What is a Community? ~via BeenThereDoneThat and Aby Heath
I was introduced to BeenThereDoneThat by their General Manager Lee Roth, after reconnecting f2f at ProcureCon in November, and having originally met Lee via the dynamic Brand Innovators community in 2014. The BeenThereDoneThat methodology is not only unique, but groundbreaking for many brands. This post via Aby Heath, their Head of Community, gets to the heart of their community approach to problem solving and the value of a community that has been there and done that.
As you all know, community is a focus of a lot of my writing and speaking because in my view... A Network gives you Reach; A Community gives you Power! Networks Connect... Communities Care. /Ted
David Alberts (Co-Founder and Chief Vision Officer at BeenThereDoneThat)
Hi, it’s David here.
This week's newsletter is written by our Community Lead Aby Heath who has been integral in building and developing our greatest asset, our Global Community.
In a world where the very best people have a choice who they work with, so many of the Community feedback that they work with us because they love working with the Community Team.
Over the years we have built out a community of Chief Strategy Officers, Chief Creative Officers, Chief Innovation Officers and now we are building out a Community of Chief Marketing Officers.
So if you are interested in joining or know anybody who has been there done that and are looking for What’s next email us at enquiry@beentheredonethat.co and either Aby or I will come back to you straight away.
Subscribe to the School of Athens on LinkedIn here.
As always, we are curious to hear what you think.
Hello, it’s Aby here.
I lead the team whose job it is to build a community of the World’s Best Thinkers to solve the World’s Toughest Problems for BeenThereDoneThat. This is an ever evolving task flexed to our client’s needs but one that will always sit at the centre of our business. One big question for Team Community this year - what is a community?
According to ChatGPT (thought I’d check out what all the hype is about - sorry Siri, Alexa and my personal favourite, the good old hardback dictionary) it’s ‘a group of individuals who share a common interest, purpose or goal and who live, work or interact together in a specific geographic area or online.’ This feels fairly accurate (don’t worry, the dictionary looks too good on the bookshelf to be threatened). Over the past 7 years BeenThereDoneThat has built a community full of diverse people, with different interests, across different areas but the one uniting thing that brings them together is being ‘the best thinker’ in their field. This year we’re keen to delve a bit deeper into what it means for us personally and what it can provide us with.
For me the first thing that comes to mind (possibly because I can hear toddler giggles in the other room as I write this) is the parents my husband and I have met since becoming parents ourselves. Maybe they’re a WhatsApp contact via the local parenting group sending suggestions of wonderful activities to entertain an energetic toddler, people whose children our daughter has bonded with and we see on a weekly basis by the swings (if you’d like a list of London's top playgrounds, I am now an expert), or simply a comment I’ve come across on Little Ones Village (sleep tips are very high up the priorities!). The shared experiences we’re going through naturally give us a mutual support network, albeit primarily virtual in the world of modern day parenting.
And in the more traditional form of community, there’s the ladies I meet with for Book Club on the 1st Wednesday of each month to decide what we’ll read next. From Stephen King’s classic The Shining, to cult Eat, Pray, Love and best seller Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow - the selection of over 60 books we’ve now read together from various genres has very much sparked all of our curiosity and inspired us to open our minds to explore new things.
Despite our communities of experts being primarily anonymous, each one of them knows they’re a BeenThereDoneThat world’s best thinker - they’re part of something. When we send them a brief, they know 2 other people at the top of their game, somewhere out there in the world, are logged into our platform, solving the same problem and probably coming up with entirely different ideas, providing our clients with diversity of thought.
Fostering a sense of community for the people we work with is something we are continually striving for. That was the point of delving into this, to learn how we can build a greater community and in order to better something, you need to fully understand it.
We’ve recently launched our community exclusive newsletter - sharing updates and opening conversations between the group. And our newest initiative is Lunch and Learns - for our community, by our community. With topics ranging from GenZ, AI, Mental Health and Wellness. We hope these things will be a shared experience, that will spark curiosity and remind the people sat at the heart of our business that they are part of something!
As always, we are curious to hear what you think (Community is).
Aby Heath (Head of Community at BeenThereDoneThat)
