October 10, 2024 • 52 mins
Here are the show notes based on the transcript:
Show Notes: Building Community with Rosie Sherry
In this episode, Nola Simon interviews Rosie Sherry, a community expert and founder of Ministry of Testing and Rosieland.
Key Topics:
- Rosie's journey into community building, starting with local tech meetups in Brighton
- The growth of Ministry of Testing from a small project to a global community
- Challenges and opportunities in running in-person conferences post-pandemic
- Creating inclusive spaces for introverts and neurodivergent individuals at events
- The impact of AI on online communities and content moderation
- Building custom community platforms vs. relying on social media
- The importance of focusing on community transformation rather than just conversations
- Addressing the global loneliness epidemic through intentional, small-scale connections
- The benefits of homeschooling and building local support networks
Highlights:
- Ministry of Testing's approach to conferences, including the unique "99-second talks" feature
- The 80/20 rule of community: 20% conversations, 80% other valuable activities
- Creating custom-built community platforms to own data and foster genuine connections
- The challenges of quantifying community ROI and the importance of organic growth
- Rosie's perspective on work-from-home policies and the potential discrimination in forced return-to-office mandates
Notable Quotes:
"Why should all the social networks have all the fun?" - Rosie Sherry on building custom community platforms
"We have to find ways to properly connect one-to-one with people and have conversations and not rely on this spamming of groups or thinking like, you know, getting the attention or getting the virality is going to all of a sudden help our loneliness. It doesn't." - Rosie Sherry on addressing loneliness
Resources Mentioned:
- Ministry of Testing (website)
- Rosieland (website)
- TestBash conference
Rosie Sherry - Ministry of Testing | LinkedIn
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Nola Simon (00:02):
Thank you so much for joining me.
I'm Nola Simon.
I'm the host of HighwayRemote Center of Excellence.
Say that three times fast.
Today we have a guest from the UK.
Where exactly are you from, Rosie?
Rosie Sherry (00:16):
I'm in Brighton in the UK, the south coast.
Nola Simon (00:18):
Ah, I'm familiar with the beaches.
I haven't been there,but I've heard of them.
Anyways, our guest is Rosie Sherry, andshe is an expert in all things community.
She started ministry andtesting, what, back in 2007?
And so that has grown to itscommunity of thousands of users, and
(00:40):
it brings in millions of dollars.
And in addition, she also runs anothercommunity called Rosyland, which is
dedicated to all things community.
So Rosie, when I was exploringcommunities, and I keep continuing
to explore communities becauseI haven't figured it out myself.
She was the expert thatI came across online.
Literally, I think it wasmore Twitter initially.
(01:02):
And then more linked in now.
But she has a way of explainingcommunity that nobody else does, I find.
And I found her approach really relatable.
You started ministry testing becauseyou had 2 kids at home and it was a way
that you could start a business, right?
Did I get that correct?
Rosie Sherry (01:23):
Yeah.
Nola Simon (01:23):
And it's grown since then.
And recently you had to step back.
You had initially headed itoff to a CEO and then recently
you stepped back in as CEO.
Is that correct?
Rosie Sherry (01:33):
Yeah.
Nola Simon (01:34):
So could you tell us more about your journey with
community and where that started?
Rosie Sherry (01:41):
Yeah, so I guess I've been in tech since around 2000 the year
2000, which is a bit scary to, to sayI started off as a software tester.
I got like my first job as a softwaretester, hence ministry testing that
came along probably seven years later.
But as I was working in tech I startedgoing to local meetups in Brighton it
(02:05):
was quite an active geeky type scene andI was just inspired about all the things
that were happening, and I stumbledacross the idea of community, and I
enjoyed the local community aspect andas the web was grown, it was like web 2.
0 era.
For me there was like a lot of kindof excitement around all of that.
(02:27):
And yeah, mostly once I discoveredthe idea of community, I could,
I was like, that became my thing.
I just couldn't forget.
What community, the idea of communityto me, it just stuck with me and I've
never been able to let it go since.
So since I've discovered that and likecommunity has always been like how I start
(02:50):
things and, or how I think about things.
And I started a local meetup.
It was a woman in tech.
It was a meetup.
called Brighton Girl Geek Dinners andthat was like my first step into like
actually doing community things and thatkind of opened my eyes to how special
(03:15):
community can be and like I ran it forprobably a couple of years, and it was
like, always fully booked out, and I metloads of people and, still in contact
with many of them even like 20 yearson, and it's that was I guess as a
introverted style person that I am, thatwas like a real kind of eye opener for me.
(03:35):
Yeah, after that I was looking foran excuse to apply community to the
ideas I had or the work I wanted to do.
And at that time as well, therewere like no community jobs really.
It just wasn't, I think.
Nola Simon (03:48):
Yeah, it was like a job that came later.
This is the type of job that,when you were a kid, you didn't
imagine it could be a real job.
Rosie Sherry (03:54):
Yeah.
I remember seeing like jobads at the time, like for
Yelp and community managers.
So there were a few startups that kindof had started to adopt that role,
that me and Brighton, those jobs in SanFrancisco was like never going to happen.
Nola Simon (04:08):
I know how that feels.
I'm from Canada.
Nothing ever interestingever happens in Canada.
Rosie Sherry (04:13):
Yeah, so I just was always looking for opportunities
to do my own community thing.
I ran a co working space for a while andthen I also decided to start ministry
of testing because I felt like therecould, there should be a better community
for software testers, which at thetime there wasn't really much at all.
(04:33):
Nothing that I really approved of.
So I used it as an excusejust to start something.
I had no real idea that it would turninto something, but it was just something
I wanted to try, play with, see whereit goes and yeah, I guess that's what,
partly what I'm, I've discovered thatI'm good at is just I just do stuff
and then figure stuff out and eithersuffer the consequences or suffer with
(04:58):
the success along the way as well.
Nola Simon (05:00):
Yeah, no, that's very interesting.
So in terms of administrativetesting that's the part of your
work that I actually don't relateto at all because I don't have that
kind of software background at all.
So what's the purpose of community?
It's to share expertise and youoffer courses as well, right?
Rosie Sherry (05:16):
Yeah, so I would call it like a community of practice.
So it's essentially for software testingprofessionals or quality assurance
engineers, they go by a few names.
And it's a space to gather and tohopefully learn more and advance.
People's careers and we do conferences.
(05:40):
So at the moment we do oneconference a year in Brighton.
Nola Simon (05:46):
Yes, you just did that though right?
Yeah, because I've seen things onlinepeople really complimenting, you know
how engaging it was and just appreciatingthe, like the in person touch.
So that's an interesting aspect Ofcommunity, because we got away from
it, obviously, during the pandemic.
So are people reallyexcited about in person?
(06:07):
Do you think that's.
And aspect of communitythat's going to develop.
Rosie Sherry (06:12):
I think so.
And I think so pre pandemic we, it wasa bit crazy to be honest, but we had
as ministry of testing grew we had nineconferences across the world in the, in
2019 which feels like really crazy now.
But post pandemic we've gone back downto just one conference and the idea
(06:36):
at the moment is just to have that oneconference a year and put much more
effort into it and hopefully make itbigger than what it's been before.
Is there an appetite for it, like 100%?
It's like people, yeah,I think people need it.
I don't think they're realising howmuch they need it until they show up.
(06:58):
And it's once they show up that they'relike, ah, this is exactly what I needed,
this is like the break I needed from work,or this is just like reconnecting with
people, or getting to meet people in reallife that they've connected with online.
And yeah, I think we'vejust forgotten that.
(07:18):
And, partly, a big part of that is thepandemic, but when people go, they,
they don't regret going in my opinion,especially this past conference, which
I think we've leveled up the experienceand got amazing feedback from it.
And it was a product manager who attendedAnd she shared on LinkedIn, I can't
(07:39):
remember her name off the top of my head,but she was sharing on LinkedIn how, just
like, how amazing it felt and how jealousof FOMO she had that software testers had
this space to gather and she didn't feellike The product managers had that same
kind of space with that community feel.
Where everyone's literallysupporting each other.
(08:01):
And the speakers havegrown up in the community.
Nola Simon (08:05):
Oh, so you bring in people who are actually members of
the community to actually speak.
Rosie Sherry (08:10):
That's cool.
Yeah, like, all our effort is like,all our kind of I guess you, you
call it marketing effort, but all oureffort is focused on the community and
uplifting the community and trying toget them to publish their first article.
Or do their first talk or, speakat a conference or, all our
effort is like community first.
It's the people in the community.
(08:31):
We don't go outsideseeking other speakers.
Don't do keynote talks.
We've never done keynote talks.
For example, it was just like everytalk is a talk from the community.
So you're really focusing on the
Nola Simon (08:44):
relationships that build within the community themselves.
Rosie Sherry (08:47):
Yeah.
And it really makes a differencebecause people know these people and
they can identify with them, right?
And they can see, oh, I know that person.
I've spoken to him or we've been in touch.
He's never spoken andnow he's up on stage.
And the vibe that gives as well isthat you have like people like cheering
them on, or if they're struggling,you can really see that the crowd
(09:09):
is like supporting them ratherthan criticizing them, for example.
So the online
Nola Simon (09:16):
connection is really fueling the in person.
Rosie Sherry (09:18):
Yeah.
So I guess like some conferenceshappen once a year for us.
The conference is justpart of the community.
So really we're likeplanning all year round.
We, we publish content all year roundand all year round, we're looking for new
speakers and those sparks was, connectionsthat, or, information or trends that
(09:39):
might be of value to the community.
And we're trying to get better atspotting it and then bringing it to the
conference as like the icing on the cake,
Nola Simon (09:50):
so you mentioned before we started recording
that you're a deep introvert.
So how does an introvertplan a conference?
Because I would assume that alot of people in that type of
profession tend to be introverts.
I could be completely wrongthere, but that's my perception.
So how does a conference for introvertsin person differ from the standard
(10:11):
conference that's planned by extroverts?
Rosie Sherry (10:14):
Yeah, I say introverted these days I'd probably use
neurodivergent, being neurodiverse.
But, whatever it is, it's peoplestruggle in, In real life situations
and say, how do you make itfeel more comfortable for them.
And part of it again is going backto community and feeling welcomed
and supported and things like that.
(10:37):
And another part is creating a varietyof activities or meetups or events
that are happening so that, hopefullythere's something for everybody.
But like a big part of it.
I feel, sometimes I feel like I harpon a lot about community, but it's so
(10:58):
many of the people arrive and they'relike really nervous and but like the
moment they step in, they're welcomedby the community or there's there's
this culture of everyone's checkingin on other people or people standing
alone, and they might go up to themand say hello or just checking on them.
Nola Simon (11:14):
I saw you write on thread something about that.
Somebody had mentioned the factthat they were nervous that a
community just standing around, orthey were at a conference and they
were just standing around and justhaving that awkward conversation.
It was like the worst experience ever.
And you're like, just.
Being generous enough to go up to somebodyand say hi, that's the most generous thing
that you could do to, for somebody at agroup, if you see them standing alone.
Rosie Sherry (11:34):
Yeah, and it's part of the culture so it's like everyone is
literally doing it because they experienceit and they see How great it can feel
and how it brings that belonging.
And it just like naturallyends up extending.
And it's not just oh, let's,this is what we want to see.
It's that's happened over the years.
(11:54):
And like when, we try to communicate it.
And then run up to it, we have thehost on stage who also communicates it.
So it's like we're trying to really embedthis culture of we're all here to support
each other, and we're all actually quitefriendly, or we're all struggling a bit.
And, it's just yeah, for whateverreason, it's just it's become
(12:15):
a big part of what Ministry ofTesting and Test Bash is all about.
And it's pretty, pretty amazing tosee that, to be honest, because I
do go to other conferences and noone ever comes up to me, other tech
conferences and it's just sometimes Ijust like wonder why am I even here?
So it's yeah, I guess there's the,there's a Pac Man model as well, which
(12:39):
is one way they talk about it, soit's it's like when you're having a
conversation with other people, theyalways leave a gap like Pac Man's mouth.
So that others can come in, standin and listen, and maybe join in.
So people have naturallystarted doing that as well, as
trying to welcome people in.
Nola Simon (12:58):
You want to leave windows and doors open so that people can feel,
see entrances into the conversation.
I've been part of groups like thatbefore and it's you have no idea when
these guys are going to stop talking.
It's hey, I don't know how to do this.
Yeah, I one of my first employee resourcegroup meetings that I ever went to, I,
I remember walking in and I'd never doneone of those and it was a whole bunch of
(13:21):
executives and I just, I didn't know whoto talk to, even though I'd worked for
the company for over probably 15 years atthat point, the majority of people from
my division weren't usually the ones whoattended those types of events, right?
And I went in and I, Ididn't know what to do.
So I went to my table.
Because we were assigned tables and I justsat thinking that, once dinner started,
(13:44):
at least that way, it would be natural.
I'd have somebody on either side of me.
At least conversation would startto float the table and I just.
sat there by myself.
And this woman that I used to actuallywork for, she was my skip level.
So my boss's boss, she saw me at thetable and she came over and gave me this
big hug and introduced me to people.
(14:04):
And then people startedrising at the table.
So she started introducing meto people around the table.
And honestly, without her breakingthat ice, I was just, I was so
grateful that it's like, Oh, okay.
Now that I've beenintroduced, I feel better.
And she just made me feellike I had a place there.
Rosie Sherry (14:20):
Yeah.
Nola Simon (14:22):
I can relate.
I can relate.
Rosie Sherry (14:25):
We've also done things like for quite a few years now,
we do lean coffee in the morning.
So there's like a few tables set aside.
And lean coffee is basically likepeople writing down in post it notes
things that they want to talk about.
And then people float on them around thetable and they just start talking about
those things that they've written down.
(14:46):
So it's like a small group thing.
And so things like that really help togive people, another option of meeting
people and having conversations withpeople, perhaps without the small
talk, because a lot of people struggle.
Nola Simon (15:01):
So do you run that around the world?
So not just in Brighton, but becauseyour community is global, right?
Do you have the
Rosie Sherry (15:08):
community is global?
Yeah, the conference is justin Brighton at the moment.
But we do have localized meetups, likekind of community volunteer led as well.
I think it's about 40of them at the moment.
It was like 100 prepandemic, but obviously.
Pandemic does that.
Yeah, we do a lot of stuff online.
(15:31):
We do monthly virtual events as well.
Again, people who speak on thoseall come from the community.
So literally our source of voicesis 100 percent from the community.
Nola Simon (15:49):
Very cool.
And one thing I like about theway you position your work,
especially for Rosalind is youare the source for all community.
You research so you do all the researchso that other people don't have to.
So I think that's genius.
What trends are you seeing rightnow that you think are either
helpful or hindering community?
Rosie Sherry (16:10):
Yeah, I guess like AI is an obvious one.
I think it's
probably hindering more at the moment.
Nola Simon (16:18):
Yeah, I saw a post you wrote on that.
Rosie Sherry (16:20):
It's a nightmare like with content and if you have a community
where anyone can submit content orwrite something, a lot of communities
are really like struggling with howto deal with that because it's just so
much, I guess I would call it AI spam.
It's we had spam before, but now it's100x like what we, what used to exist.
(16:40):
And.
It's, 100x harder to spot it orto figure out how to deal with it.
So are
Nola Simon (16:46):
people like using it to post and comment or like both?
Yeah.
Really?
Rosie Sherry (16:52):
Yeah.
So
Nola Simon (16:53):
what's the point of Using AI to comment, because, personally for me,
comments are how I express my opinion, howI express my value, to share expertise.
To filter that through AI, I don'tknow that I would get value from
that, for me personally, right?
What's the point of even commenting?
(17:13):
I don't get it.
Rosie Sherry (17:15):
I don't know.
There's tools now that will autoAlso create comments for you,
like on social, isn't there?
So it's so you can leave so manycomments and they look genuine,
but they're not really genuine.
Or they read the posts that you'recommenting on to try to sound authentic.
And it's just yeah, I just don't get it.
It was like, what's the point?
And, places like productdon't have a lot of AI spam.
(17:38):
People always trying to playthe game, always trying to,
ends up becoming not really bad.
community it ends up becoming abouttrying to get as many upvotes so that
then that might somehow turn intoclick throughs or more sales or more
awareness of the product Right and likesometimes comments can influence the
(17:58):
algorithm Whether that's true or not,that's, generally like what they say is
that the more comments, the more chanceit has of being featured and stuff.
So people will play the game andthey'll use AI to support that.
Yeah.
And it's just Yes, it's just not greatand I did work at Indie Hackers I
led the community there for a coupleof years and that was pre AI hype
(18:21):
but like they suffered a ton fromspam in general And I saw as AI was
becoming popular as like a lot of thecomments on the posts were AI generated
And it's hard to deal with, right?
It's just as a community person, youdon't want to have to deal with that.
But and, yeah, it causes extra workfor anyone who's trying to run it.
(18:42):
Probably work that they don't want to do.
Nola Simon (18:45):
How are you managing that?
Are you deleting poststhat are obvious AI?
I
Rosie Sherry (18:52):
don't actually have that problem.
It's just
Nola Simon (18:54):
it's a
Rosie Sherry (18:55):
problem like we see.
Yeah.
Okay.
So we get minimal spam atMinistry of Testing, but there
is some, but not a huge amount.
Nola Simon (19:06):
Do you think that's actually because of the connection?
Rosie Sherry (19:10):
Yeah.
Nola Simon (19:11):
Cool.
I love that.
Rosie Sherry (19:14):
And because we don't go out trying to create fake games.
We don't go out trying to create fakehype or there's no real motivation
for people or reward for people whodo come in and comment on stuff.
We use a discourse as a forum and they'requite good at like auto fragging like
(19:35):
suspicious behavior Okay, we make weget that maybe a couple times a week.
It's no big deal to manage right?
and A lot of that is becausewe don't really focus on
that kind of external growth.
We're not like stressed out about tryingto get new people in and participate in.
It's just the forum is just likeone part of our community strategy.
(19:58):
It's not the community.
It's I call it like the 80 20 ruleof conversations and community.
A lot of people think ofcommunity as community.
It's all about the conversation.
It's let's talk and havefun and blah, blah, blah.
But actually, constant conversationis like really tiring and exhausting
(20:18):
and people don't have time for that.
Idea of the 80 20 rule is 20 percentof community should be conversations.
And then the other 80% Is other stuff.
So like our forum is maybe 20 percentof our efforts and the other 80 percent
are articles we publish, the conferencewe run, courses we produce, there's
(20:40):
a whole list of other things that wedo that counts up for the other 80%.
Nola Simon (20:44):
So there's actually action in addition to conversation.
Yeah.
Action.
And that, that, that combination,like people often join community
because they're looking for not justsupport, but they're actually looking
for transformation of some sort.
Rosie Sherry (20:58):
Yeah.
Nola Simon (20:59):
So if you're helping people achieve goals that they
have personally and professionally,then that's, is that the key to,
to really having community stick?
Do you think?
Rosie Sherry (21:11):
I think so.
I really do.
And it's definitely easiersaid than done, right?
But at Ministry of Testing the goalis perhaps they want to stay on top of
trends that are happening, so that'ssomething we're giving more focus on,
and making it easier for the communityto learn about trends that are happening.
But another thing is, a lot of peoplehave a goal of being a speaker, right?
(21:34):
Getting up on that stage.
So we then design thingsin to enable that.
Whether it's a simple encouragementof submitting to speak, that's
always like a good first step, right?
But then another thing is like atest bash, which is our conference.
We've done it since our second everconference, but I came up with this idea
(21:57):
that wouldn't it be great if anybodyhad the opportunity just to get up on
stage just to get a little bit of tape.
So I came up with the ideaof doing 99 second talks at
the end of a conference day.
So anyone can stand in the queue,get up on stage, talk about
absolutely anything for 99 seconds.
We have a buzzer, we set the timer,they go, they talk, we buzz them
(22:22):
if they go over the limit andthen the next person comes on.
Nola Simon (22:25):
Okay, so you're on stage, you take the action, you're fighting your
like, imposter syndrome, and you actuallyget a sense of achievement, right?
And do you get feedback?
Do you get feedback for that speaking or?
Rosie Sherry (22:42):
You get the feedback from the audience, and it's amazing,
like everyone's like cheering them on.
Okay.
So there's that aspect, we record all thetalks, then it goes on to our website.
So they can show it to other people.
They have proof of their contribution.
And now at the moment, as we're buildingour Ministry of Testing further,
(23:04):
and we're going increasingly downthe route of just, Custom building
everything pretty much apart from theforum and then, they get that talk
on their profile page So now we'reintroducing profile pages which becomes
a portfolio and it becomes somethingmore It gives you know, the sense of
(23:25):
they are contributing to the community
Nola Simon (23:28):
right
Rosie Sherry (23:28):
and here's a proof of it and Not quite like a Facebook
page or LinkedIn page, eventuallyone day it'll get there, but right.
So is it externally
Nola Simon (23:38):
accessible, the profile page?
Yeah.
Oh, that's cool.
So you can build it out and use itas like a mini profile or portfolio.
Rosie Sherry (23:47):
Yeah,
Nola Simon (23:47):
more active you are in the community.
I like that.
That's really cool.
Rosie Sherry (23:55):
Sorry, a phrase I said the other day is like, why should all the
social networks have all the fun, right?
So I'm trying to bring that in, but into Acommunity that's ours and it's a community
that's not owned by a big tech company.
We're just trying to build somethinglike really special and we've got we've
got photos now we call them memories.
(24:16):
So now people can post photos.
So our conference that just passed.
We've, started building a collectionof photos that anyone can add.
And people can add memes as well.
So we're building up this, knowledgebase, community knowledge base.
I would call it, and whereeveryone can contribute, right?
And these ideas aren't new.
(24:39):
It's there's memes,there's Instagram, right?
But it's actually Let's do that within ourcommunity, let's own the data, let's not
let the big socials like, be forever inpower, and let's see what we can do for
ourselves and People are loving it, we'redoing it on a really small budget, but
Nola Simon (24:58):
we're trying.
Yeah, it's amazing how happy GIFsand memes can make people laugh.
It's still true.
It is still true.
For all the people who try totell us that it's not cool Gen
Z it still makes people laugh.
It's very
Rosie Sherry (25:12):
cool.
Nola Simon (25:13):
Exactly.
It's very cool, yeah.
It's actually interesting to thinkabout, The profile page in conjunction
with AI, because one of the mostinteresting uses I've come across
with AI when I'm testing AI at all.
And when I say test, I'm just using it.
I literally start with a question oftell me about an assignment and it pulls
(25:35):
in anything that I've done on LinkedInor anything on my website and whatnot.
And if you don't recognize me,that means that I don't know what
data you're crawling, but it's not.
The data that are like, it'snot the places that I am, right?
So I like perplexity becauseperplexity knows really who I am.
So I'm like, okay they pick up my media,they pick up my podcast, they pick up
(25:58):
LinkedIn, they pick up all of this stuff.
So to have a publicly profile,like a public profile page that's
indexed by search, that's actuallyhelping building out yeah.
Personal branding, right?
And that's the interestingthing about personal branding.
Going forward is it's it'snot just what's on Google.
It's not just what's on LinkedIn.
It's not what you put on your resume,but it's like, what is a I going
(26:21):
to know about you and if you're nota public person and you're not in
media, you don't have a podcast.
What does it know about you?
And so that's interesting.
For software developers who aren'tnecessarily public people, how does
that publicize them in a way that isadvantageous for the future of work?
Rosie Sherry (26:41):
Yeah.
And that's interesting, right?
I think that's where AI can come.
Yeah.
Would be helpful in coming, rather thanAI creating content for people, it's
like actually AI, Making it easy to findinformation or data about people, right?
Yeah,
Nola Simon (26:56):
that discoverability, I think, is what's interesting,
and how does it connect dots?
That's what I'm interestedin, is because there's so much
information in the world these days.
It's like, how can you filter it?
And Google search is beingweird lately, personally.
So AI is interesting, too.
But, anyways, that's just an aside.
But I think what you're doing Has alot of potential, is what I'm saying.
Rosie Sherry (27:21):
I'm excited about it.
The first time in a few years, I'mactually like really excited about
the work that we're doing again.
It felt like there was this lull andfirst pandemic and then there's like
community hype and then it feels likeeveryone's now forgotten about community.
It's no longer the hype anymore.
And there's this lull in community, butlike the deeper, like I go into trying
(27:43):
to explore how to build community.
Our way, from scratch, custom buildingit, going through all the pains
that are involved in that as well.
I just it feels exciting againto be like, building something.
Yeah.
Yeah, something unique, andtrying to do something different,
trying not to be scared.
(28:04):
With, people saying, oh, you're crazyfor doing that stuff, it'll never work,
social media, whatever platform, they'llalways have the advantage over yourself.
All those things, but it's like.
Yeah, I just feel a bit moreexcited partly the Fediverse,
partly like open web stuff.
I think, I have hope that the trendis changing more towards that.
(28:26):
And I'm definitely seeing a few more techpeople just disregarding the big socials.
Twitter is an obvious one thatpeople have just left en masse.
To be honest, I think peoplefeel the same with everything.
Even Thread seems nice, or LinkedIn seemsnice, and they'll play in your favor for a
while, but then they own your data, right?
(28:47):
Yeah.
And they opt you in to the AIstuff without permission, but you
can uncheck yourself, but peoplemostly don't, or they're not aware.
And to me, it's just I don'twant to play that game anymore.
I've just I've decided I've had enough.
Nola Simon (29:02):
Yeah.
So I'm part of generalist world.
I know you're considering yourselfa generalist and I think you've
consulted with Malik on how tobuild that community, right?
So it is the one group that I've been partof where we've done the in person meetup.
So I actually went to Torontowhat, two weeks ago now?
It took me two and a half hours each way.
Certainly a full time commitment.
(29:24):
But it was fun.
It was neat to find something.
It was actually interesting becausea lot of the people who are actually
there were potential community members.
They weren't actuallypart of the community.
So I was like, oh, okay.
So I found myself pitching alot of it, what the community
was and what the potential was.
But what was interestingis he mentioned threads.
I posted I took a picture of just.
(29:44):
Toronto it's really just trying toprove that I was in Toronto because
I don't go very often right becauseI'm north of the city and I took a
picture I had Roy Thompson Hall infront of it and then Seattle Tower.
It was just those are recognizableToronto landmarks, right?
And I post it on threads and I justput, every time I go to Toronto, I
remember why I don't go to Toronto.
(30:05):
Meaning that the keeming was awful, right?
Traffic was just awful, right?
And oh my God, people just jumped on me.
It, the whole thread went viral, but itwas like for completely the wrong reason
because they're like if you don't want tocome to Toronto, don't come to Toronto.
And it was just like allof these negative people.
They're like, what's yourproblem with Roy Thompson Hall?
And I'm like, I don't have aproblem with Roy Thompson Hall.
(30:26):
It's a beautiful facility.
I've been there once in my life.
I don't care.
It's just in the picture becausethat's where the CN Tower is, right?
Oh my goodness.
So yeah, it was interesting because Ilike threads, but I do find that it still
gets that type of like viral negativityevery so often that Twitter has.
(30:49):
It's interesting how it's pages.
Rosie Sherry (30:54):
I've had a couple of viral threads.
I didn't get the negativitythough, so that's interesting.
Block and mute.
Yeah, I basically posted aboutTwitter, and leaving Twitter,
or something like that.
What was it?
I got kicked out of a group.
(31:16):
On Twitter for some reason.
Yeah, I can't remember what it was
or something about Elon Muskblocking me or no, it was
because I had blocked Elon Musk.
It wouldn't let me join.
Yeah, it wouldn't let me join their kindof Twitter moderation group or something.
(31:38):
Oh,
Nola Simon (31:39):
yeah, because you can be part of the group if you had actually
blocked Elon Musk and you were like yeah,I'm blocking him to be able to join.
Rosie Sherry (31:47):
So I posted a screenshot of that, and it went viral.
It was quite funny.
But does it add value tomy life in any kind of way?
Is it?
Absolutely not.
Did it bring followers?
Not really.
So it's I think it's I don't know,I'm getting older, I just don't care
anymore about that kind of stuff.
And to be honest, I've just whilst Istill occasionally post, and I still
(32:11):
will, but There's a term, it's post once,syndicate everywhere, I think it is.
P O S E so the idea is to like, first poston your own platform, on your own website.
And then cross post to yeah.
But these days, I just I justpost to either Ministry of
Testing or Rosyland for my stuff.
(32:33):
And I barely bother anymorewith social, I just,
Nola Simon (32:37):
Yeah, I've seen you a lot less.
Rosie Sherry (32:38):
Yeah, I just can't, I don't have the yeah, I don't know.
Nola Simon (32:43):
I think there's a general amount of these, basically.
People are just not enjoying it.
Honestly, I gotta tellyou, I love LinkedIn.
I always did love LinkedIn.
But it's been less fun this year.
Something is in the air.
And I don't exactly,couldn't tell you what.
And maybe it's the focus on video.
Because I really just don't love video.
Rosie Sherry (33:05):
You can barely tell what platform you're on anymore,
it's like sometimes I'm on LinkedInand I think I'm on Facebook.
Nola Simon (33:10):
Oh
Rosie Sherry (33:10):
yeah.
Nola Simon (33:11):
And if you scroll the video feed, like if you have the new video
feed, it's oh my god, these are allthe people that I know from TikTok.
But it's I've never seen those peopleon LinkedIn before ever, right?
So it's like, where does that come from?
And it's I don't know.
I just, I don't know thatthere's so much value.
You can share it.
Like the videos have tobe like under 60 seconds.
(33:32):
And I tried, or is it 90, 90 seconds?
I tried and I could only getdo two minutes and 20 seconds.
And that is I couldn't cut it downanymore because I'm like, I'm just,
I'm not sharing anything useful.
So it's I don't care if you don'tlike me, but that's how long I need to
be able to actually craft a message.
But honestly, maybe that'swrong because you do 99 seconds.
(33:52):
You have to get better at speaking.
That's funny.
Rosie Sherry (33:59):
We'd love to, like one of the ideas I'd love to do is
actually do really short form videoson MOT, like Reels, like TikToks.
Yeah.
I think that would be quite fun.
Nola Simon (34:11):
Yeah.
Rosie Sherry (34:12):
With us owning the data.
Obviously.
Nola Simon (34:15):
Yeah.
Rosie Sherry (34:15):
Not the social platforms.
Nola Simon (34:17):
Yeah.
I wanted to bring one thing up.
You mentioned that people havebeen going away from community
and is starting to come back.
Before we started recording, Igot an email from somebody that I
follow that I like and basicallythey were talking about, like, how
to facilitate return to office.
And one of the themes was,So what's your theory?
(34:37):
I know what my theory is aboutimmunity as part of an agenda, right?
Rosie Sherry (34:46):
Yeah, that kind of, it feels if someone like, All of a sudden
springs the answer is community.
It feels just genuine.
It doesn't feel real, right?
It feels like another fad.
It's we're doing back to officebecause we want to build community.
I think most companies, if theyreally wanted to do community, they
would have been doing it anyways.
(35:06):
And maybe if there's a back to officething, it's like, Considering the
communities or the people's voices inthat is do people really want to go back?
Or are they, have they really listenedto people that about their opinions
or needs about going back to office?
Nola Simon (35:22):
And that's what I think about a return to office community.
It's is the topic of whether going backor not off the table, because if that
conversation isn't a conversation you'rewilling to have, then automatically
it's not a genuine community, right?
Because you're limitingthe conversation, right?
Rosie Sherry (35:44):
So it's also a very ableist thing to do, right?
It's like dismissing likethe needs of so many people.
And I think honestly, like
a lot of good came fromCOVID from that perspective.
I've worked from home for 15 years,but the fact that like working
from home became normalized,I think it's amazing for.
(36:07):
For so many people around the world,new divergent people, mothers,
it's just people with complicatedlives or, parents to care for.
I almost have all of thatin my life at the moment.
I've got my care for, I've got a newdivergency, we homeschool have five kids.
It's there's no way I'd be able to gointo an office, but it's like, can I
(36:27):
still build community in a sense of work?
And what we do is yeah, But it doesn't,it doesn't mean going into the office
and I, I definitely know with Ministryof Testing if we force people into
the office, it's like, everyone wouldleave, it's not community focused if
you're not taken into consideration.
what people need.
And I know in my circumstance, it wouldn'tbe possible because of how people's
(36:54):
lives have now adapted since COVID.
It's there's been too much change to goback, in my opinion, to and, often, I
think, isn't that illegal to force that?
onto people, isn't thatlike discrimination, like
disability, like discrimination?
This is where if you can work from home,
Nola Simon (37:11):
yeah, this is really where the laws get interesting around the
world, because like the UK is actuallybeing pretty thoughtful, I think,
because isn't there a a law that where,All companies have to at least consider
the work from home request and actuallyassess it so everyone can believe.
So yeah, I just don't know what thatlooks like in practice and whether
(37:33):
it has any and if you're denied whatyou're What your rights are basically.
Think that's a whole area of developmentthat needs to really come into play to
make sure that rights are respected.
But that whole aspect of, does return tooffice impact women, people who are older
people who have neurodivergence, likeyou mentioned, disabilities, physical
(37:55):
disabilities as well, too, when you seesystems in place that are targeting those
people, because those are the people whoare said that their lives are impacted
negatively by going back to the office.
Then that's a whole systemof oppression, right?
So basically systems aremeant to continue, right?
(38:16):
So they're built to continue.
So my personal take is Returnto Office is an example of
systems of oppression thriving,
and that's a conversation thatnot a lot of people are having.
Rosie Sherry (38:31):
And then from the community aspect.
I guess what I get annoyed aboutand sometimes a bit, I wouldn't say
angry, but protective with communityis, it's like using communities as
an excuse to make Thanks Other thingshappen because like when people say
the word community everybody's oh,yeah, of course, that sounds great.
(38:52):
Oh, we'd love more.
Yeah Oh, yes, let's buy into it.
And like through the whole Pandemicis that it's like community hype and
Yeah, oh my god, like crypto stuff andlike people going into all this stuff
Crypto's community and I kept pushingback and saying, it's not community
what the heck are you talking about?
(39:12):
This is not going to work and, but peoplekept slapping the name community on it
saying this is community or it's buy it,buy this token or buy this NFT and you'll
automatically be part of this communityand find belonging and you can make money
and this and that and it's just Yeah.
Doesn't help like what community isand what we can achieve and people
(39:35):
end up what I feel is like people aredisillusioned by the idea of community
now they're like oh it's just hype.
Nola Simon (39:41):
Because the focus isn't on the members, it's not on that
connection, there's an agenda.
Before I actually was restructured inmy work, I had founded like an employee
resource group at my work familybecause I knew as soon as people were
forced from home, the people who aregoing to be impacted were the people
who had children who had caregiving,who had never worked from home before
(40:01):
and didn't know how to manage how doyou work when you've got three kids?
I knew that was going to be anissue because I knew what it
was like to try to manage that.
And I was really disappointedthe other day, they posted that
still community still exists,even though I'm not there anymore.
And they posted that it was allabout teaching kids about, financial
literacy, but it's okay, that's great.
(40:23):
That's a, it's a valid thing to teachkids about, but it's that is directly
funneling into the products that you sell.
So basically your communityis not necessarily focused
on family and the kids.
Your community is really about.
Building a potential new customers,and that's really what your focus is.
And I'm like five years later.
(40:44):
You haven't actually learned whatcommunity is about, and the focus is not
on the people that you actually serve.
And I'm like, that's so sad.
It made me so sad, because I'm like,that is not at all what I envisioned
was the potential for the community.
I visioned it as being a resourceto help people with their lives,
help people with their needs.
People with their work and basicallyjust be committed to like their
(41:06):
belonging and wellbeing and, make it abetter place to work, not a funnel for
potential new customers when they're 10
. I just, yeah.
It becomes transactional at that pointand it under undermines the trust I think
that you have in the community organizers.
Yeah.
Rosie Sherry (41:27):
It's also, stuff like that, it's also a reason why I don't
track our marketing efforts and stufflike that, it's like, we have systems
in place, we send emails, we do socialstuff, but I don't I tend to keep an
eye on the graphs going upwards andwhether it's trending in a positive way.
Yeah.
But you open rates like crazy.
(41:48):
No, and I don't track like sales that comein, like when did they first subscribe?
How long does it take them to becomea customer and stuff like that?
It's of course, it's in the idealworld, it'd be nice if they became
a customer quicker rather than laterit would make our lives a lot easier.
We could probably growquicker and stuff like that.
But I've come to the conclusionthat it's just like too much work
(42:09):
to even try to make sense of.
How people make decisions wherepurchases come from and actually
often like a lot of our purchasescome from like training budgets.
So there's no actual way to track itfrom an individual because it would
be a word of mouth or an internalconversation that happens with the HR or
(42:30):
training people to get budget sign off.
And then that budget sign offteam would then come to us.
Separately and say, buy something,but like trying to connect it to the
original source is like impossible.
So like the idea of like techbeing able to track absolutely
everything, I think, like for us,it's just it's just overkill, right?
(42:53):
You can spend so much time, time andmoney, on all these things, or for me
it's just or you can have fun alongthe way and just do your best to grow,
do your best to get people to signup, and keep your fingers crossed
that people will like what you dO.
Nola Simon (43:10):
how do you quantify like word of mouth and that connection
if people are being drawn because ofthe community aspect and the support
like all of that kind of stuff.
It's really hard to quantify.
So you're probably even notgoing to get great data on the
reality of why people join.
So you're probably wise.
Rosie Sherry (43:29):
Yeah, and then there's in the community world, it's oh,
what's a return on investmenton community and stuff, and it's
just I just cannot get involved.
Nola Simon (43:37):
Yeah.
Rosie Sherry (43:38):
It's, it just feels like an impossible task, or, pointless task, and
it's I'd rather spend my time trying toimprove the industry, or trying to find or
create better ways of building community.
Perhaps, that's what I'veended up being good at.
I guess that's how you people likeyourself like stumble across me
is because I just tried to pushforward with different ideas to
(44:01):
get people to think differently.
Yeah, about community because mostlybecause I'm just frustrated like with.
I like your genuineness, your honesty.
Nola Simon (44:12):
Honestly, that's I feel that you're a straight talker and
I can trust your expertise and youradvice and you come to things with
what I feel is the right approach.
putting people first.
I do have one last thing that I'dlike to bring up and that's the whole
connection of the world lonelinessepidemic, if you'd like to call it
(44:34):
that and how community can really help.
And it seems like it's a big, vasttopic, but I personally think big,
vast topics are best solved withSmall approaches on a regular basis.
What's your take on that?
Rosie Sherry (44:50):
Yeah a lot of people would look at me and I'd say, Oh,
you've got a lot of followers, oryou must be surrounded by people.
But actually day to day, it's avery small amount of people that I
actually interact with closely, right?
I think there's a lot of peoplewho, look at others and think, Oh,
they must have it all together.
But, actually we don't.
And more recently I've been goingsmall and more intentional and I've
(45:13):
picked out a handful of people andwe WhatsApp together and we just have
this like agreement that we're goingto keep in touch whatever way we can.
And sometimes it's just instead ofyou could share a photo on Instagram
or I could share it in a WhatsApp.
Yeah.
And the WhatsApp always gets a responseor always gets a conversation going.
(45:34):
And it's always nice to see, right?
But it's not the same in Instagram.
Nola Simon (45:38):
WhatsApp
Rosie Sherry (45:39):
doesn't have an
Nola Simon (45:40):
algorithm, right?
Rosie Sherry (45:42):
It doesn't have an algorithm.
It's more personal sometimes.
Yeah.
Depends how you use it.
But I think like startups, especiallywhat, the tech world, they think they
can solve loneliness through technology.
And whilst I think it contributeshonestly, it's just We have to find
ways to properly connect one to onewith people and have conversations and
(46:06):
not rely on this spamming of groups orthinking like, getting the attention
or getting the virality is going toall of a sudden help our loneliness.
It doesn't.
It doesn't help at all.
And I guess if I was makingrecommendations to people, I would, I'd
say, think about your local community,think about the people around you.
(46:29):
Those are really the people, mostof the time, who you can, they will
help you get out of that loneliness.
It's like when you're Unwell when you'reunable to do something and it's the people
around you who are close to you who canactually give you what you need, if you
need someone to go to the shop for youand you've got a broken leg, whatever it
Nola Simon (46:52):
is, it's like local people can help you, right?
You just need sugar.
Let's go back to the old days.
Ask your neighbor for sugar.
Rosie Sherry (47:01):
It's so simple, right?
But like people have forgotten it.
Yes.
That's, that's my strategy.
That's my intentional strategy atthe moment is I'm guilty of falling
into that loneliness trap as well.
I'm guilty of just getting overwhelmedwith life and everything around it
and neglecting the people around me.
But especially in the pastcouple of years, I've like more
(47:25):
intentionally reached, reaching outto people, developing friendships.
And, making that extra effort with peoplethat, I think would make a difference
to my life with my family's life.
Nola Simon (47:38):
Yeah, no, very nice.
I agree.
Yeah, I've always I was thinkingthe other day I've always been a
part of a community family, right?
I grew up.
My parents would get up at fiveo'clock leave by six o'clock in the
morning, and they wouldn't get homeuntil six, seven o'clock at night.
And that's been my entire lifeuntil I started working from home.
And for people to then expect us togive that up, where you feel that you
(48:02):
can, if you need somebody to walk yourdog, you can just go next door, right?
You've built those connectionswith people, right?
Because you have more time.
To invest in the people around you, right?
And to give that up togo back to commuting.
So you have maybe onehour a day with my kids.
That's a really big expectation.
And I think that's honestly a bigpart of why people are fighting it
(48:25):
is because they've built communitycloser to where they live rather than
community where they work in the office.
How do you let that go?
And
Rosie Sherry (48:34):
some people, they look at me and say, Oh, you're crazy.
You've got what, five kids?
You've got a business, a coupleof businesses, homeschool as well.
It's Oh my God, that must be so much.
But actually there's certain aspects,for example, with homeschooling that
actually makes life so much easier.
Not doing the school run every day andnot dealing with, like, all the things
(48:57):
that come with school, all the messages,all the, you don't have to sit in an
Nola Simon (49:01):
auditorium and listen to 30 kids play recorders really badly.
Rosie Sherry (49:04):
Yeah.
But instead the flip side ofthat is we end up connecting with
other home editors, and we endup supporting each other, right?
So we're like, we'll have we sayplaydates, but it's also, playdates
aren't playdates themselves, oftenthey're a way of supporting each other
or, it's let's share car runs, or pick uptimes sometimes we find people locally,
(49:28):
and we try to, encourage each otherto, to help each other out, instead of
it's good for the environment as well,obviously, but it's like trying to be
efficient with each, with our time, butalso appreciate that we need each other.
It's really helpful to have other parentswho can step up and say, Oh, I'll pick up
your kid for you if you're stuck, right?
(49:49):
Yeah.
And but yeah, just Not havingthat makes a really lonely world.
So it's like homeschooling is naturallymore community led and it's almost
like it ends up becoming that, Iwouldn't quite say second family, but
it becomes that supportive networkthat That we need and we recently
(50:09):
went on a camping trip with someother home editors and it was amazing.
It was just like, there's a wayto get to know some of the other
parents, but then the kids just werelike, they were off playing all day.
And
Nola Simon (50:23):
you can schedule that when the weather's going to be good.
You don't have to scheduleit around actual school time.
So
Rosie Sherry (50:30):
yeah, literally we scheduled it during the
week when it's nice and quiet.
Nola Simon (50:34):
Yeah, you can take advantage of all of the benefits of that seniors
have and people who who aren't boundby that school's school schedule.
I like it.
Very cool.
All right.
Was there anything else that youthought we missed in this discussion
that you want to highlight?
Rosie Sherry (50:52):
I don't think so.
Nola Simon (50:54):
We managed to hit the high points of what we planned.
Oh, that's perfect.
I will make sure that all yoursocials are available to people.
Is there anything elsethat you want me to add?
Rosie Sherry (51:05):
No.
Just yeah, I guess websites to me are moreimportant than socials these days, okay.
Nola Simon (51:12):
Okay.
Yeah, I will make sure that's in there.
All right.
Thank you so much, Rosie.
I've learned so much from you.
This is a way of me saying thank you.
When you put out that postgoing, I want to be a podcast.
I'm like, Hey, you want to do mine?
Because I had you on my list forever.
And then you went back and youwere so busy and I didn't want
to, I didn't want to bother you.
But then I'm like, Oh, if she'sready for it, then, make this happen.
(51:35):
Thank you for doing it.
All right, let me just hit stop.
There we go.
Thank you so much for joining me.
I'm Nola Simon.
I'm the host of HighwayRemote Center of Excellence.
Say that three times fast.
Today we have a guest from the UK.
Where exactly are you from, Rosie?
Rosie Sherry (00:16):
I'm in Brighton in the UK, the south coast.
Nola Simon (00:18):
Ah, I'm familiar with the beaches.
I haven't been there,but I've heard of them.
Anyways, our guest is Rosie Sherry, andshe is an expert in all things community.
She started ministry andtesting, what, back in 2007?
And so that has grown to itscommunity of thousands of users, and
(00:40):
it brings in millions of dollars.
And in addition, she also runs anothercommunity called Rosyland, which is
dedicated to all things community.
So Rosie, when I was exploringcommunities, and I keep continuing
to explore communities becauseI haven't figured it out myself.
She was the expert thatI came across online.
Literally, I think it wasmore Twitter initially.
(01:02):
And then more linked in now.
But she has a way of explainingcommunity that nobody else does, I find.
And I found her approach really relatable.
You started ministry testing becauseyou had 2 kids at home and it was a way
that you could start a business, right?
Did I get that correct?
Rosie Sherry (01:23):
Yeah.
Nola Simon (01:23):
And it's grown since then.
And recently you had to step back.
You had initially headed itoff to a CEO and then recently
you stepped back in as CEO.
Is that correct?
Rosie Sherry (01:33):
Yeah.
Nola Simon (01:34):
So could you tell us more about your journey with
community and where that started?
Rosie Sherry (01:41):
Yeah, so I guess I've been in tech since around 2000 the year
2000, which is a bit scary to, to sayI started off as a software tester.
I got like my first job as a softwaretester, hence ministry testing that
came along probably seven years later.
But as I was working in tech I startedgoing to local meetups in Brighton it
(02:05):
was quite an active geeky type scene andI was just inspired about all the things
that were happening, and I stumbledacross the idea of community, and I
enjoyed the local community aspect andas the web was grown, it was like web 2.
0 era.
For me there was like a lot of kindof excitement around all of that.
(02:27):
And yeah, mostly once I discoveredthe idea of community, I could,
I was like, that became my thing.
I just couldn't forget.
What community, the idea of communityto me, it just stuck with me and I've
never been able to let it go since.
So since I've discovered that and likecommunity has always been like how I start
(02:50):
things and, or how I think about things.
And I started a local meetup.
It was a woman in tech.
It was a meetup.
called Brighton Girl Geek Dinners andthat was like my first step into like
actually doing community things and thatkind of opened my eyes to how special
(03:15):
community can be and like I ran it forprobably a couple of years, and it was
like, always fully booked out, and I metloads of people and, still in contact
with many of them even like 20 yearson, and it's that was I guess as a
introverted style person that I am, thatwas like a real kind of eye opener for me.
(03:35):
Yeah, after that I was looking foran excuse to apply community to the
ideas I had or the work I wanted to do.
And at that time as well, therewere like no community jobs really.
It just wasn't, I think.
Nola Simon (03:48):
Yeah, it was like a job that came later.
This is the type of job that,when you were a kid, you didn't
imagine it could be a real job.
Rosie Sherry (03:54):
Yeah.
I remember seeing like jobads at the time, like for
Yelp and community managers.
So there were a few startups that kindof had started to adopt that role,
that me and Brighton, those jobs in SanFrancisco was like never going to happen.
Nola Simon (04:08):
I know how that feels.
I'm from Canada.
Nothing ever interestingever happens in Canada.
Rosie Sherry (04:13):
Yeah, so I just was always looking for opportunities
to do my own community thing.
I ran a co working space for a while andthen I also decided to start ministry
of testing because I felt like therecould, there should be a better community
for software testers, which at thetime there wasn't really much at all.
(04:33):
Nothing that I really approved of.
So I used it as an excusejust to start something.
I had no real idea that it would turninto something, but it was just something
I wanted to try, play with, see whereit goes and yeah, I guess that's what,
partly what I'm, I've discovered thatI'm good at is just I just do stuff
and then figure stuff out and eithersuffer the consequences or suffer with
(04:58):
the success along the way as well.
Nola Simon (05:00):
Yeah, no, that's very interesting.
So in terms of administrativetesting that's the part of your
work that I actually don't relateto at all because I don't have that
kind of software background at all.
So what's the purpose of community?
It's to share expertise and youoffer courses as well, right?
Rosie Sherry (05:16):
Yeah, so I would call it like a community of practice.
So it's essentially for software testingprofessionals or quality assurance
engineers, they go by a few names.
And it's a space to gather and tohopefully learn more and advance.
People's careers and we do conferences.
(05:40):
So at the moment we do oneconference a year in Brighton.
Nola Simon (05:46):
Yes, you just did that though right?
Yeah, because I've seen things onlinepeople really complimenting, you know
how engaging it was and just appreciatingthe, like the in person touch.
So that's an interesting aspect Ofcommunity, because we got away from
it, obviously, during the pandemic.
So are people reallyexcited about in person?
(06:07):
Do you think that's.
And aspect of communitythat's going to develop.
Rosie Sherry (06:12):
I think so.
And I think so pre pandemic we, it wasa bit crazy to be honest, but we had
as ministry of testing grew we had nineconferences across the world in the, in
2019 which feels like really crazy now.
But post pandemic we've gone back downto just one conference and the idea
(06:36):
at the moment is just to have that oneconference a year and put much more
effort into it and hopefully make itbigger than what it's been before.
Is there an appetite for it, like 100%?
It's like people, yeah,I think people need it.
I don't think they're realising howmuch they need it until they show up.
(06:58):
And it's once they show up that they'relike, ah, this is exactly what I needed,
this is like the break I needed from work,or this is just like reconnecting with
people, or getting to meet people in reallife that they've connected with online.
And yeah, I think we'vejust forgotten that.
(07:18):
And, partly, a big part of that is thepandemic, but when people go, they,
they don't regret going in my opinion,especially this past conference, which
I think we've leveled up the experienceand got amazing feedback from it.
And it was a product manager who attendedAnd she shared on LinkedIn, I can't
(07:39):
remember her name off the top of my head,but she was sharing on LinkedIn how, just
like, how amazing it felt and how jealousof FOMO she had that software testers had
this space to gather and she didn't feellike The product managers had that same
kind of space with that community feel.
Where everyone's literallysupporting each other.
(08:01):
And the speakers havegrown up in the community.
Nola Simon (08:05):
Oh, so you bring in people who are actually members of
the community to actually speak.
Rosie Sherry (08:10):
That's cool.
Yeah, like, all our effort is like,all our kind of I guess you, you
call it marketing effort, but all oureffort is focused on the community and
uplifting the community and trying toget them to publish their first article.
Or do their first talk or, speakat a conference or, all our
effort is like community first.
It's the people in the community.
(08:31):
We don't go outsideseeking other speakers.
Don't do keynote talks.
We've never done keynote talks.
For example, it was just like everytalk is a talk from the community.
So you're really focusing on the
Nola Simon (08:44):
relationships that build within the community themselves.
Rosie Sherry (08:47):
Yeah.
And it really makes a differencebecause people know these people and
they can identify with them, right?
And they can see, oh, I know that person.
I've spoken to him or we've been in touch.
He's never spoken andnow he's up on stage.
And the vibe that gives as well isthat you have like people like cheering
them on, or if they're struggling,you can really see that the crowd
(09:09):
is like supporting them ratherthan criticizing them, for example.
So the online
Nola Simon (09:16):
connection is really fueling the in person.
Rosie Sherry (09:18):
Yeah.
So I guess like some conferenceshappen once a year for us.
The conference is justpart of the community.
So really we're likeplanning all year round.
We, we publish content all year roundand all year round, we're looking for new
speakers and those sparks was, connectionsthat, or, information or trends that
(09:39):
might be of value to the community.
And we're trying to get better atspotting it and then bringing it to the
conference as like the icing on the cake,
Nola Simon (09:50):
so you mentioned before we started recording
that you're a deep introvert.
So how does an introvertplan a conference?
Because I would assume that alot of people in that type of
profession tend to be introverts.
I could be completely wrongthere, but that's my perception.
So how does a conference for introvertsin person differ from the standard
(10:11):
conference that's planned by extroverts?
Rosie Sherry (10:14):
Yeah, I say introverted these days I'd probably use
neurodivergent, being neurodiverse.
But, whatever it is, it's peoplestruggle in, In real life situations
and say, how do you make itfeel more comfortable for them.
And part of it again is going backto community and feeling welcomed
and supported and things like that.
(10:37):
And another part is creating a varietyof activities or meetups or events
that are happening so that, hopefullythere's something for everybody.
But like a big part of it.
I feel, sometimes I feel like I harpon a lot about community, but it's so
(10:58):
many of the people arrive and they'relike really nervous and but like the
moment they step in, they're welcomedby the community or there's there's
this culture of everyone's checkingin on other people or people standing
alone, and they might go up to themand say hello or just checking on them.
Nola Simon (11:14):
I saw you write on thread something about that.
Somebody had mentioned the factthat they were nervous that a
community just standing around, orthey were at a conference and they
were just standing around and justhaving that awkward conversation.
It was like the worst experience ever.
And you're like, just.
Being generous enough to go up to somebodyand say hi, that's the most generous thing
that you could do to, for somebody at agroup, if you see them standing alone.
Rosie Sherry (11:34):
Yeah, and it's part of the culture so it's like everyone is
literally doing it because they experienceit and they see How great it can feel
and how it brings that belonging.
And it just like naturallyends up extending.
And it's not just oh, let's,this is what we want to see.
It's that's happened over the years.
(11:54):
And like when, we try to communicate it.
And then run up to it, we have thehost on stage who also communicates it.
So it's like we're trying to really embedthis culture of we're all here to support
each other, and we're all actually quitefriendly, or we're all struggling a bit.
And, it's just yeah, for whateverreason, it's just it's become
(12:15):
a big part of what Ministry ofTesting and Test Bash is all about.
And it's pretty, pretty amazing tosee that, to be honest, because I
do go to other conferences and noone ever comes up to me, other tech
conferences and it's just sometimes Ijust like wonder why am I even here?
So it's yeah, I guess there's the,there's a Pac Man model as well, which
(12:39):
is one way they talk about it, soit's it's like when you're having a
conversation with other people, theyalways leave a gap like Pac Man's mouth.
So that others can come in, standin and listen, and maybe join in.
So people have naturallystarted doing that as well, as
trying to welcome people in.
Nola Simon (12:58):
You want to leave windows and doors open so that people can feel,
see entrances into the conversation.
I've been part of groups like thatbefore and it's you have no idea when
these guys are going to stop talking.
It's hey, I don't know how to do this.
Yeah, I one of my first employee resourcegroup meetings that I ever went to, I,
I remember walking in and I'd never doneone of those and it was a whole bunch of
(13:21):
executives and I just, I didn't know whoto talk to, even though I'd worked for
the company for over probably 15 years atthat point, the majority of people from
my division weren't usually the ones whoattended those types of events, right?
And I went in and I, Ididn't know what to do.
So I went to my table.
Because we were assigned tables and I justsat thinking that, once dinner started,
(13:44):
at least that way, it would be natural.
I'd have somebody on either side of me.
At least conversation would startto float the table and I just.
sat there by myself.
And this woman that I used to actuallywork for, she was my skip level.
So my boss's boss, she saw me at thetable and she came over and gave me this
big hug and introduced me to people.
(14:04):
And then people startedrising at the table.
So she started introducing meto people around the table.
And honestly, without her breakingthat ice, I was just, I was so
grateful that it's like, Oh, okay.
Now that I've beenintroduced, I feel better.
And she just made me feellike I had a place there.
Rosie Sherry (14:20):
Yeah.
Nola Simon (14:22):
I can relate.
I can relate.
Rosie Sherry (14:25):
We've also done things like for quite a few years now,
we do lean coffee in the morning.
So there's like a few tables set aside.
And lean coffee is basically likepeople writing down in post it notes
things that they want to talk about.
And then people float on them around thetable and they just start talking about
those things that they've written down.
(14:46):
So it's like a small group thing.
And so things like that really help togive people, another option of meeting
people and having conversations withpeople, perhaps without the small
talk, because a lot of people struggle.
Nola Simon (15:01):
So do you run that around the world?
So not just in Brighton, but becauseyour community is global, right?
Do you have the
Rosie Sherry (15:08):
community is global?
Yeah, the conference is justin Brighton at the moment.
But we do have localized meetups, likekind of community volunteer led as well.
I think it's about 40of them at the moment.
It was like 100 prepandemic, but obviously.
Pandemic does that.
Yeah, we do a lot of stuff online.
(15:31):
We do monthly virtual events as well.
Again, people who speak on thoseall come from the community.
So literally our source of voicesis 100 percent from the community.
Nola Simon (15:49):
Very cool.
And one thing I like about theway you position your work,
especially for Rosalind is youare the source for all community.
You research so you do all the researchso that other people don't have to.
So I think that's genius.
What trends are you seeing rightnow that you think are either
helpful or hindering community?
Rosie Sherry (16:10):
Yeah, I guess like AI is an obvious one.
I think it's
probably hindering more at the moment.
Nola Simon (16:18):
Yeah, I saw a post you wrote on that.
Rosie Sherry (16:20):
It's a nightmare like with content and if you have a community
where anyone can submit content orwrite something, a lot of communities
are really like struggling with howto deal with that because it's just so
much, I guess I would call it AI spam.
It's we had spam before, but now it's100x like what we, what used to exist.
(16:40):
And.
It's, 100x harder to spot it orto figure out how to deal with it.
So are
Nola Simon (16:46):
people like using it to post and comment or like both?
Yeah.
Really?
Rosie Sherry (16:52):
Yeah.
So
Nola Simon (16:53):
what's the point of Using AI to comment, because, personally for me,
comments are how I express my opinion, howI express my value, to share expertise.
To filter that through AI, I don'tknow that I would get value from
that, for me personally, right?
What's the point of even commenting?
(17:13):
I don't get it.
Rosie Sherry (17:15):
I don't know.
There's tools now that will autoAlso create comments for you,
like on social, isn't there?
So it's so you can leave so manycomments and they look genuine,
but they're not really genuine.
Or they read the posts that you'recommenting on to try to sound authentic.
And it's just yeah, I just don't get it.
It was like, what's the point?
And, places like productdon't have a lot of AI spam.
(17:38):
People always trying to playthe game, always trying to,
ends up becoming not really bad.
community it ends up becoming abouttrying to get as many upvotes so that
then that might somehow turn intoclick throughs or more sales or more
awareness of the product Right and likesometimes comments can influence the
(17:58):
algorithm Whether that's true or not,that's, generally like what they say is
that the more comments, the more chanceit has of being featured and stuff.
So people will play the game andthey'll use AI to support that.
Yeah.
And it's just Yes, it's just not greatand I did work at Indie Hackers I
led the community there for a coupleof years and that was pre AI hype
(18:21):
but like they suffered a ton fromspam in general And I saw as AI was
becoming popular as like a lot of thecomments on the posts were AI generated
And it's hard to deal with, right?
It's just as a community person, youdon't want to have to deal with that.
But and, yeah, it causes extra workfor anyone who's trying to run it.
(18:42):
Probably work that they don't want to do.
Nola Simon (18:45):
How are you managing that?
Are you deleting poststhat are obvious AI?
I
Rosie Sherry (18:52):
don't actually have that problem.
It's just
Nola Simon (18:54):
it's a
Rosie Sherry (18:55):
problem like we see.
Yeah.
Okay.
So we get minimal spam atMinistry of Testing, but there
is some, but not a huge amount.
Nola Simon (19:06):
Do you think that's actually because of the connection?
Rosie Sherry (19:10):
Yeah.
Nola Simon (19:11):
Cool.
I love that.
Rosie Sherry (19:14):
And because we don't go out trying to create fake games.
We don't go out trying to create fakehype or there's no real motivation
for people or reward for people whodo come in and comment on stuff.
We use a discourse as a forum and they'requite good at like auto fragging like
(19:35):
suspicious behavior Okay, we make weget that maybe a couple times a week.
It's no big deal to manage right?
and A lot of that is becausewe don't really focus on
that kind of external growth.
We're not like stressed out about tryingto get new people in and participate in.
It's just the forum is just likeone part of our community strategy.
(19:58):
It's not the community.
It's I call it like the 80 20 ruleof conversations and community.
A lot of people think ofcommunity as community.
It's all about the conversation.
It's let's talk and havefun and blah, blah, blah.
But actually, constant conversationis like really tiring and exhausting
(20:18):
and people don't have time for that.
Idea of the 80 20 rule is 20 percentof community should be conversations.
And then the other 80% Is other stuff.
So like our forum is maybe 20 percentof our efforts and the other 80 percent
are articles we publish, the conferencewe run, courses we produce, there's
(20:40):
a whole list of other things that wedo that counts up for the other 80%.
Nola Simon (20:44):
So there's actually action in addition to conversation.
Yeah.
Action.
And that, that, that combination,like people often join community
because they're looking for not justsupport, but they're actually looking
for transformation of some sort.
Rosie Sherry (20:58):
Yeah.
Nola Simon (20:59):
So if you're helping people achieve goals that they
have personally and professionally,then that's, is that the key to,
to really having community stick?
Do you think?
Rosie Sherry (21:11):
I think so.
I really do.
And it's definitely easiersaid than done, right?
But at Ministry of Testing the goalis perhaps they want to stay on top of
trends that are happening, so that'ssomething we're giving more focus on,
and making it easier for the communityto learn about trends that are happening.
But another thing is, a lot of peoplehave a goal of being a speaker, right?
(21:34):
Getting up on that stage.
So we then design thingsin to enable that.
Whether it's a simple encouragementof submitting to speak, that's
always like a good first step, right?
But then another thing is like atest bash, which is our conference.
We've done it since our second everconference, but I came up with this idea
(21:57):
that wouldn't it be great if anybodyhad the opportunity just to get up on
stage just to get a little bit of tape.
So I came up with the ideaof doing 99 second talks at
the end of a conference day.
So anyone can stand in the queue,get up on stage, talk about
absolutely anything for 99 seconds.
We have a buzzer, we set the timer,they go, they talk, we buzz them
(22:22):
if they go over the limit andthen the next person comes on.
Nola Simon (22:25):
Okay, so you're on stage, you take the action, you're fighting your
like, imposter syndrome, and you actuallyget a sense of achievement, right?
And do you get feedback?
Do you get feedback for that speaking or?
Rosie Sherry (22:42):
You get the feedback from the audience, and it's amazing,
like everyone's like cheering them on.
Okay.
So there's that aspect, we record all thetalks, then it goes on to our website.
So they can show it to other people.
They have proof of their contribution.
And now at the moment, as we're buildingour Ministry of Testing further,
(23:04):
and we're going increasingly downthe route of just, Custom building
everything pretty much apart from theforum and then, they get that talk
on their profile page So now we'reintroducing profile pages which becomes
a portfolio and it becomes somethingmore It gives you know, the sense of
(23:25):
they are contributing to the community
Nola Simon (23:28):
right
Rosie Sherry (23:28):
and here's a proof of it and Not quite like a Facebook
page or LinkedIn page, eventuallyone day it'll get there, but right.
So is it externally
Nola Simon (23:38):
accessible, the profile page?
Yeah.
Oh, that's cool.
So you can build it out and use itas like a mini profile or portfolio.
Rosie Sherry (23:47):
Yeah,
Nola Simon (23:47):
more active you are in the community.
I like that.
That's really cool.
Rosie Sherry (23:55):
Sorry, a phrase I said the other day is like, why should all the
social networks have all the fun, right?
So I'm trying to bring that in, but into Acommunity that's ours and it's a community
that's not owned by a big tech company.
We're just trying to build somethinglike really special and we've got we've
got photos now we call them memories.
(24:16):
So now people can post photos.
So our conference that just passed.
We've, started building a collectionof photos that anyone can add.
And people can add memes as well.
So we're building up this, knowledgebase, community knowledge base.
I would call it, and whereeveryone can contribute, right?
And these ideas aren't new.
(24:39):
It's there's memes,there's Instagram, right?
But it's actually Let's do that within ourcommunity, let's own the data, let's not
let the big socials like, be forever inpower, and let's see what we can do for
ourselves and People are loving it, we'redoing it on a really small budget, but
Nola Simon (24:58):
we're trying.
Yeah, it's amazing how happy GIFsand memes can make people laugh.
It's still true.
It is still true.
For all the people who try totell us that it's not cool Gen
Z it still makes people laugh.
It's very
Rosie Sherry (25:12):
cool.
Nola Simon (25:13):
Exactly.
It's very cool, yeah.
It's actually interesting to thinkabout, The profile page in conjunction
with AI, because one of the mostinteresting uses I've come across
with AI when I'm testing AI at all.
And when I say test, I'm just using it.
I literally start with a question oftell me about an assignment and it pulls
(25:35):
in anything that I've done on LinkedInor anything on my website and whatnot.
And if you don't recognize me,that means that I don't know what
data you're crawling, but it's not.
The data that are like, it'snot the places that I am, right?
So I like perplexity becauseperplexity knows really who I am.
So I'm like, okay they pick up my media,they pick up my podcast, they pick up
(25:58):
LinkedIn, they pick up all of this stuff.
So to have a publicly profile,like a public profile page that's
indexed by search, that's actuallyhelping building out yeah.
Personal branding, right?
And that's the interestingthing about personal branding.
Going forward is it's it'snot just what's on Google.
It's not just what's on LinkedIn.
It's not what you put on your resume,but it's like, what is a I going
(26:21):
to know about you and if you're nota public person and you're not in
media, you don't have a podcast.
What does it know about you?
And so that's interesting.
For software developers who aren'tnecessarily public people, how does
that publicize them in a way that isadvantageous for the future of work?
Rosie Sherry (26:41):
Yeah.
And that's interesting, right?
I think that's where AI can come.
Yeah.
Would be helpful in coming, rather thanAI creating content for people, it's
like actually AI, Making it easy to findinformation or data about people, right?
Yeah,
Nola Simon (26:56):
that discoverability, I think, is what's interesting,
and how does it connect dots?
That's what I'm interestedin, is because there's so much
information in the world these days.
It's like, how can you filter it?
And Google search is beingweird lately, personally.
So AI is interesting, too.
But, anyways, that's just an aside.
But I think what you're doing Has alot of potential, is what I'm saying.
Rosie Sherry (27:21):
I'm excited about it.
The first time in a few years, I'mactually like really excited about
the work that we're doing again.
It felt like there was this lull andfirst pandemic and then there's like
community hype and then it feels likeeveryone's now forgotten about community.
It's no longer the hype anymore.
And there's this lull in community, butlike the deeper, like I go into trying
(27:43):
to explore how to build community.
Our way, from scratch, custom buildingit, going through all the pains
that are involved in that as well.
I just it feels exciting againto be like, building something.
Yeah.
Yeah, something unique, andtrying to do something different,
trying not to be scared.
(28:04):
With, people saying, oh, you're crazyfor doing that stuff, it'll never work,
social media, whatever platform, they'llalways have the advantage over yourself.
All those things, but it's like.
Yeah, I just feel a bit moreexcited partly the Fediverse,
partly like open web stuff.
I think, I have hope that the trendis changing more towards that.
(28:26):
And I'm definitely seeing a few more techpeople just disregarding the big socials.
Twitter is an obvious one thatpeople have just left en masse.
To be honest, I think peoplefeel the same with everything.
Even Thread seems nice, or LinkedIn seemsnice, and they'll play in your favor for a
while, but then they own your data, right?
(28:47):
Yeah.
And they opt you in to the AIstuff without permission, but you
can uncheck yourself, but peoplemostly don't, or they're not aware.
And to me, it's just I don'twant to play that game anymore.
I've just I've decided I've had enough.
Nola Simon (29:02):
Yeah.
So I'm part of generalist world.
I know you're considering yourselfa generalist and I think you've
consulted with Malik on how tobuild that community, right?
So it is the one group that I've been partof where we've done the in person meetup.
So I actually went to Torontowhat, two weeks ago now?
It took me two and a half hours each way.
Certainly a full time commitment.
(29:24):
But it was fun.
It was neat to find something.
It was actually interesting becausea lot of the people who are actually
there were potential community members.
They weren't actuallypart of the community.
So I was like, oh, okay.
So I found myself pitching alot of it, what the community
was and what the potential was.
But what was interestingis he mentioned threads.
I posted I took a picture of just.
(29:44):
Toronto it's really just trying toprove that I was in Toronto because
I don't go very often right becauseI'm north of the city and I took a
picture I had Roy Thompson Hall infront of it and then Seattle Tower.
It was just those are recognizableToronto landmarks, right?
And I post it on threads and I justput, every time I go to Toronto, I
remember why I don't go to Toronto.
(30:05):
Meaning that the keeming was awful, right?
Traffic was just awful, right?
And oh my God, people just jumped on me.
It, the whole thread went viral, but itwas like for completely the wrong reason
because they're like if you don't want tocome to Toronto, don't come to Toronto.
And it was just like allof these negative people.
They're like, what's yourproblem with Roy Thompson Hall?
And I'm like, I don't have aproblem with Roy Thompson Hall.
(30:26):
It's a beautiful facility.
I've been there once in my life.
I don't care.
It's just in the picture becausethat's where the CN Tower is, right?
Oh my goodness.
So yeah, it was interesting because Ilike threads, but I do find that it still
gets that type of like viral negativityevery so often that Twitter has.
(30:49):
It's interesting how it's pages.
Rosie Sherry (30:54):
I've had a couple of viral threads.
I didn't get the negativitythough, so that's interesting.
Block and mute.
Yeah, I basically posted aboutTwitter, and leaving Twitter,
or something like that.
What was it?
I got kicked out of a group.
(31:16):
On Twitter for some reason.
Yeah, I can't remember what it was
or something about Elon Muskblocking me or no, it was
because I had blocked Elon Musk.
It wouldn't let me join.
Yeah, it wouldn't let me join their kindof Twitter moderation group or something.
(31:38):
Oh,
Nola Simon (31:39):
yeah, because you can be part of the group if you had actually
blocked Elon Musk and you were like yeah,I'm blocking him to be able to join.
Rosie Sherry (31:47):
So I posted a screenshot of that, and it went viral.
It was quite funny.
But does it add value tomy life in any kind of way?
Is it?
Absolutely not.
Did it bring followers?
Not really.
So it's I think it's I don't know,I'm getting older, I just don't care
anymore about that kind of stuff.
And to be honest, I've just whilst Istill occasionally post, and I still
(32:11):
will, but There's a term, it's post once,syndicate everywhere, I think it is.
P O S E so the idea is to like, first poston your own platform, on your own website.
And then cross post to yeah.
But these days, I just I justpost to either Ministry of
Testing or Rosyland for my stuff.
(32:33):
And I barely bother anymorewith social, I just,
Nola Simon (32:37):
Yeah, I've seen you a lot less.
Rosie Sherry (32:38):
Yeah, I just can't, I don't have the yeah, I don't know.
Nola Simon (32:43):
I think there's a general amount of these, basically.
People are just not enjoying it.
Honestly, I gotta tellyou, I love LinkedIn.
I always did love LinkedIn.
But it's been less fun this year.
Something is in the air.
And I don't exactly,couldn't tell you what.
And maybe it's the focus on video.
Because I really just don't love video.
Rosie Sherry (33:05):
You can barely tell what platform you're on anymore,
it's like sometimes I'm on LinkedInand I think I'm on Facebook.
Nola Simon (33:10):
Oh
Rosie Sherry (33:10):
yeah.
Nola Simon (33:11):
And if you scroll the video feed, like if you have the new video
feed, it's oh my god, these are allthe people that I know from TikTok.
But it's I've never seen those peopleon LinkedIn before ever, right?
So it's like, where does that come from?
And it's I don't know.
I just, I don't know thatthere's so much value.
You can share it.
Like the videos have tobe like under 60 seconds.
(33:32):
And I tried, or is it 90, 90 seconds?
I tried and I could only getdo two minutes and 20 seconds.
And that is I couldn't cut it downanymore because I'm like, I'm just,
I'm not sharing anything useful.
So it's I don't care if you don'tlike me, but that's how long I need to
be able to actually craft a message.
But honestly, maybe that'swrong because you do 99 seconds.
(33:52):
You have to get better at speaking.
That's funny.
Rosie Sherry (33:59):
We'd love to, like one of the ideas I'd love to do is
actually do really short form videoson MOT, like Reels, like TikToks.
Yeah.
I think that would be quite fun.
Nola Simon (34:11):
Yeah.
Rosie Sherry (34:12):
With us owning the data.
Obviously.
Nola Simon (34:15):
Yeah.
Rosie Sherry (34:15):
Not the social platforms.
Nola Simon (34:17):
Yeah.
I wanted to bring one thing up.
You mentioned that people havebeen going away from community
and is starting to come back.
Before we started recording, Igot an email from somebody that I
follow that I like and basicallythey were talking about, like, how
to facilitate return to office.
And one of the themes was,So what's your theory?
(34:37):
I know what my theory is aboutimmunity as part of an agenda, right?
Rosie Sherry (34:46):
Yeah, that kind of, it feels if someone like, All of a sudden
springs the answer is community.
It feels just genuine.
It doesn't feel real, right?
It feels like another fad.
It's we're doing back to officebecause we want to build community.
I think most companies, if theyreally wanted to do community, they
would have been doing it anyways.
(35:06):
And maybe if there's a back to officething, it's like, Considering the
communities or the people's voices inthat is do people really want to go back?
Or are they, have they really listenedto people that about their opinions
or needs about going back to office?
Nola Simon (35:22):
And that's what I think about a return to office community.
It's is the topic of whether going backor not off the table, because if that
conversation isn't a conversation you'rewilling to have, then automatically
it's not a genuine community, right?
Because you're limitingthe conversation, right?
Rosie Sherry (35:44):
So it's also a very ableist thing to do, right?
It's like dismissing likethe needs of so many people.
And I think honestly, like
a lot of good came fromCOVID from that perspective.
I've worked from home for 15 years,but the fact that like working
from home became normalized,I think it's amazing for.
(36:07):
For so many people around the world,new divergent people, mothers,
it's just people with complicatedlives or, parents to care for.
I almost have all of thatin my life at the moment.
I've got my care for, I've got a newdivergency, we homeschool have five kids.
It's there's no way I'd be able to gointo an office, but it's like, can I
(36:27):
still build community in a sense of work?
And what we do is yeah, But it doesn't,it doesn't mean going into the office
and I, I definitely know with Ministryof Testing if we force people into
the office, it's like, everyone wouldleave, it's not community focused if
you're not taken into consideration.
what people need.
And I know in my circumstance, it wouldn'tbe possible because of how people's
(36:54):
lives have now adapted since COVID.
It's there's been too much change to goback, in my opinion, to and, often, I
think, isn't that illegal to force that?
onto people, isn't thatlike discrimination, like
disability, like discrimination?
This is where if you can work from home,
Nola Simon (37:11):
yeah, this is really where the laws get interesting around the
world, because like the UK is actuallybeing pretty thoughtful, I think,
because isn't there a a law that where,All companies have to at least consider
the work from home request and actuallyassess it so everyone can believe.
So yeah, I just don't know what thatlooks like in practice and whether
(37:33):
it has any and if you're denied whatyou're What your rights are basically.
Think that's a whole area of developmentthat needs to really come into play to
make sure that rights are respected.
But that whole aspect of, does return tooffice impact women, people who are older
people who have neurodivergence, likeyou mentioned, disabilities, physical
(37:55):
disabilities as well, too, when you seesystems in place that are targeting those
people, because those are the people whoare said that their lives are impacted
negatively by going back to the office.
Then that's a whole systemof oppression, right?
So basically systems aremeant to continue, right?
(38:16):
So they're built to continue.
So my personal take is Returnto Office is an example of
systems of oppression thriving,
and that's a conversation thatnot a lot of people are having.
Rosie Sherry (38:31):
And then from the community aspect.
I guess what I get annoyed aboutand sometimes a bit, I wouldn't say
angry, but protective with communityis, it's like using communities as
an excuse to make Thanks Other thingshappen because like when people say
the word community everybody's oh,yeah, of course, that sounds great.
(38:52):
Oh, we'd love more.
Yeah Oh, yes, let's buy into it.
And like through the whole Pandemicis that it's like community hype and
Yeah, oh my god, like crypto stuff andlike people going into all this stuff
Crypto's community and I kept pushingback and saying, it's not community
what the heck are you talking about?
(39:12):
This is not going to work and, but peoplekept slapping the name community on it
saying this is community or it's buy it,buy this token or buy this NFT and you'll
automatically be part of this communityand find belonging and you can make money
and this and that and it's just Yeah.
Doesn't help like what community isand what we can achieve and people
(39:35):
end up what I feel is like people aredisillusioned by the idea of community
now they're like oh it's just hype.
Nola Simon (39:41):
Because the focus isn't on the members, it's not on that
connection, there's an agenda.
Before I actually was restructured inmy work, I had founded like an employee
resource group at my work familybecause I knew as soon as people were
forced from home, the people who aregoing to be impacted were the people
who had children who had caregiving,who had never worked from home before
(40:01):
and didn't know how to manage how doyou work when you've got three kids?
I knew that was going to be anissue because I knew what it
was like to try to manage that.
And I was really disappointedthe other day, they posted that
still community still exists,even though I'm not there anymore.
And they posted that it was allabout teaching kids about, financial
literacy, but it's okay, that's great.
(40:23):
That's a, it's a valid thing to teachkids about, but it's that is directly
funneling into the products that you sell.
So basically your communityis not necessarily focused
on family and the kids.
Your community is really about.
Building a potential new customers,and that's really what your focus is.
And I'm like five years later.
(40:44):
You haven't actually learned whatcommunity is about, and the focus is not
on the people that you actually serve.
And I'm like, that's so sad.
It made me so sad, because I'm like,that is not at all what I envisioned
was the potential for the community.
I visioned it as being a resourceto help people with their lives,
help people with their needs.
People with their work and basicallyjust be committed to like their
(41:06):
belonging and wellbeing and, make it abetter place to work, not a funnel for
potential new customers when they're 10
. I just, yeah.
It becomes transactional at that pointand it under undermines the trust I think
that you have in the community organizers.
Yeah.
Rosie Sherry (41:27):
It's also, stuff like that, it's also a reason why I don't
track our marketing efforts and stufflike that, it's like, we have systems
in place, we send emails, we do socialstuff, but I don't I tend to keep an
eye on the graphs going upwards andwhether it's trending in a positive way.
Yeah.
But you open rates like crazy.
(41:48):
No, and I don't track like sales that comein, like when did they first subscribe?
How long does it take them to becomea customer and stuff like that?
It's of course, it's in the idealworld, it'd be nice if they became
a customer quicker rather than laterit would make our lives a lot easier.
We could probably growquicker and stuff like that.
But I've come to the conclusionthat it's just like too much work
(42:09):
to even try to make sense of.
How people make decisions wherepurchases come from and actually
often like a lot of our purchasescome from like training budgets.
So there's no actual way to track itfrom an individual because it would
be a word of mouth or an internalconversation that happens with the HR or
(42:30):
training people to get budget sign off.
And then that budget sign offteam would then come to us.
Separately and say, buy something,but like trying to connect it to the
original source is like impossible.
So like the idea of like techbeing able to track absolutely
everything, I think, like for us,it's just it's just overkill, right?
(42:53):
You can spend so much time, time andmoney, on all these things, or for me
it's just or you can have fun alongthe way and just do your best to grow,
do your best to get people to signup, and keep your fingers crossed
that people will like what you dO.
Nola Simon (43:10):
how do you quantify like word of mouth and that connection
if people are being drawn because ofthe community aspect and the support
like all of that kind of stuff.
It's really hard to quantify.
So you're probably even notgoing to get great data on the
reality of why people join.
So you're probably wise.
Rosie Sherry (43:29):
Yeah, and then there's in the community world, it's oh,
what's a return on investmenton community and stuff, and it's
just I just cannot get involved.
Nola Simon (43:37):
Yeah.
Rosie Sherry (43:38):
It's, it just feels like an impossible task, or, pointless task, and
it's I'd rather spend my time trying toimprove the industry, or trying to find or
create better ways of building community.
Perhaps, that's what I'veended up being good at.
I guess that's how you people likeyourself like stumble across me
is because I just tried to pushforward with different ideas to
(44:01):
get people to think differently.
Yeah, about community because mostlybecause I'm just frustrated like with.
I like your genuineness, your honesty.
Nola Simon (44:12):
Honestly, that's I feel that you're a straight talker and
I can trust your expertise and youradvice and you come to things with
what I feel is the right approach.
putting people first.
I do have one last thing that I'dlike to bring up and that's the whole
connection of the world lonelinessepidemic, if you'd like to call it
(44:34):
that and how community can really help.
And it seems like it's a big, vasttopic, but I personally think big,
vast topics are best solved withSmall approaches on a regular basis.
What's your take on that?
Rosie Sherry (44:50):
Yeah a lot of people would look at me and I'd say, Oh,
you've got a lot of followers, oryou must be surrounded by people.
But actually day to day, it's avery small amount of people that I
actually interact with closely, right?
I think there's a lot of peoplewho, look at others and think, Oh,
they must have it all together.
But, actually we don't.
And more recently I've been goingsmall and more intentional and I've
(45:13):
picked out a handful of people andwe WhatsApp together and we just have
this like agreement that we're goingto keep in touch whatever way we can.
And sometimes it's just instead ofyou could share a photo on Instagram
or I could share it in a WhatsApp.
Yeah.
And the WhatsApp always gets a responseor always gets a conversation going.
(45:34):
And it's always nice to see, right?
But it's not the same in Instagram.
Nola Simon (45:38):
Rosie Sherry (45:39):
doesn't have an
Nola Simon (45:40):
algorithm, right?
Rosie Sherry (45:42):
It doesn't have an algorithm.
It's more personal sometimes.
Yeah.
Depends how you use it.
But I think like startups, especiallywhat, the tech world, they think they
can solve loneliness through technology.
And whilst I think it contributeshonestly, it's just We have to find
ways to properly connect one to onewith people and have conversations and
(46:06):
not rely on this spamming of groups orthinking like, getting the attention
or getting the virality is going toall of a sudden help our loneliness.
It doesn't.
It doesn't help at all.
And I guess if I was makingrecommendations to people, I would, I'd
say, think about your local community,think about the people around you.
(46:29):
Those are really the people, mostof the time, who you can, they will
help you get out of that loneliness.
It's like when you're Unwell when you'reunable to do something and it's the people
around you who are close to you who canactually give you what you need, if you
need someone to go to the shop for youand you've got a broken leg, whatever it
Nola Simon (46:52):
is, it's like local people can help you, right?
You just need sugar.
Let's go back to the old days.
Ask your neighbor for sugar.
Rosie Sherry (47:01):
It's so simple, right?
But like people have forgotten it.
Yes.
That's, that's my strategy.
That's my intentional strategy atthe moment is I'm guilty of falling
into that loneliness trap as well.
I'm guilty of just getting overwhelmedwith life and everything around it
and neglecting the people around me.
But especially in the pastcouple of years, I've like more
(47:25):
intentionally reached, reaching outto people, developing friendships.
And, making that extra effort with peoplethat, I think would make a difference
to my life with my family's life.
Nola Simon (47:38):
Yeah, no, very nice.
I agree.
Yeah, I've always I was thinkingthe other day I've always been a
part of a community family, right?
I grew up.
My parents would get up at fiveo'clock leave by six o'clock in the
morning, and they wouldn't get homeuntil six, seven o'clock at night.
And that's been my entire lifeuntil I started working from home.
And for people to then expect us togive that up, where you feel that you
(48:02):
can, if you need somebody to walk yourdog, you can just go next door, right?
You've built those connectionswith people, right?
Because you have more time.
To invest in the people around you, right?
And to give that up togo back to commuting.
So you have maybe onehour a day with my kids.
That's a really big expectation.
And I think that's honestly a bigpart of why people are fighting it
(48:25):
is because they've built communitycloser to where they live rather than
community where they work in the office.
How do you let that go?
And
Rosie Sherry (48:34):
some people, they look at me and say, Oh, you're crazy.
You've got what, five kids?
You've got a business, a coupleof businesses, homeschool as well.
It's Oh my God, that must be so much.
But actually there's certain aspects,for example, with homeschooling that
actually makes life so much easier.
Not doing the school run every day andnot dealing with, like, all the things
(48:57):
that come with school, all the messages,all the, you don't have to sit in an
Nola Simon (49:01):
auditorium and listen to 30 kids play recorders really badly.
Rosie Sherry (49:04):
Yeah.
But instead the flip side ofthat is we end up connecting with
other home editors, and we endup supporting each other, right?
So we're like, we'll have we sayplaydates, but it's also, playdates
aren't playdates themselves, oftenthey're a way of supporting each other
or, it's let's share car runs, or pick uptimes sometimes we find people locally,
(49:28):
and we try to, encourage each otherto, to help each other out, instead of
it's good for the environment as well,obviously, but it's like trying to be
efficient with each, with our time, butalso appreciate that we need each other.
It's really helpful to have other parentswho can step up and say, Oh, I'll pick up
your kid for you if you're stuck, right?
(49:49):
Yeah.
And but yeah, just Not havingthat makes a really lonely world.
So it's like homeschooling is naturallymore community led and it's almost
like it ends up becoming that, Iwouldn't quite say second family, but
it becomes that supportive networkthat That we need and we recently
(50:09):
went on a camping trip with someother home editors and it was amazing.
It was just like, there's a wayto get to know some of the other
parents, but then the kids just werelike, they were off playing all day.
And
Nola Simon (50:23):
you can schedule that when the weather's going to be good.
You don't have to scheduleit around actual school time.
So
Rosie Sherry (50:30):
yeah, literally we scheduled it during the
week when it's nice and quiet.
Nola Simon (50:34):
Yeah, you can take advantage of all of the benefits of that seniors
have and people who who aren't boundby that school's school schedule.
I like it.
Very cool.
All right.
Was there anything else that youthought we missed in this discussion
that you want to highlight?
Rosie Sherry (50:52):
I don't think so.
Nola Simon (50:54):
We managed to hit the high points of what we planned.
Oh, that's perfect.
I will make sure that all yoursocials are available to people.
Is there anything elsethat you want me to add?
Rosie Sherry (51:05):
No.
Just yeah, I guess websites to me are moreimportant than socials these days, okay.
Nola Simon (51:12):
Okay.
Yeah, I will make sure that's in there.
All right.
Thank you so much, Rosie.
I've learned so much from you.
This is a way of me saying thank you.
When you put out that postgoing, I want to be a podcast.
I'm like, Hey, you want to do mine?
Because I had you on my list forever.
And then you went back and youwere so busy and I didn't want
to, I didn't want to bother you.
But then I'm like, Oh, if she'sready for it, then, make this happen.
(51:35):
Thank you for doing it.
All right, let me just hit stop.
There we go.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.