by: Chris Troksa
Barbara Silverstone, an attorney with decade of non-profit experience, provides her insights
What is your definition of Product Community?
I see the product community is a community of association leaders who come together to explore ways to enhance and eventually monetize membership engagement. The product community cohorts will give leaders the opportunity to learn creative ways to grow and diversify revenue. All associations, regardless of their size or mission, face many of the same problems including member recruitment, retention, and engagement, offering educational material, and the best way to share information with members. By learning new ideas of what members want, participants will learn how to develop their markets based on understanding members and expanding on ideas.
Aside from the cohorts, I see the Product Community as a place for leaders to share best practices and ways to solve specific challenges. For example, the association design circle coffees are informal gatherings of association leaders who can share their experiences and advice on specific challenges or share their thoughts on more general issues facing associations today.
How do you define product and innovation?
A product is anything of value to an association. This can include work done to advance its mission or to meet the needs of its members, including targeted advocacy, publications, or other educational material. Innovation is change needed to meet current needs. It takes courage to innovate, to look beyond the ways things have always been done, to take a good look at what products are working for the association and what innovation is needed for it to grow and continue to benefit, and be indispensable to, its members.
This is the second post of an interview with Barbara. Here is part one.