How to find and engage your community leaders with Alla Zhdan

[MUSIC] >> Hey, fellow community builders. It is Anna Maria here with yet another mapping ties conversation bringing you the real and unfiltered stories from the trenches. Today I am talking to Alashdan, a community consultant practitioner with over 10 years of community building work under her belt. We unpack her role at SoftServe when she has led the project manager's office, a center of excellence with a strong community of practice for hundreds of project managers across 15 office locations. And we went deep. I left with pages of notes because Alash shared all her secrets with us. We talked about the local leaders program, how she selected the leaders and engaged them. We also unpack the top contributors program she designed with a strong and notification flavor to it. Lastly, Alash shared some of the most successful formats that community brought to life. For example, the so-called hard cases night, a learning session to brainstorm solutions for real work related cases that were made anonymous. Trust me, you'll need a pen and paper for this one. [MUSIC] >> Hello, everyone. And hello, Alah. Thank you very much for joining me today. How have you been? >> I'm so excited and so happy to be here and to share my knowledge with the fellow community managers. >> Fantastic. That's what this next hour is all about, Alah. And let's kick us off by telling us a bit about yourself. Who are you? What do you do at the moment? And also how have you started carving this career path in community building? >> Okay. So I'm Alash Dan and I'm a community manager, the community architect, head of community. And now I'm working mainly as a community organizer of Women in the Malta data science. In Lviv, it's a local Ukrainian chapter. And also I'm a part of leadership team within the global women in the Malta data science. And I'm excited about that because when I worked in my previous company, I had a opportunity to collaborate and to meet a chapter from Paris. And we made an event together and after that I decided I wanted to be in the team and I want to do like things. That's why I stick to this project. And also I'm like a core organizer of Metaspelnotta. This is a community for community managers in Ukraine and I'm making a data set for community managers where you can find a lot of useful stuff. >> So you have your plate full, I think, safe to say, Alah. And also today we're not going to talk about any of these communities. We're going to talk about another community that you've managed in the past. So let's zoom in on to that community that we're exploring today. Maybe tell us what type of community was it and in which kind of organization were you building it? >> So I have been working on community of project managers which is internal community of practice within the company. So it's like corporate community. The goal of which is to unite and together and to like engage project managers within the particular company and also as a side practice is to engage potential project managers who could be a part of the company as well like both internal and external community. And this community I studied to work on in 2019 and I worked on it for four years and created a lot of cool opportunities for people to engage and to collaborate and to grow as project managers and as the people who can work on their personal brand because community management inside the companies is about the way you are visible, what you are doing and about what intake you can bring into the company and into the community. I love that. So we're going to get into the weeds of this in a second. But before we start deep diving into what was the community doing, maybe you can take us back to the purpose of this community. Why was it created? What problem was it solving and maybe we can look at the purpose or the problem it was solving for the organization generally and then for the members themselves? The structure of big corporate companies which are providing a lot of services and like managing projects or doing a lot of stuff is about bringing together people and it's about different departments that are dedicated to various job profiles and various directions. For instance, there's BA department like BOW, which is business analyst office or PDMO, which is product management office or QMO quality management office. I was a part of PMO project management office and project management office is a center of expertise and excellence within the company. So PMO cascades the approaches and best practices to the community and helps community, which is project managers to correctly and coolly and awesomely and in other all great ways to do their job and also to benefit within those communities because on the PMO side is to create all those opportunities for people to develop and for them to feel their relation to the main relation to the profession and understanding that they have this space where they can help each other while taking care of their teams and not forgetting of themselves. By the way, this is like the goal of the community that I have created. We had these three branches about helping, managing and taking care of teams and also about not forgetting of yourself, self-development. And these were the three tracks in which I worked as a community manager in this company. So tell us how big was the team, this PMO project management office, the center of excellence, how big was that team and then how many community members, actual project managers were you supporting or helping or bringing together in the community? Yeah, sure. So the PMO team is quite small. There were around 10 people, I think, Max in the team. And basically the team consists of competence managers who are top project managers, who knows everything about project management so they are sort of like promoted or like they selected to cascade all the best practices and to help project managers which are the community to do their job, to help with the projects and to deliver some of the services within the PMO. So we had like 10 people, the majority were competence managers, although there is a PMO director obviously who hired me to this role and I am a PMO community manager. Also there was a person who was responsible for operational things like functional office coordinator and also we had tech communicator now with him who helped with the slide tax, with some content that we need to share with the community in various formats. Yeah, so basically this is the whole team. Okay, that sounds awesome. And how many people you had in the community? How many project managers colleagues? When I joined the company in 2019 there were like around 250 project managers so around 250 members of the community if we can say that. And the number of project management team, this awesome people who worked on the projects within the company grew according to the demand of market and by the end of my service within this community which ended in four years there were like around, yeah, around 1000 of people. Wow. Okay, I assume all over the world, I think you mentioned you were present actually in certain countries, right? You were distributed working online. What can you tell us about that? So the company in which I worked is quite international. There are a lot of hard offices in various countries and offices in various countries and this is a cool because we could stuff people all over the world. But project managers basically when I joined the team were mainly in Ukraine. In Bulgaria and in Poland. So but with the time we also added Latin America because we staffed project managers there too in 2022 I think. But the first when I joined the team we had like our two project managers in Bellostock and also a lot of project managers in Ukraine. Basically we had 15 locations, 15 cities in which we had our project managers. 11 I think were in Ukraine and also three in Poland and one in Bulgaria. All right now let's get a bit closer to the meat and potatoes of your job. You already mentioned this three-pillar approach I guess if I could call it like that you mentioned this kind of helping or supporting each other how to manage your teams but also yourself development. What can you tell us about the community activities of formats and really we want to know just a general overview of what was the community doing? So when I joined the team of PMO we already had a format which called PMClan. PMClan is an offline activity where we have like a person who delivers some topic and all the community can participate in discussion and bring them some comments or suggestions and also challenge maybe somehow this topic and we made these events as I thought offline and they were like local ones. So for instance we have like Rotslav and we want to make event there so we made PMClan there and that's how I took this awesome format and started to implement it in various locations but also while I was doing it I discovered that I need support of local leaders because nobody knows community better than the community members. I'm Alhastan I'm a community manager and they are project managers and they live in various countries and various locations and nobody knows what they need better than they do. That's why I decided that while making these formats I need local leaders who will go to the community and find experts who can come to PMClan and bring the topics because when you are on location and when you have the same job profile it's easier for you to find the common language with the community. And that's why I initiated and created this PM community champions program and we started to search for people who can be the part of it and lucky we are that we already had some people who did the job who engaged local people without any ranks or without any I don't know huge title and huge like additive to their already like existing job profile within the company but they were interested in community that's why the first people to whom I came to discuss with them the PM conformant and to discuss with them the perspectives of it because maybe we need to do something else we need to extend the number of formats because you asked me about formats and I think this is important to add leaders, community leaders to this story and to this question so I started to search for leaders and first we met with those people who are already interested in this role and half of them agreed to be our PM community champions and other half said that they cannot be leaders because of some their reasons and they suggested some alternative people they suggested someone who could be awesome leader and then also we started this long process of searching leaders because we wanted to do voting process we wanted to first find volunteers and we wanted to give community and stakeholders vote for those people and that's how we could find true leaders interested in community building and by the end of the first year like the 2019 manager and the company we had 15 local leaders all right so let's let's stay here for a bit because I think in a lot of organizations these approach to find and engage different colleagues in these informal community leadership roles it's very common also we also know that it's not the easiest task it comes with its challenges right so maybe you can tell us a lot first what did it look like to to find these 15 people and and once you found them how were you working with them like what was their task and how were you supporting them so two questions in one and by the answer the second question from this part I can answer also about formats because you asked me about formats and I haven't forget this three questions one and the other okay yeah yeah so as I've told we already had the pool of people who already made some activities and were like cool and awesome leaders already so we asked them to join us they did that but then I started to search for other ones I think this is the most important thing for you is to create a page dedicated to this initiative that is like open for everyone to see not only your community but to for everyone we made our pages in conconflents and it was accessible for all the company because leadership and these opportunities are we think that we are doing them and everyone knows about them if we wrote one email or just sent some post within the community but that's not it and you need to be sure that not only your community but the company knows about the initiative because you can get your leaders from unexpected places because someone can see for instance the delivery director can see the opportunity and pass it to project manager because delivery directors are managers of project managers within the organization in which I work so you need to create clear and approachable page where you can describe the format list of the benefits that the person will get and also you can already add those people who are the leaders within the community who agreed already I asked the designer to make me to make me 15 small visuals which were dedicated to each city with the sites of the city it it looked almost like you know these used Starbucks used to make these cups with the Paris or yeah so they were almost alike but in the colors of the PMO and I use those illustrations afterwards in all the communications and presentations because they were quite easy to understand this is a well-estogged this is Ivana from Kipsk and this is Sofia from Bulgaria so I think that's a cool way to differentiate and give the understanding this is local leader from particular city so I made this page with the designs created specially for it and I put the all the 15 locations in the chart and where there were no leader I just put like we are looking for you join and contact ALA and that's how people can also see that there are a lot of opportunities and you can apply and you can contact me and that's how I found part of the local leaders because they just saw the page they saw the opportunity and they joined so it was awesome and this is the one part of the process you can like get your people because they saw the opportunity and they liked it but also there are different locations and you need to find the approach to your local people because not all approaches work for everyone that's why in particular locations I selected another way to find and to get those local leaders I basically made a meeting where I invited the whole local community and I prepared presentations about this initiative and about the person or people I'm looking for and I shared this idea on the meeting and it was so funny that on one of the calls like this I've talked about it and they people had poker faces, you know, they were like, okay, but then after each sessions like this, I sent to all the community form with only two questions. Would you like to be a community leader? Yes, no, maybe with a couple of it. It's an important moment because sometimes people don't want to be alone on this path, so they need some partner in crime. So the first question was like this. And the second question was, if not you then who? Give me the names. So I wasn't that meeting with all project managers with poker faces, but then when I send the form, I got the most answer rate ever. You know, everyone wanted to be a local leader and it was such a surprise for me because not always if your community is not excited on the spot by something they hated, don't seem like that. Give them opportunity to secretly or somehow with the forms with the feedback, give you understanding of what they want and how they want it. So I got this pool of awesome people from particular location and then I made the shortlist with them. I added their photos, I added link to their corporate profiles and I made non-anonymous. It's important form to for all the community plus stakeholders to vote for the person that they think would be the best leader. So I had this pool of people who answered yes, obviously or yes with the co-pilot. So this that's why this form was with a lot of people and then why form is not anonymous because this is a voting process and this is a big company. There were like 7,000 of people at the moment in the company. So you know you cannot track who will answer that. So the form was non-anonymous so I could track that the people, local people are voting. It's important and that's how I got this winner who became a local leader in this particular location. If there were no volunteers within some locations, I checked the second question and answered that I got a name. If not you then who? And that's how I got several like the same names in various forms like repetitive names and I came to those people after and privately and I told Agnieszka you were mentioned by the majority of the community as a potential leader maybe. With my help, with my support and this support of our stakeholders, you would like to consider that because people know you, you know them and they want to be with a cool leader. And that's how I also found some people. So basically you as a community manager can come to people who are already active and interested and leaders but without any extra, you know, name and also you can make this voting process and you can explain the opportunity and then give them option to select the person or you can try to reach those who are awesome potential candidates for this role. And that's how I got my list. Fabulous. Okay. Because this was so good and I take so many notes, I'm just going to do a short recap. Right. So these are the local leads for the 15 cities or locations where you were looking to expand the PM clan, the local, the local events of many events and also you were looking to have this kind of crew, this core team of people that would help you grow the community, give ideas, bring someone for months and just expand on the activities of the community. So the way you've kind of went through a very intentional process to find them. And the first people you went to were to the where the people that are already let's call them early adopters. These are the people that are very engaged already. They were already kind of informally doing that with the need to overall, very oriented social social learning, do us, they were showing initiative, etc. So you went to those people and you invite them in and made it official. Basically, that was step number one. The step number two was to design this one stop shop, one page where you would explain what this project is. Which are the cities in which cities do we have already leads in which cities we have open spots and you have published that over the place for folks to see and understand what this is all about. And here you've used your colleagues from marketing and Brian need to give that a specific look and feel, a specific image, make it very professional and very impactful. And you basically open this up to people to apply for it. So there was a survey and people could apply for it. In those locations where you had no application, you basically summoned everyone for a meeting where you had pitched the project and send this survey afterwards. Right. So this was a next straw layer off, let's say promotion or marketing or just making sure that they understand what this program is, what it is and who you're looking for and what are the benefits for them. And I really love that application form that has it was very simple, very basic two questions. Are you the person that is interested in this role? Yes, no, and maybe with a co-pilot. And if not you then who so they can propose someone else in their team. I thought that was really smart. For the locations where you had just a lot of applications, you you created a short list with their photos, their profiling and you open it up to a non anonymous vote for the whole organization to vote for the local community and for the local communities of the countries. There we go. And this is kind of how you found your volunteers and where there were no volunteers, you basically went to those recommendations from the forum from the second question. And that's where that came in very handy. When you then went to the person and you told them, hey, everyone really wants you in this role. They're like several people have mentioned you. Do you want to join the program? Yes or no? So I just want to see what that kind of together because I think that was a very intentional process and has allowed you to fill up the 15 find the 15 leaders for the 15 locations that you were looking for. And one thing that I want to ask out of here is and that's also a question that a lot of community builders internally are struggling with or sometimes like it's always something we think about. It's the the question of rewards. Usually these are informal rules. Sometimes they come with an added bonus to the salary, but most of the times they're not. So how did that work in your case? How were you rewarding these 15 leads or more? What were they gaining? What was in it for them besides obviously learning? How were you selling this thing to them? Yeah, so I wanted also to specify that if you are like you don't know how to find your leaders, you need to ask just the callers that are also local ones. For instance, L&D specialist in the particular location because the university, the company university was one of the stakeholders because obviously those events are connected to the learning process and the L&D department is interesting into making intake into those initiatives and projects and help with these events as well and help to work on it. So I for instance contacted the local L&D specialist and asked her first of all I asked her to give me the correct names of everyone because for instance I don't know the specifics of pronunciation in Polish language so the our first weekend was basically I had the list of all project managers within the location and I was reading the names and so her name and she corrected me because I'm not a Polish speaking person, I'm Ukrainian speaking person. So this was our first meeting but I think it was quite cool because I knew how to pronounce the names so L&D especially actually told me what her opinion about this search of leaders and she helped me also with this process so you can ask your stakeholders to give your advice on how to find your leaders and what is the best approach to your local community members so I think it's important to mention and ask for the last question. that you asked me about benefits for local leaders. We had obviously them personal brand development part because every local leader was announced in our internal workplace. We highlighted the intake of this person that they are our local leaders. And also we added them into our wrap up here a video about community achievements because they were and are one of the biggest achievements of the year because leaders are awesome and they helped to be this bridge between community and stakeholders. So we had this personal brand development scene and also in the company where I worked. There were promotion criteria that you should do and you should meet to get the promotion and one of them was to make intake into community development in general and also specifically to be leader. So only 15 people could cover this type of criteria but I think this is also important to mention because your intake matters. So if you are making intake and if you are leader you can get this plus two, your points that you should get to get the promotion. So this was the first thing. You should have this space to be a leader to get more benefits for your promotion. And also in 2020, I made a program like internal championship in the middle because we are project managers for those local leaders, the program that they can participate in and can get the prize. In the first year, we started with the offline, the big networking for the location that will be in this competition whose local leader will win this competition. But as we all know, in 2020, current line started or this COVID scene and we shifted it to the presence to all members of their local community. We had this awesome PMO boxes filled with awesome things for project managers. But to get those boxes, local leader needed to do tasks and activities and various challenges and get points for those challenges to get the victory. So the community leaders could benefit in various ways. First one is to get the additive to your promotion. The second is personal brand development because we cheer for our local leaders. The third was to get featured in our year in review. And also this opportunity in 2020 to win prizes for all people in this location for all project managers. And we had like six categories in which those local leaders should gain the points. And we had one location who was the best and we made and we packed our whole PMO team. We gathered at my home. We packed those PMO boxes and actually the director of PMO, he put stickers on the boxes and other member of the team packed a put candies in those boxes and our technical communicator, she signed all the postcards manually. It was quite a job. She had to sign 50 postcards. So you could also get this PMO box in the end of the year. In 2021, I changed the approach to this championship. Yeah, so it became better. So so many things to unpack you. I love it. They will open a lot of threads. But I just before closing this one with the local leads, local hub leads, can you tell us maybe one or two examples of those six categories? Like give us an example of a challenge of something that they had to do just so that we can imagine what that looked like. Sure. Ellen D. Specialist, who was a stakeholder, helped me to organize these events for community. And on the side of Ellen D. Specialist was to create this registration form and also the form to give a feedback. And all the community members could rate the session, the topic of the session from zero to five and also leave their feedback. So I've counted those points. And actually the five points was the highest rank. So I counted the internal number of points within their particular event. And that's how we could get the first number because on the side of local leader was to find the expert and to bring this topic to the audience. So it was important for us to understand whether community liked the topic or not. And the second criteria that I picked was their attendee rate. So not only the points matter, but also I like this phrase about ballet that you should count not the number of people who bought the ticket to your performance. But you should count the number of people who stayed before the first pause and who stayed till the end of the show. The same I think about community management than about events here. So I've had several numbers. I had number of registrations and I had a number of people who joined and who stayed till the end. And that's how I made the second section of those points for local leaders. And also one of the way that local leaders could get points was to add local people to the talent page. We had this PM talent page where you can add local people who are interested in delivering some topics or who can write an article or who could be a potential blogger. So you add, you contact them and they are aware that you put them in this chart. So you add the names or name, the corporate email, and also the list of the topics that they are ready to speak about. And you also add whether they can speak about them locally or whether they are open to go or to some other location or maybe deliver them online. And also maybe that they have some podcasting or some blogging experience as well. And I counted the number of people added by local leader from the particular location. And also this list was used by the stakeholders, Ellen this specialist and the char marketing specialist. So it was beneficial both for their local community and for the company in general. These are three examples of the way I counted the points. And as a benefit of this championship, those people who like one, I applied them for internal awards with a broad statement, why are they so awesome and why they deserve to get the award. And I went to their managers to talk about these applications and to ask them to make it stronger and to be there for them to be aware that I'm going to apply their project managers. So it was important. And yeah, actually I have been doing that for three years in the road to apply the best local leaders and two of them won in one year. So I'm so proud of that because I highlighted their achievements and showed the whole company that they were doing awesome things within the PMO and the community. All right. So we already have a very nice list of ways in which you were rewarding your leader and engaging them and making sure that they have a great time while doing that. So let's go a little deeper when it comes to the actual-- maybe we go back to the formats because I know that you mentioned that you've really worked together with the leaders and they helped you identify the type of formats or activities that the community should be doing. I think you mentioned maybe three formats, correct me if I'm wrong. So we're now at the level of PMs. people, community members, what were they doing, how were they engaging and what type of events, what opportunities did they had? To tell the truth, I just wanted to also add that those events that we created were connected with the idea of local leaders. So I had those people, those awesome 15 people, and I gathered them to ask about what should we do, what formats should we do for project managers, because obviously we could not do offline when every one went to online in the COVID times. So I had to redesign the whole concept because we started the year, awesomely, we started to do these local events and they were all great and to de-rate was awesome. But then with the current time we just had to move on to the online mode and everyone created and designed online events so you should stand out. That's why I gathered the local leaders and I asked them about the formats. I showed them what I already designed and got and they were like, "Oh, that's awesome, but why should I go there?" You need to add value because I'm a project manager, I'm a busy person and I have already a lot on my plate and I need to be awesome and standing out for me to go there. So I'll do your homework and bring us something else and that's how I was the help of local leaders managed to create three new formats which answered the goals of community because they needed things within those three tracks that I've shared earlier. So they needed something like the platform where they can share the experience in lecture format where they can test their hypothesis or bring their topics before going to major big conference outside the company because we encourage our community members to go and apply to various conferences within their crane and Europe and also to apply to the awards and we help them with that and we supported them on those events physically to go in there and to make content with them and post that content on social media and before to help them define the best topic that can discover their potential and talent and can show how awesome they are as a project managers. So the first format was like lecture format it was transformative from PM Klan but we had this agenda and format and we had from one to three experts who can perform on particular topic but they were also localized so local leaders helped to organize them sometimes they moderated those events so it was quite cool. The second format was hard cases night and we started to gather hard cases from the life of project managers and we wanted to make sessions where you can join and you can listen to other persons hard case which is totally anonymous and totally like clean in this sense so nobody can understand whose case is this. So hard means like challenging a difficult case. Yeah yeah and there were different cases so we made this global event where I found five moderators some of them were local leaders some of them were teammates of fellow project managers of those leaders and they actually had those five cases which were gathered from the community anonymous ones how we got those cases. There was a template that you can add the text and also add how you solve the case and we invited people to this hard cases night and actually this was the event when we had like 500 people 100 came to this event so it was quite cool because it was in English it was global and I was looking at a lot of people joining and I needed to make those zoom rooms and I was like challenging on how to do that in the best way because people continue to join. And my case for you. Yeah but manageable you know there's nothing impossible for community manager. Yeah so we had this approach when we had five breakout rooms with a moderator in each who presents the case without giving the solution then people brainstorm and get the moderator gathers the insights and the way people would solve this case and then the moderator presents how it was really solved or not solved and then we change moderators between breakout rooms so within the one hour our community could work and could check three various cases with the three different moderators. So this was the second format and actually local leaders took it for their teams so they are not only may we're making them for local project managers but also they took it and cascaded it to their team so they made local one team hard cases nights and this format was quite cool and decarsed a lot of cases and this format was one of the most favorite ones among project managers so this was the second one and the third one was PM games. I don't know whether you aware of this tool that is called "Joraparty Labs" come this is a website which quite intuitively easy a blue one if you think about "Joraparty Labs" this is a blue one and you can add questions and answers there and you can put them in various categories so basically we started to make our games based on the PMBOK and the parts of expertise that project managers should know to be a great professional like procurement management, HR management, time management, everything that were like according to the previous PMBOK. Now PMBOK is different so the categories could be could be different but when we made those PM games we had like strict topics and we had experts who wrote questions and answers to each of these topics that were in different categories and each question was various number of points this is basically I'm trying to explain the "Joraparty Labs" but actually that was a game where you should answer the questions and if you are quick if you are know the correct answers within 30 seconds if you know you're seeing you can get the points and I got from stakeholders prizes for these games like mentoring with the cool mentors within the company coaching sessions and also like discounts to certifications for project managers so we had cool prizes and each game was dedicated to a particular topic and we had like three winners who could get those prizes three formats lecture hard cases and games fantastic thank you so much for sharing and also so much so into detail because I think myself and I'm taking by the way so many notes I'm at my third page already of notes and I think that I'll listen as well can really imagine what that looked like and also get a glimpse into how you facilitate it and put those things together one last thing when it comes to the community before we close that up because we're all well we're at time you already mentioned this I think here and there in everything you've shared so far but I know that you had something called the top contributors program so a lot of the things that you mentioned so far was kind of I think it was falling into that but can you give us an overview of what that top contributor program was because I think that was aimed at anyone in the community so anyone in the community could actually become a top contributor also as a way of rewarding the PM members what can you share there so we had this criteria that you should meet to get promoted and you should make intake into community and actually the line within this platform where you get promotion and you track your success there was the only one that like make intake into PMO community and I added link to this one sentence which contained the whole description of all opportunities that you can do within the community to cover this criteria so you can not only be a speaker you can be a mentor you can be a trainer you can be a blogger you can write articles because you can become this expert and make these questions for the PM games. You can also participate in initiatives that are occasional that are created by competence managers because they need some people like focus groups to do some stuff and they need particular people of level three or level four who can help to understand how this tool of this approach could work for project managers because competence managers were working on that for facilitating and making the processes better for project managers. That's why there were a lot of opportunities and within each of those opportunities we were looking for top contributors. For instance, a person who, according to the information passed from Ellen Dispecialis who gathered these points and marks and feedback, they had their own system how they track the best performance, the performers. I got from them the best trainers for instance because I'm not the owner of this initiative and this project but this is also part of community. When you are a trainer, you are making your intake into the community and I'm collaborating with a learning department to be aware of what's going on and I get from them the information who among project managers was the best trainer this year. Also we have the mentoring program and I'm also not owner of this program but I collaborate with the owner of it and with a partner who is responsible for mentors and I ask the person who is working there. Please give me a list of top three project managers who were the best mentors within the year because obviously mentoring program is to highlight all people in the company so they make those monthly and quarterly posts about top mentors but these are top mentors within the whole company and I need my people. I need project managers so I go to this specialist and this associate within the company who can give me this information so I get the top mentors and also I have my local leaders and I have this championship and I know who are the best and who perform the best within the particular year and I also add them to this list of top contributors and also I have stakeholders and they have initiatives and projects that I'm not totally aware of because they are technical and because I should not be aware of them. This is a job of competence managers and they also involve project managers and I ask stakeholders please give me names of the people who contributed the most within the year to you who make this awesome intake into the projects that you are dedicated to. Is there educational projects for project managers or maybe some competency people oriented stuff or maybe a agile oriented direction so I've asked my stakeholders to give me those people and also I've checked who are writing articles externally among the community and I wanted not only in Carzos people who internally created cases or case studies or articles or some materials for project managers. I wanted also to highlight people who went externally and promoted the expertise and promoted this profession. So I also added them. So I had both internal writers and external ones and that's how I got my list of people and they were like approximately 50 people per year who had in this list of top contributors and who could get this PMO box. Actually we had not only PMO box like the physical present for them but also digital one. So the first part I sent to all those people email with explanation why they were so awesome and what intake they actually made into PMO community and these emails were personal and like all crafted separately for each top contributor and I added the link to promo code for the you can use Amazon or maybe some local shop that you can use to make a digital present because I'm into digital presents you know because we all have mags and cups and t-shirts let's let's face it. Yeah so the first part of this present was digital with sincere explanation and thank you for the intake and with a small like hint that they will get soon and great present like the parcel and we sent those parcels to Bulgaria and to Poland and within Ukraine so I have the photo on my social media where I'm like among those parcels like a Godzilla in the city you know it's the examples is so so true so yeah. This was absolutely stunning thank you very much for all the great ideas that you've shared into how you found your volunteers how you kept them how you'd wear them how you nurture them so thank you very much and the last question I'll offer everyone here that is looking to upscale I'm curious what are some skills or maybe mindsets that have helped you personally to be so successful in this role now for for years you've been doing this now for a while any skills or mindsets that have proven very useful for you and your work. I think that the most important is to love people and because not everyone wants and has this inside them to repeat again and again to be patient to generally want to help someone because you've told that again and again and you repeated that but you like to do that because you want people to benefit from their community and you want to make them know what is going on and what are awesome opportunities you have and what cool things are happening this is a first thing to love people the second one is you should know your community you can have a lot of hypothesis you can even be if you are a former project manager you can know what is going on but you need to ask your people what they want you need to keep your hand on pulse all the time and be aware of what's going on it's happening and change everything I've changed the processes I've changed formats because people need something fresh people need something cool people get used to something so you need to improve your formats and improve the things you are doing even if they work in perfectly be hungry to that it's extremely important and the third scene I think is to study not only community management according to research that we made within Ukrainian community managers with us and we got replies for over 150 I think people they think that project management skills actually are more important for community managers than everything else so learn where is things learn marketing learn project management learn event management this is something that could make you better community manager for sure this was absolutely fabulous I appreciate so much the generosity with which you share your experience so far if someone wants to reach out to you and connect and grab a coffee or tap into your brain where can they do that I'm all the time on LinkedIn so I'll be glad to connect with people there so yeah let's let's connect and let's talk about community management I'll wish you great rest of the day and we'll chat soon thank you very much