Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Welcome to Rework, a podcast by 37signals about the better way to work and run your business. I'm your host, Kimberly Rhodes. And this week, we're talking all about building a community around your business or product. We recently did this at 37signals and have a group of Basecamp enthusiasts and users who are part of a Basecamp community.
community. Here to talk about that group and what we've learned from doing it and how you might set up something similar for yourself are two people from our customer support team, Marissa Dawson and Ashley Bowie. You guys, welcome to the podcast. Before we get started with our topic, you guys do a little intro. Marissa, start with you. Tell me how long you've been with the company and then Ashley will go to you.
My name is Marissa. I live in Austin, Texas, and I joined 37 Signals in February of 2011. So just about ready to start my 14th year. My God. Which is amazing. I love it. I'm so happy to be here. I started out on the support team, and I'm now currently one of the customer support managers on the team. And, you know, I'm here to talk about the community. I helped start that up with one of our other colleagues.
Perfect. And Ashley, you've also been around for a while and now you head up the community. Tell us a little bit about your, your start and tenure at Basecamp. Yeah. I'm coming on year eight, so not quite at 13, 14, but I will, I will get there with you. And I am currently a customer engagement specialist. So slightly different role than when we started or when I started it on the support team. So it's really more about initiatives to help
engage customers in any ways. And so the community is just such a prime example of that. We'll get into it. Okay, amazing. And you might recognize Ashley, who co-hosts some of our live office hours sessions with us as well. So before we talk about the community now, Ashley, I'll have you take that portion. Marissa, let's go back to the beginning of when the community started and why we decided to do something like this, because I actually don't even know the origin story.
Yeah, so a community for me is something that I had thought about for a really long time. We just didn't really have the bandwidth for years and years and years to kind of
get that started and do that. I'll kind of rewind even further. In January of 2010, 37 Signals introduced 37 Answers. And 37 Answers was basically like a Q&A forum where customers would ask a question, but anyone could answer it. That might be somebody from 37 Signals. That might just be another person. I remember once the questions were answered, there was a cute little answered stamp that would be next to the
the question that somebody from 37 Signals would tag it if the question was answered. That had always stuck with me because that was around and I think we got rid of it
or retired it, I should say, in 2013, maybe. So I got to work with that for a couple of years. And I just really liked it. It was a cool place to see customers, a cool place for me, who at that time was still like super new to like maybe find an answer. Maybe a customer wrote in, but I could find the answer on 37 Answers instead, you know? So I really loved that. And that 37 Answers was in the back of my mind, basically, since we retired it.
We've kind of talked about it. Chase, who's our head of support, we talked about it over the years. Again, didn't have the bandwidth to really do it. Then sometime probably in 2020 or so, one of our customers was basically using Basecamp as like a community forum for...
their company, they shout out to Decent Espresso. They basically invite people to their Basecamp account to show them how to use their espresso machines or whatnot, which was super neat. And so I kind of thought, oh, wow, yeah, like they're using Basecamp for their community. Like,
Maybe we can do it. So we started thinking about how we could do it. And at that point in time, we were a little bit less reactive with customers and had time to do other project work. So we thought, let's go ahead and see if we can start a community up in Basecamp. And so we really started trying, I think, and putting things together in December, October.
of 2021. Started thinking about the ideas. Then February 2022, got super serious about it. Took about three months to put the ideas out there, to seed the account with the information that we needed, and then eventually invited people to the account, some like beta testers, I guess you could say, in May.
Okay, so this is a fun fact. I don't know if you guys actually know this, but I was a Basecamp user at the time the community started, and I was one of those beta testers. I was one of the original small group that became part of that community.
account. I was kind of a lurker all of that time until I actually joined the company. Yeah, that's super cool. I think a lot of the community members are lurkers, even like today, just a great place to scroll through and check out what's happening and lurk around and see what people are using Basecamp for.
So Ashley, kind of talk us through what the community looks like. Marissa mentioned it is a Basecamp project or it's in Basecamp, but tell me if someone were going to start a similar community project, like what kind of information is being shared?
how many people are in it. Give me the lowdown of the current Basecamp community. Yeah. I think one of the best things about the community and just generally all Basecamp users is that they're so creative with what they do and how they do it. So if you and I both work at our different marketing agencies, our approach to accomplishing very similar work is
could be wildly different. So it really is like a wonderful place to see what those examples look like, as there's a space called Inspiration Exchange, where people will post like, you know what, this is really cool. I did something pretty interesting, and I think you all would like it. And the response is generally delightful. And the other side of the response is,
just curious. So you end up with a lot of people who are interested in sharing or asking questions about how they can accomplish something. Have you ever done this? Is this a possibility? How would you approach this situation? And then as often as we can, we try to get people from the 37signals team to share not only just as much as possible, but columns is what they used to be called. This one feature is called card table now. It is our take on a Kanban board. When Jason freed our
CEO posted that the response was humongous. Marissa, do you remember that? I do. The response was very large. It's a big deal. It's a big deal. Anytime Jason wants to be in the community, same with David or even Brian, like hearing from a signal is a big deal over there. So I think that's probably one of the, one of the nicer features for the people who have been with Basecamp for like 20 years is
So they get something other than just like always giving. And I think just the general closeness that you can generate from it. A lot of people have no way to contact anyone's CEO. They're like deliberately far apart, like very far removed. So the fact that we are welcoming folks into being near is just a different style than what you typically see today.
Okay. So I'm curious about how you see your role in the community because when I observe it, as I poke in and out of the community, it seems like it's kind of self-managed a lot. Tell me your thoughts about when you're providing information, when you're jumping in versus letting people in the community answer each other's questions. Like, how do you kind of see your role in that?
Yeah, I think event hosting is probably the closest thing you can make it. Where we are inviting people in, we're welcoming them in. We might offer them a...
virtual, you know, canapé or something to be able to say, this is what's here. Please enjoy. Also, if you feel like making something, making a speech for everyone else, we'd love to hear it. So a good part of it is just like people are sharing out of their own willingness. But as much as we can, fostering that conversation is
When to comment and when not to comment is a situation, case-by-case basis kind of a thing. Because I really want other people to be able to get a chance to respond, but you also don't want someone to go unnoticed. That doesn't feel great. So it's a fine line. Yeah. Marissa, anything to add? No, I think that one of the goals for the community was to create a safe and a fun space for customers to trade secrets and their workarounds to learn from each other.
and also a place for us at 37 Signals to gain knowledge about what customers might like and dislike in sort of like almost a jobs to be done fashion. So as far as like how much we comment or boost them or answer is kind of how Ashley mentioned. We do our best there, but a lot of times, sometimes the community members don't even want to hear from us. They would rather hear from somebody who works in their same industry. So we kind of wait for somebody to chime in there.
So this is kind of an origin story question, but Ashley, of course, feel free to jump in as well.
I would imagine when starting something like this, you have to really be open to how it's going to go. Not knowing exactly you're putting all of these people together in a room, like not knowing exactly what that's going to look like. Was there anything you guys were nervous about when starting something like this from scratch? So one of my favorite parts about working at 37signals is that we're not really afraid to try something and to know that even
even if it fails or is kind of a bust that like there's probably, you know, there's something to be learned from that. And it's not necessarily going to be taken as a failure if it doesn't work out. So I kept all of that in my back pocket and didn't get too, too many nerves about starting it. I just kind of thought this will either be like super cool, which I think it will be, or like, you know, it'll just be all right. And while we tried, you know, that sort of a feeling.
But it has grown to, I guess it's so we're coming up on three years and we have, I think, about 2,100 users or community members in there, basically. But yeah, I wasn't too, too nervous to start. I just thought of it as more of an experiment type thing. And then, Ashley, tell me a little bit about the community now. I know since you've jumped in as being...
in charge of it. You've been wanting to reorganize some things. Kind of tell me what your like new vision is for the community. Yeah, it comes from having countless
upwards of like 500 calls with individual people and hearing how they are using Basecamp and knowing that it's always very unique when they invite them into the community, they want to be able to just find things as quickly as possible. So there's, there'll be some light remapping, but most of it is just like very solid, like a very, very solid foundation. I just want to make it a little bit easier for folks to be like, you know what? I do work in the restaurant industry.
And here are all the examples because they bubble up naturally. But I think we just need to make that like, you know, organic growing into a more tailored bouquet so that they can find it. My metaphor is today. Yeah.
But just so that they can get in and get out if that's what they need to do. But it's so different from some of the original members because they are like dedicated to being in that space and assisting. They get so much from helping. I have a question. How many people were really a part of that core group at the beginning? I want to say like eight to ten. I would consider like a really core. I wasn't in that group. Group.
There's some honorable mentions in there for sure, but I think that we had about, we have probably like 10, maybe even like a dozen, like, I mean, and they're still around. At least half of them are still very, very active in the community as well. But I think the folks that we kind of, you know, invited in before we officially, officially launched the community, yeah.
are a large part of why the community is as successful as it is. So if they're listening, I truly appreciate them. And another favorite part of my job is our customers. I say that to everybody as well. We're really lucky to have such incredibly thoughtful, intentional, and kind customers.
who just generally want to help each other. So it's nice to be a part of that. So I'm really grateful to the folks who have been around in the community since the beginning. Okay, I said I was in there from the beginning, but I totally lied because I was there when there was maybe like a couple, maybe 200 people, like the first big group. An early adopter. Yeah, that was probably like when we officially...
launched it. It really, we started inviting people, like I said, I think in May of 2022, but then launched it like after that, kind of after the summer officially to kind of see how it would go. Yeah. Ashley, go ahead. It's a question for you, Kimberly. As a early adopter of this group, do you also have a hat?
I actually don't have a hat, Kimberly. We must correct this. I do not have a Basecamp community hat. For those of you who are listening and not watching, Marissa has a Basecamp community hat. And I feel like I need to get one of those. We'll have to send you one. We don't want you to be left out. So you guys tell me this, because I can imagine someone who's listening who has their own product or service or business might be thinking like, what are the things I should...
consider if I want to start something like this? Are there things that we've learned from like, oh, we should never do that again? Like that was a mistake. Are there anything like that that you can share that maybe we've learned over time about how the Basecamp community works? I have an important thing to start with that really just harkens back to what was already said, and it's about the culture of it. And if you start with a basis of
It's okay to try things. And it makes it literally significantly easier to have fewer nerves about what it is you want to try. As long as you kind of figure out what, what good measurement looks like. And that can truly just be qualitative or like a feeling more than anything else, whatever the company values, however, you can kind of prove that something is working. And again, it could just be a feeling. I think that is an important place to start.
Definitely agree with that. I don't think that there's anything along the way that we were like, oh, we wouldn't do that again or we wouldn't try it. We've definitely kind of removed some things that we've we tried at the beginning that maybe just didn't get, you know, that much attention.
They weren't worth like the effort that we were putting into it. We didn't really think that folks had liked that. We did put out some surveys a couple of times and asked folks, you know, hey, what are your favorite parts? Hey, what are your least favorite parts? That type of thing. And kind of chose some things to maybe remove from there. But there's literally nothing I can think of where we're like, we won't do that again. Okay. Is there anything that we did well that you would recommend if someone's going to start something like this again, you'd be like, yes, you absolutely should do this.
In that case, I'm going to say yes. What I think that we did do very well is to seed the Basecamp account or the community before inviting people in. And that included things like already including different messages with tips, writing out our community guidelines, creating a path to invite users into the account, how we would do that,
like a little survey link and then we would you know manually invite people in with a you know hey you're just gonna follow this project here and you know introduce yourself um that was a big thing we kind of created we did create like a few fake users where that gave introductions that weren't real people at first so you could kind of see what we were looking for um there and you know different folders and docs and files and things that people could already find so we weren't just
tossing brand new, what we hope to be long-term community members into an account with nothing in it or just, you know, nothing there. So I think that that was something that we did do well and we did very intentionally. And it's why the success at the beginning, I think, was pretty strong. One of the reasons why. What do people say are some of their favorite parts?
I know that there's a new survey going on now that Ashley could probably touch on recently, but I would say probably mainly just hearing from other members or about like, you know, workarounds or tips that they can use and hearing from a signal. If a signal answers a question or boosts, that's fun. Also being able to be involved in beta testing, which we've grabbed some beta testers for the card table, AKA columns at that time to test it, to see what they thought, you know, being involved in,
Ashley can probably say a little bit more. No, those are the main ones being involved. And it just is a little bit different for each person because for someone who is just, you know, one of the 10 or the several hundred, those people, they have given a lot already in the past few years. And so what they get back, we want it to be like really high value for them. So
As long as we are making sure that we are rewarding the people for collaborating and joining and just existing, then we have the people who are just they need something really quickly. And then we also have the people who have a little bit more time to give and to kind of see how they can assist us.
It's like kind of a really delightful, like symbiotic relationship. I mean, I feel like everyone just like in life likes to feel like they're a part of something. Like community is such a, like if you look at the blue zones, people that live to be 100, it's like having a community as part of that. And even if it's related to a work tool, I think it's nice to give people space
an option if they want to opt in. Like we've created this group of people, like-minded people who are all using the same tool you're using. I think it's just kind of a nice option as a company.
I think it's great. And like I said, the people there that are amazing. So, I mean, I encourage every customer to join the community as even a spot to lurk in the evenings, whatever lurkers are welcome. You can learn all kinds of fun stuff as you're scrolling through like that you may not have thought of to use. So yeah, highly encouraged.
Amazing. Well, if you are a Basecamp customer, you can find that at Basecamp.com slash community. And Ashley will be the one to, Ashley or Robert, I guess, to welcome you into that Basecamp group. So check that out. Until then, Rework is production of 37 Signals. You can find show notes and transcripts on our website at 37signals.com slash podcast. Full video episodes are on YouTube. And if you have a question for Jason or David...
or our community team here. You can leave us a voicemail at 708-628-7850. You can also text that number or send us an email to rework at 37signals.com. Boom. Thanks, ladies.