a given question if the user is open to it. No reason why 1 person needs to answer all the questions as long as they make sure someone is taking care of a specific question

Yes, this is similar to the system that I am trying to design for the community thanks for the affirmation!