December 26, 2024 • 25 mins
Today we speak with Matt Genovese, a chip designer turned community builder, as he unveils the surprising power of authentic connections in the tech world. Matt's adventure began with a simple idea that blossomed into Door64, a thriving technology community in Austin, Texas, uniting over 30,000 professionals. Tune in to understand how Matt's serendipitous path led him from designing chips to transforming lives, revealing unexpected marketing talents along the way. His story offers a unique perspective on how fostering real-world connections in professional communities can lead to profound personal and professional changes.
Authenticity and humor emerge as the secret ingredients in cultivating a true community, as Matt shares insights from his experience with Door64. Through personal anecdotes and shared interests, he highlights the difference between genuine connections and mere gatherings. Listen to learn how targeted job fairs and personal storytelling can create meaningful bonds that go beyond professional networking, offering a blueprint for building communities that resonate deeply with their members.
The conversation takes a deeper look into the evolving landscape of community building, both online and offline, in the tech industry as AI emerges. Explore the critical role of in-person events, the challenges of nurturing online engagements, and the subtle impact of platforms like AI Product Hive and Planarama. Matt's narrative illuminates the joy of witnessing communal and personal growth, painting a vivid picture of how lasting impressions and positive influences are cultivated within these vibrant networks.
Check out Matt's community AI Product Hive
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Eric Eden (00:01):
We are talking about the power of communities,
solving problems withcommunities, and how to do that
in the era of AI, and we have agreat guest to talk to us about
this today, with a lot ofexperience in this area Matt
Genovese.
Welcome to the show.
Matt Genovese (00:18):
Thank you so much , eric, nice to meet you.
Eric Eden (00:22):
Why don't we start off by you giving us, just a
minute or two, a little bitabout who you are and what you
do?
Matt Genovese (00:29):
Sure.
So my background is actually abit varied.
I think, if I were to look atmy career, I didn't necessarily
expect it was going to bob andweave as it did, but there's
probably a lot of people in thatsame boat.
Lot of people in that same boat.
My background I have anundergrad and graduate in
computer and electricalengineering and I spent about
(00:50):
half my career as a chipdesigner in Austin, texas, and
then I spent the other half ofmy career moving into software,
product development and justmainly product development as a
whole, and these days I run aproduct design firm called
Planarama Design and we focus onthe design and requirements and
documentation that is neededfor complex products, usually
(01:13):
SaaS offerings, b2b offeringsand things like that.
We tend to get into the weedsand think about the nuances and
challenges that commonly occur,that the development team that
is downstream usually the clientbrings their own dev team is
able to build it and build itefficiently and effectively and
not stumble, and in fact, ableto execute very quickly so we
(01:37):
can get that product to market.
As it turns out, I'm not adesigner, I'm not a UX designer
or anybody like that.
I'm actually, as I said, anengineer, but I have a designer.
I'm not a UX designer oranybody like that, I'm actually,
as I said, an engineer but Ihave a great team of designers
and I learn a lot from them andI think they learn some from me
too, and together we are workdone.
But, like I said, I have avaried background and back when
(01:57):
I was living in Austin, Iactually started a technology
community a bit by accident.
It ended up growing quite bigand I learned a lot from that
experience and probably learnedthat I had some marketing chops
when I didn't even realize I did.
You never know what muscles youhave until you got to use them.
Eric Eden (02:15):
Indeed, so we're ready to be inspired.
Let's hear a little bit aboutthis.
How did you build thiscommunity and what were you able
to achieve with doing that?
Matt Genovese (02:26):
Well, the storyline is that I had went
back to school after about sevenyears after getting my
undergrad and I was working atMotorola at the time and I was
able to go back and get mymaster's in electrical and
computer engineering at theUniversity of Texas at Austin,
and I had met many people likemyself, people that were in, you
(02:47):
know, were maybe five to 10years out of their undergrad,
people that were working atcompanies, either at Motorola or
at AMD or Intel or any other.
You know many other techcompanies in the Austin area If
you know Austin.
Austin has got so many techcompanies.
You know it's hard to findsomebody who isn't working in
tech sometimes, but I found itand I thought what a shame.
(03:10):
Right, because engineersespecially can benefit from
networking and yet they oftenare seen as the more reclusive
kind that aren't going out andexpanding their network, aren't
going out and expanding theirnetwork.
It's not usually taught inschool how to go do that, unless
a professor happens to beforward thinking and trying to
enlighten their class about howthings work in the real world
(03:33):
beyond designing chips orwriting software.
And so I thought it'd be reallynice to find a way to kind of
coalesce or aggregate all thetech people in the Austin area I
was thinking of engineers andtry to help them to meet each
other, just to network, just toget together and have some
(03:54):
interactions face-to-face.
And this was around the timewhen LinkedIn was just coming
out and networking was certainlybeing promoted and everybody
was joining LinkedIn.
In fact, I was trying toincentivize my own colleagues at
work at Motorola.
I said, boy, it'd be reallygood to join LinkedIn.
There's real benefit to it.
But at the same time I feltthat there was a need to
(04:18):
actually meet each otherface-to-face, because there's a
connection that you make withsomebody, like I did in my
master's program.
You can't just make you knowthrough a digital connection if
you never have any interactionbeyond.
You know, subscribing orconnecting or linking or
whatever the term is right.
You need to have a way to beable to get to know each other
(04:39):
and have some kind of human tohuman connection, have some kind
of human to human connection.
And so, yeah, that was how Igot started and it kind of grew
from there.
But in the end the result waswe ended up over about six years
having around 30,000 peoplebecome part of the community and
lots of live events and thingslike that, and I learned a lot
(05:00):
along the way.
And that's where I kind offigured out that, oh, I can do
this.
I didn't know I could.
Eric Eden (05:08):
And what was the real impact of creating this
community of 30,000 people?
Matt Genovese (05:14):
Well, it's interesting, there are a couple
of them right.
One of them was people foundjobs, right and I would have.
I would go out sometimes andsomebody would recognize me and
say, oh, you're Matt from thecommunity was called Door 64.
I named it after my Commodore64 that I had when I was growing
up and but D-O-O-R like a door.
(05:37):
And that was a temporary nameuntil people, until I actually
realized I couldn't change itanymore because everybody kind
of gravitated to the name.
But the tangible benefits wasthat people found work and it
made legitimate changes inpeople's lives and I was really
thrilled to see that.
To know that something I startedhad that personal impact was
(06:00):
incredibly rewarding and it justmade my day anytime.
Somebody told me that, or myweek for that matter, and for me
personally.
I grew up in upstate New Yorkin the 80s and there was a real
downturn and my father was outof work for a long, long time.
It had a lot of impact on ourfamily.
So there was a part of me thatrealized much, much later after
(06:23):
I exited from door 64, afterthat point I realized that I was
doing this to try to save, Ithink, a lot of families from
the stress that happened.
The primary caregiver or theprimary breadwinner is out of
work and that causes a lot ofreal stress and anxiety and
changes people.
So I was thrilled that we couldaccomplish that in and of
(06:45):
itself, but we also found thatthere were ways to solve
problems collectively that noone person could do themselves,
and that was rather exciting.
Eric Eden (06:58):
Yeah, and here in the era of AI, a lot of people,
anytime they have a question,pops to their head they need
advice.
They think the main thing is toask ChatGPT.
But the question is, thequality of advice you get may
not be the highest from ChatGPT,right?
Matt Genovese (07:16):
Well, it may not be, it may not be empathetic,
that's right, and it certainlymay not be able to go do things
for you although with agents,who knows?
But in terms of being able topick up the phone and call
somebody on my networker'sbehalf or my friend's behalf, ai
(07:37):
is not going to do that yet,but there is.
I believe, even more so nowthan there was before.
Like, look, when we were onlinein the 2000s, when LinkedIn
came out, facebook came out, youhad a pretty good idea that
there was a person behind everyprofile.
Right, you're talking to aperson.
(07:59):
You know, I would say probablythe 2010s, when people started
realizing wait, these are botaccounts that are trying to spam
, and some of the socialnetworks and I would say a lot
of them now are kind ofinfiltrated by that.
But now we have even this.
In some ways, it's almost atrick that you know, man, I
(08:20):
really don't know if I'm talkingto anybody on the other side.
I really don't know if I'mtalking to anybody on the other
side.
And it's getting to the pointwhere, if you've seen the movie
Her or if you look at what'shappening with video, you're
like my gosh, I'm not even sure,even if I get on video, if it's
going to be a real person thatI'm talking to.
And so we have this time rightnow, where we're going to get
(08:45):
faked out, and I think, evenmore so than before, there's
going to be a craving forauthenticity, right, the
pendulum's swinging in onedirection.
You get AI-generated music, art,whatever, but people are having
to define, well, what is artreally?
Is art something that'sgenerated?
Does it come from a human?
Does it come from a person?
Does it?
Is art something that'sgenerated?
Does it come from a human?
(09:06):
Does it come from a person?
Does it come from AI?
Does conversation, does it comefrom a human?
Does it come from AI?
And what does authenticityreally mean?
And that plays into a lot ofareas, by the way, it plays into
UX design, which is what mycompany does.
How do you indicate thatsomething is AI-gener, human
generated?
Do we have to tackle that atsome point?
So there's a lot there, butanyway, with community, I think
(09:29):
that communities are going tobecome even more interesting and
scrutinized and powerful if youcan actually guarantee that
there are people involved inthem and not outsourced to just
AI to go and achieve somemarketing objective.
Eric Eden (09:43):
Yeah, I guess what's real is the question going
forward when so much is fake?
The question is what is real?
And I think that getting advicefrom people who are doing the
thing that you want to do is theideal thing from the front
lines, if you will.
(10:03):
If you will, I mean, ai is agreat research buddy, but you
still have to double, triplecheck everything it's telling
you before you make any materialdecisions from it.
So I think you know it's ifyou're talking to somebody who
works in the tech area that youneed advice on, for example, and
they're in it every day andthey're a person and you're
(10:24):
talking they're a real personand you're talking to them in
person at an event, for example,like I don't think you'd have
to do necessarily the same levelof sanity check.
I probably still sanity checkeverything to get multiple
sources for ideas, but you knowit's still, I think, much more
authentic on the spectrum, likeyou're saying.
Matt Genovese (10:43):
I think so too.
I'll tell you.
You know, when I was runningDoor64, every week I sent out a
newsletter and I wrote it atnight.
I would write it on a Sundaynight to send out on a Monday
morning, and in the beginning Iwould include stories of my kids
or what happened last week, orI'd be.
You know, I can't help but be abit humorous, especially if I'm
(11:06):
, you know, an engineering humor, you know, and so I tend to be.
You know, I try to writesomething clever.
And then after a while I thought, you know, maybe it's becoming
a professional community, maybeI should cut that out and I
should just talk about what'scoming up in the following week
and so on.
And I would attend my events.
We would hold networking eventsin Austin for a few hundred
(11:27):
people each, and folks wouldcome over and say, hey, I'm kind
of mad at you.
And I thought, oh my gosh, whathappened?
And they said you stoppedwriting about your family, you
stopped writing about thepersonal things.
You just kind of made itbusinessy.
And I realized at that pointthat this was not an initiative,
(11:48):
this was a community in thereal sense and people wanted to
get to know me.
And in fact, every newsletter Ihad my photo there so that when
they came to an event theywould at least know one person.
It was all the willpower theycould muster to get to an event
(12:09):
and if they knew that I wasgoing to be the one running it,
then at least they'd be able tosee my face and they'd have a
friendly face right To go andmeet and try to help them engage
in the community.
But the newsletter and that allof that kind of came together
and it turned into a learningexperience where the
authenticity was joined at thehip with community and if it
(12:32):
wasn't, then it wasn't really acommunity, right?
If there wasn't that level ofconnection and authenticity,
then it was just an initiative.
It was something else.
But that term community keptgetting thrown around a lot.
You know we have a community ofthis, community that, and I
think that you know, linkedin isnot a community, linkedin is
just a platform, right, and they, many of these platforms, used
(12:53):
to call themselves communities,and I think they were.
It was disingenuous to do sobecause it there there wasn't
anything in common with thepeople.
There wasn't a reason toconnect or talk.
It was just, you know, likeputting a bunch of people in the
same room.
That's not community, that'sjust an aggregation of people.
Eric Eden (13:10):
Yeah, I think it's a community when people know, like
and trust each other.
I think that's what you'resaying, right.
Matt Genovese (13:18):
That's right.
That's right, and when theyhave some common, there are
usually some commonalitiesbetween them.
In Austin, it was people inhigh tech, people working in
hardware, software, it but itwas not for people that were
coming there to solicit, right,it was not for financial
planners or realtors or peoplelike that.
I would actually boot them outof my events because they'd try
(13:40):
to get in, because they wantedto meet the people that could be
their clients, right.
So I would actively try to keepthe group focused and, as I
mentioned before, we had somecommon objectives that I thought
you know.
Over time, I started realizingand seeing that there are a lot
of job postings about certaintypes of roles that nobody could
(14:02):
.
It seemed like these companiescouldn't find the people they
needed.
It seemed like these companiescouldn't find the people they
needed, and so I ended upputting together an event in
Austin where we had it was avery targeted job fair, focused
on very certain roles that werehard to find, and we found that
people were flying in from allover the US to come to that
(14:25):
event because they knew it wasworth their time over the US to
come to that event.
Because they knew it was worththeir time and so that what I
also learned about communitiesis that focus brought value.
Sometimes people think that thenumbers are going to grow and
the numbers are going to make itall worthwhile, but if you
don't have any focus for whatyou're trying to accomplish or
the types of people that arethere, then it's like what I
said before it's just a bunch ofpeople in the same room that
(14:48):
don't necessarily have anythingin common.
And this job fair turned out tobe very successful.
We called it the pain point jobfair because we were trying to
address that pain point, and itreally did make a difference.
These companies were able tohire the people they needed,
which I saw as being successfulfor the area right.
It gave them the people theyneeded so they could grow and
(15:08):
perhaps bring on other types ofpeople as well that were in the
area.
Eric Eden (15:12):
Yeah, that's great.
I think the power of focusreally helps drive that
connection between people,because if there's just a lot of
people there that don't reallymeet, the bar of looks like them
can be helpful to them and it'sjust vendors trying to sell
people.
That's sort of a yuckyexperience.
Matt Genovese (15:39):
What was the hardest thing about building the
community Well, the hardestthing?
I knew that I wanted to solve aproblem right, and that problem
(16:08):
was, I think, tech folks in thethat.
I tried this.
I focused on the website.
This was at the time when wedidn't have online communities,
like we didn't have Discord andstuff like this.
Right, slack was just comingout, so there were some
opportunities to use it, but Ihad to build something myself.
So I built something like anengineer would and I made it
pixel perfect.
I made it beautiful and nobodycame to my party.
(16:30):
Right, I put everything thereand it made it a real challenge
because folks weren't coming tomy events or coming to my online
.
You know, hangout time was thatgetting that online discussion
was very difficult.
(16:50):
It turns out if I solved otherproblems for people because I
thought the discussion was goingto help make people connected
and help them to buildrelationships, and it would, but
that happens better in person.
What I found was easier wassolving other problems for
people like hey, here are somejob postings that were published
on our site from the past week.
Here are some events coming upin the community relevant to
tech that you may want to knowabout and that got the
(17:13):
newsletter First of all.
The newsletter startedpublicizing that.
That got it forwarded out.
People started reallygravitating and coming onto the
site.
The discussions, the onlinediscussions, were the very last
thing and it was the very firstthing I wanted and it was the
very last thing to happen.
Right and now that might'vebeen because it was the time.
It might be that just wasn'ttoo much to talk about.
(17:35):
But I'll tell you the events,the event, the in-person events.
I found they blew up and theybecame really popular because
people could come out and startmeeting each other in person and
building their own network in away that they couldn't before,
and so in the end, I was solvingthe problem.
I just didn't solve it in a waythat I originally thought I was
(17:56):
going to.
I ended up solving it adifferent way, but I had to bob
and weave and figure it outalong the way.
Eric Eden (18:03):
Yeah, I think in-person events still sort of
probably have that magic fordifferent reasons today.
Like, probably one of thereasons you mentioned is online,
like on LinkedIn, there's 120million fake accounts they
deleted just this year.
Like I can't even wrap my headaround that stat of like it's
(18:24):
not really a community, it'slike a bot community if it's
anything, and so you know,that's, I think, a very weird
experience for people.
Even when people, I think, gointo Reddit since they've gone
public is more popular for sortof these subreddits or
communities, and I think some ofthem get kind of interesting,
(18:47):
but a lot of them are just sortof full of weird stuff, and so
I've heard a lot of feedbackfrom people saying they still
really get a lot of value fromthe in-person events.
I think it's good to researchthings online, use AI, but I
think people still are going toconferences and networking
(19:07):
events and things like this totry to get high quality,
authentic insights, like youwere saying.
Matt Genovese (19:15):
That's exactly right.
I tend to think the same, eric,that in-person events and
conferences are probably notgoing to go away, because we
still are going to crave that inperson.
We want to be able to shakesomebody's hand right, talk with
them, get the fullcommunication right From them
with the face, the hands, theeverything right, the voice
(19:37):
right.
Have that some kind of fullcommunication with them.
And conferences I mean you cando that on Zoom and we're doing
that right here, but on you know, when you go to a conference,
you can do that at scale, andit's hard to do that at scale,
uh, unless you're hosting awebinar or a podcast sometimes.
But to go and meet other peopleand, by the way, also to get the
kind of get the zeitgeist ofwhere things are at you it still
(20:00):
is has the South by Southwestconference and I love to just go
walk around the floor and kindof just spend a day seeing what
people are working on.
It gives you an idea of whatthe lay of the land is or the
state of the union looks likefor a certain area or technology
or something like that.
It's hard to do that if you'renot physically there at the
conference, everybody kind ofhanging out their shingle and
(20:21):
showing what they're working on.
You know they're useful in thatregard, so I don't know that
they're going to go away anytimesoon.
Eric Eden (20:29):
I think it's still a very powerful way for people to
connect.
You can't really enjoy a coffeewith AI.
You can drink your own coffee,but it's not really the same as
enjoying a cup of coffee withsomeone else and having a good
conversation.
So it's just sort of adifferent thing.
Any other advice you could giveto people who are looking to
(20:55):
create their own community?
Matt Genovese (21:07):
actually, at Planarama, we have a strong
component of our work thatinvolves AI, and we started on
this early, very early, actuallydoing work on AI and systems
that are using AI and designingfor those systems, so we've kind
of got our feet wet in thatarea.
So what we did is we built anonline community.
We started one a couple about ayear and a half ago called AI
Product Hive, and it's forproduct teams, people from
(21:29):
product teams, product managers,designers, developers, qa to
come on and to meet other peoplethat are doing the same kind of
things that they are,especially when they're working
on projects or products thatinvolve generative AI, and to
share stories, to share what'sworking, share what's not, and
that can still be very valuableright, those online communities
(21:51):
are quite useful and people aregoing on there and using it
every day.
I think we still have the needto have face-to-face connections
Now on an online community,that can be a challenge.
What we do is we hold bi-weeklycalls where we have a topic or
(22:11):
we have somebody presentingabout what they're working on,
and we have everybody join andwe post those on YouTube and
that's a way for people to havesome level of authenticity about
who this is and who the peopleare behind it, and having that
connection and sometimes makingthe connections that are going
to go outside of the communityand turn into friendships or
(22:31):
turn into new projects orventures or whatever that is.
So I think communities arestill very relevant and going to
start them is actually mucheasier than it was before.
I had to build something, youknow, build a site, back in 2006
to go and do this, but nowyou've got things like Discord
(22:52):
and Slack and many others thatare available.
That well, you know, almostwithin about half a day you can
be set up, you know, and geteverything the way you want it.
But then being involved with itand nurturing it, that's a
different story, right?
So there are people that dothis, you know, community
managers and people that grow it, and I have a wonderful one
(23:14):
that works with me and he's inthat all the time, helping
people to feel welcome in thecommunity and doing a fantastic
job, and so that's it's anongoing effort.
But, look, I know that we'reable to do good things with it
and we can create kind of thesewin-win scenarios with people in
the community meeting eachother and also getting to know
about Planarama as well.
(23:34):
We don't make it a hard sellabout what we do at Planarama,
but people know that we're there.
But, more importantly, we getto see folks thrive and that's
exciting.
Eric Eden (23:44):
That's great.
I will link to that in the shownotes so people who are a good
fit for that can check it outand really appreciate you being
with us today and sharing yourstories and your insights.
Thanks for being on the show.
Matt Genovese (23:57):
Thank you, Eric.
I had a great time.
It was really nice to take thislittle bit of a trip down
memory lane for me on thecommunity side.
I've been doing this for
We are talking about the power of communities,
solving problems withcommunities, and how to do that
in the era of AI, and we have agreat guest to talk to us about
this today, with a lot ofexperience in this area Matt
Genovese.
Welcome to the show.
Matt Genovese (00:18):
Thank you so much , eric, nice to meet you.
Eric Eden (00:22):
Why don't we start off by you giving us, just a
minute or two, a little bitabout who you are and what you
do?
Matt Genovese (00:29):
Sure.
So my background is actually abit varied.
I think, if I were to look atmy career, I didn't necessarily
expect it was going to bob andweave as it did, but there's
probably a lot of people in thatsame boat.
Lot of people in that same boat.
My background I have anundergrad and graduate in
computer and electricalengineering and I spent about
(00:50):
half my career as a chipdesigner in Austin, texas, and
then I spent the other half ofmy career moving into software,
product development and justmainly product development as a
whole, and these days I run aproduct design firm called
Planarama Design and we focus onthe design and requirements and
documentation that is neededfor complex products, usually
(01:13):
SaaS offerings, b2b offeringsand things like that.
We tend to get into the weedsand think about the nuances and
challenges that commonly occur,that the development team that
is downstream usually the clientbrings their own dev team is
able to build it and build itefficiently and effectively and
not stumble, and in fact, ableto execute very quickly so we
(01:37):
can get that product to market.
As it turns out, I'm not adesigner, I'm not a UX designer
or anybody like that.
I'm actually, as I said, anengineer, but I have a designer.
I'm not a UX designer oranybody like that, I'm actually,
as I said, an engineer but Ihave a great team of designers
and I learn a lot from them andI think they learn some from me
too, and together we are workdone.
But, like I said, I have avaried background and back when
(01:57):
I was living in Austin, Iactually started a technology
community a bit by accident.
It ended up growing quite bigand I learned a lot from that
experience and probably learnedthat I had some marketing chops
when I didn't even realize I did.
You never know what muscles youhave until you got to use them.
Eric Eden (02:15):
Indeed, so we're ready to be inspired.
Let's hear a little bit aboutthis.
How did you build thiscommunity and what were you able
to achieve with doing that?
Matt Genovese (02:26):
Well, the storyline is that I had went
back to school after about sevenyears after getting my
undergrad and I was working atMotorola at the time and I was
able to go back and get mymaster's in electrical and
computer engineering at theUniversity of Texas at Austin,
and I had met many people likemyself, people that were in, you
(02:47):
know, were maybe five to 10years out of their undergrad,
people that were working atcompanies, either at Motorola or
at AMD or Intel or any other.
You know many other techcompanies in the Austin area If
you know Austin.
Austin has got so many techcompanies.
You know it's hard to findsomebody who isn't working in
tech sometimes, but I found itand I thought what a shame.
(03:10):
Right, because engineersespecially can benefit from
networking and yet they oftenare seen as the more reclusive
kind that aren't going out andexpanding their network, aren't
going out and expanding theirnetwork.
It's not usually taught inschool how to go do that, unless
a professor happens to beforward thinking and trying to
enlighten their class about howthings work in the real world
(03:33):
beyond designing chips orwriting software.
And so I thought it'd be reallynice to find a way to kind of
coalesce or aggregate all thetech people in the Austin area I
was thinking of engineers andtry to help them to meet each
other, just to network, just toget together and have some
(03:54):
interactions face-to-face.
And this was around the timewhen LinkedIn was just coming
out and networking was certainlybeing promoted and everybody
was joining LinkedIn.
In fact, I was trying toincentivize my own colleagues at
work at Motorola.
I said, boy, it'd be reallygood to join LinkedIn.
There's real benefit to it.
But at the same time I feltthat there was a need to
(04:18):
actually meet each otherface-to-face, because there's a
connection that you make withsomebody, like I did in my
master's program.
You can't just make you knowthrough a digital connection if
you never have any interactionbeyond.
You know, subscribing orconnecting or linking or
whatever the term is right.
You need to have a way to beable to get to know each other
(04:39):
and have some kind of human tohuman connection, have some kind
of human to human connection.
And so, yeah, that was how Igot started and it kind of grew
from there.
But in the end the result waswe ended up over about six years
having around 30,000 peoplebecome part of the community and
lots of live events and thingslike that, and I learned a lot
(05:00):
along the way.
And that's where I kind offigured out that, oh, I can do
this.
I didn't know I could.
Eric Eden (05:08):
And what was the real impact of creating this
community of 30,000 people?
Matt Genovese (05:14):
Well, it's interesting, there are a couple
of them right.
One of them was people foundjobs, right and I would have.
I would go out sometimes andsomebody would recognize me and
say, oh, you're Matt from thecommunity was called Door 64.
I named it after my Commodore64 that I had when I was growing
up and but D-O-O-R like a door.
(05:37):
And that was a temporary nameuntil people, until I actually
realized I couldn't change itanymore because everybody kind
of gravitated to the name.
But the tangible benefits wasthat people found work and it
made legitimate changes inpeople's lives and I was really
thrilled to see that.
To know that something I startedhad that personal impact was
(06:00):
incredibly rewarding and it justmade my day anytime.
Somebody told me that, or myweek for that matter, and for me
personally.
I grew up in upstate New Yorkin the 80s and there was a real
downturn and my father was outof work for a long, long time.
It had a lot of impact on ourfamily.
So there was a part of me thatrealized much, much later after
(06:23):
I exited from door 64, afterthat point I realized that I was
doing this to try to save, Ithink, a lot of families from
the stress that happened.
The primary caregiver or theprimary breadwinner is out of
work and that causes a lot ofreal stress and anxiety and
changes people.
So I was thrilled that we couldaccomplish that in and of
(06:45):
itself, but we also found thatthere were ways to solve
problems collectively that noone person could do themselves,
and that was rather exciting.
Eric Eden (06:58):
Yeah, and here in the era of AI, a lot of people,
anytime they have a question,pops to their head they need
advice.
They think the main thing is toask ChatGPT.
But the question is, thequality of advice you get may
not be the highest from ChatGPT,right?
Matt Genovese (07:16):
Well, it may not be, it may not be empathetic,
that's right, and it certainlymay not be able to go do things
for you although with agents,who knows?
But in terms of being able topick up the phone and call
somebody on my networker'sbehalf or my friend's behalf, ai
(07:37):
is not going to do that yet,but there is.
I believe, even more so nowthan there was before.
Like, look, when we were onlinein the 2000s, when LinkedIn
came out, facebook came out, youhad a pretty good idea that
there was a person behind everyprofile.
Right, you're talking to aperson.
(07:59):
You know, I would say probablythe 2010s, when people started
realizing wait, these are botaccounts that are trying to spam
, and some of the socialnetworks and I would say a lot
of them now are kind ofinfiltrated by that.
But now we have even this.
In some ways, it's almost atrick that you know, man, I
(08:20):
really don't know if I'm talkingto anybody on the other side.
I really don't know if I'mtalking to anybody on the other
side.
And it's getting to the pointwhere, if you've seen the movie
Her or if you look at what'shappening with video, you're
like my gosh, I'm not even sure,even if I get on video, if it's
going to be a real person thatI'm talking to.
And so we have this time rightnow, where we're going to get
(08:45):
faked out, and I think, evenmore so than before, there's
going to be a craving forauthenticity, right, the
pendulum's swinging in onedirection.
You get AI-generated music, art,whatever, but people are having
to define, well, what is artreally?
Is art something that'sgenerated?
Does it come from a human?
Does it come from a person?
Does it?
Is art something that'sgenerated?
Does it come from a human?
(09:06):
Does it come from a person?
Does it come from AI?
Does conversation, does it comefrom a human?
Does it come from AI?
And what does authenticityreally mean?
And that plays into a lot ofareas, by the way, it plays into
UX design, which is what mycompany does.
How do you indicate thatsomething is AI-gener, human
generated?
Do we have to tackle that atsome point?
So there's a lot there, butanyway, with community, I think
(09:29):
that communities are going tobecome even more interesting and
scrutinized and powerful if youcan actually guarantee that
there are people involved inthem and not outsourced to just
AI to go and achieve somemarketing objective.
Eric Eden (09:43):
Yeah, I guess what's real is the question going
forward when so much is fake?
The question is what is real?
And I think that getting advicefrom people who are doing the
thing that you want to do is theideal thing from the front
lines, if you will.
(10:03):
If you will, I mean, ai is agreat research buddy, but you
still have to double, triplecheck everything it's telling
you before you make any materialdecisions from it.
So I think you know it's ifyou're talking to somebody who
works in the tech area that youneed advice on, for example, and
they're in it every day andthey're a person and you're
(10:24):
talking they're a real personand you're talking to them in
person at an event, for example,like I don't think you'd have
to do necessarily the same levelof sanity check.
I probably still sanity checkeverything to get multiple
sources for ideas, but you knowit's still, I think, much more
authentic on the spectrum, likeyou're saying.
Matt Genovese (10:43):
I think so too.
I'll tell you.
You know, when I was runningDoor64, every week I sent out a
newsletter and I wrote it atnight.
I would write it on a Sundaynight to send out on a Monday
morning, and in the beginning Iwould include stories of my kids
or what happened last week, orI'd be.
You know, I can't help but be abit humorous, especially if I'm
(11:06):
, you know, an engineering humor, you know, and so I tend to be.
You know, I try to writesomething clever.
And then after a while I thought, you know, maybe it's becoming
a professional community, maybeI should cut that out and I
should just talk about what'scoming up in the following week
and so on.
And I would attend my events.
We would hold networking eventsin Austin for a few hundred
(11:27):
people each, and folks wouldcome over and say, hey, I'm kind
of mad at you.
And I thought, oh my gosh, whathappened?
And they said you stoppedwriting about your family, you
stopped writing about thepersonal things.
You just kind of made itbusinessy.
And I realized at that pointthat this was not an initiative,
(11:48):
this was a community in thereal sense and people wanted to
get to know me.
And in fact, every newsletter Ihad my photo there so that when
they came to an event theywould at least know one person.
It was all the willpower theycould muster to get to an event
(12:09):
and if they knew that I wasgoing to be the one running it,
then at least they'd be able tosee my face and they'd have a
friendly face right To go andmeet and try to help them engage
in the community.
But the newsletter and that allof that kind of came together
and it turned into a learningexperience where the
authenticity was joined at thehip with community and if it
(12:32):
wasn't, then it wasn't really acommunity, right?
If there wasn't that level ofconnection and authenticity,
then it was just an initiative.
It was something else.
But that term community keptgetting thrown around a lot.
You know we have a community ofthis, community that, and I
think that you know, linkedin isnot a community, linkedin is
just a platform, right, and they, many of these platforms, used
(12:53):
to call themselves communities,and I think they were.
It was disingenuous to do sobecause it there there wasn't
anything in common with thepeople.
There wasn't a reason toconnect or talk.
It was just, you know, likeputting a bunch of people in the
same room.
That's not community, that'sjust an aggregation of people.
Eric Eden (13:10):
Yeah, I think it's a community when people know, like
and trust each other.
I think that's what you'resaying, right.
Matt Genovese (13:18):
That's right.
That's right, and when theyhave some common, there are
usually some commonalitiesbetween them.
In Austin, it was people inhigh tech, people working in
hardware, software, it but itwas not for people that were
coming there to solicit, right,it was not for financial
planners or realtors or peoplelike that.
I would actually boot them outof my events because they'd try
(13:40):
to get in, because they wantedto meet the people that could be
their clients, right.
So I would actively try to keepthe group focused and, as I
mentioned before, we had somecommon objectives that I thought
you know.
Over time, I started realizingand seeing that there are a lot
of job postings about certaintypes of roles that nobody could
(14:02):
.
It seemed like these companiescouldn't find the people they
needed.
It seemed like these companiescouldn't find the people they
needed, and so I ended upputting together an event in
Austin where we had it was avery targeted job fair, focused
on very certain roles that werehard to find, and we found that
people were flying in from allover the US to come to that
(14:25):
event because they knew it wasworth their time over the US to
come to that event.
Because they knew it was worththeir time and so that what I
also learned about communitiesis that focus brought value.
Sometimes people think that thenumbers are going to grow and
the numbers are going to make itall worthwhile, but if you
don't have any focus for whatyou're trying to accomplish or
the types of people that arethere, then it's like what I
said before it's just a bunch ofpeople in the same room that
(14:48):
don't necessarily have anythingin common.
And this job fair turned out tobe very successful.
We called it the pain point jobfair because we were trying to
address that pain point, and itreally did make a difference.
These companies were able tohire the people they needed,
which I saw as being successfulfor the area right.
It gave them the people theyneeded so they could grow and
(15:08):
perhaps bring on other types ofpeople as well that were in the
area.
Eric Eden (15:12):
Yeah, that's great.
I think the power of focusreally helps drive that
connection between people,because if there's just a lot of
people there that don't reallymeet, the bar of looks like them
can be helpful to them and it'sjust vendors trying to sell
people.
That's sort of a yuckyexperience.
Matt Genovese (15:39):
What was the hardest thing about building the
community Well, the hardestthing?
I knew that I wanted to solve aproblem right, and that problem
(16:08):
was, I think, tech folks in thethat.
I tried this.
I focused on the website.
This was at the time when wedidn't have online communities,
like we didn't have Discord andstuff like this.
Right, slack was just comingout, so there were some
opportunities to use it, but Ihad to build something myself.
So I built something like anengineer would and I made it
pixel perfect.
I made it beautiful and nobodycame to my party.
(16:30):
Right, I put everything thereand it made it a real challenge
because folks weren't coming tomy events or coming to my online
.
You know, hangout time was thatgetting that online discussion
was very difficult.
(16:50):
It turns out if I solved otherproblems for people because I
thought the discussion was goingto help make people connected
and help them to buildrelationships, and it would, but
that happens better in person.
What I found was easier wassolving other problems for
people like hey, here are somejob postings that were published
on our site from the past week.
Here are some events coming upin the community relevant to
tech that you may want to knowabout and that got the
(17:13):
newsletter First of all.
The newsletter startedpublicizing that.
That got it forwarded out.
People started reallygravitating and coming onto the
site.
The discussions, the onlinediscussions, were the very last
thing and it was the very firstthing I wanted and it was the
very last thing to happen.
Right and now that might'vebeen because it was the time.
It might be that just wasn'ttoo much to talk about.
(17:35):
But I'll tell you the events,the event, the in-person events.
I found they blew up and theybecame really popular because
people could come out and startmeeting each other in person and
building their own network in away that they couldn't before,
and so in the end, I was solvingthe problem.
I just didn't solve it in a waythat I originally thought I was
(17:56):
going to.
I ended up solving it adifferent way, but I had to bob
and weave and figure it outalong the way.
Eric Eden (18:03):
Yeah, I think in-person events still sort of
probably have that magic fordifferent reasons today.
Like, probably one of thereasons you mentioned is online,
like on LinkedIn, there's 120million fake accounts they
deleted just this year.
Like I can't even wrap my headaround that stat of like it's
(18:24):
not really a community, it'slike a bot community if it's
anything, and so you know,that's, I think, a very weird
experience for people.
Even when people, I think, gointo Reddit since they've gone
public is more popular for sortof these subreddits or
communities, and I think some ofthem get kind of interesting,
(18:47):
but a lot of them are just sortof full of weird stuff, and so
I've heard a lot of feedbackfrom people saying they still
really get a lot of value fromthe in-person events.
I think it's good to researchthings online, use AI, but I
think people still are going toconferences and networking
(19:07):
events and things like this totry to get high quality,
authentic insights, like youwere saying.
Matt Genovese (19:15):
That's exactly right.
I tend to think the same, eric,that in-person events and
conferences are probably notgoing to go away, because we
still are going to crave that inperson.
We want to be able to shakesomebody's hand right, talk with
them, get the fullcommunication right From them
with the face, the hands, theeverything right, the voice
(19:37):
right.
Have that some kind of fullcommunication with them.
And conferences I mean you cando that on Zoom and we're doing
that right here, but on you know, when you go to a conference,
you can do that at scale, andit's hard to do that at scale,
uh, unless you're hosting awebinar or a podcast sometimes.
But to go and meet other peopleand, by the way, also to get the
kind of get the zeitgeist ofwhere things are at you it still
(20:00):
is has the South by Southwestconference and I love to just go
walk around the floor and kindof just spend a day seeing what
people are working on.
It gives you an idea of whatthe lay of the land is or the
state of the union looks likefor a certain area or technology
or something like that.
It's hard to do that if you'renot physically there at the
conference, everybody kind ofhanging out their shingle and
(20:21):
showing what they're working on.
You know they're useful in thatregard, so I don't know that
they're going to go away anytimesoon.
Eric Eden (20:29):
I think it's still a very powerful way for people to
connect.
You can't really enjoy a coffeewith AI.
You can drink your own coffee,but it's not really the same as
enjoying a cup of coffee withsomeone else and having a good
conversation.
So it's just sort of adifferent thing.
Any other advice you could giveto people who are looking to
(20:55):
create their own community?
Matt Genovese (21:07):
actually, at Planarama, we have a strong
component of our work thatinvolves AI, and we started on
this early, very early, actuallydoing work on AI and systems
that are using AI and designingfor those systems, so we've kind
of got our feet wet in thatarea.
So what we did is we built anonline community.
We started one a couple about ayear and a half ago called AI
Product Hive, and it's forproduct teams, people from
(21:29):
product teams, product managers,designers, developers, qa to
come on and to meet other peoplethat are doing the same kind of
things that they are,especially when they're working
on projects or products thatinvolve generative AI, and to
share stories, to share what'sworking, share what's not, and
that can still be very valuableright, those online communities
(21:51):
are quite useful and people aregoing on there and using it
every day.
I think we still have the needto have face-to-face connections
Now on an online community,that can be a challenge.
What we do is we hold bi-weeklycalls where we have a topic or
(22:11):
we have somebody presentingabout what they're working on,
and we have everybody join andwe post those on YouTube and
that's a way for people to havesome level of authenticity about
who this is and who the peopleare behind it, and having that
connection and sometimes makingthe connections that are going
to go outside of the communityand turn into friendships or
(22:31):
turn into new projects orventures or whatever that is.
So I think communities arestill very relevant and going to
start them is actually mucheasier than it was before.
I had to build something, youknow, build a site, back in 2006
to go and do this, but nowyou've got things like Discord
(22:52):
and Slack and many others thatare available.
That well, you know, almostwithin about half a day you can
be set up, you know, and geteverything the way you want it.
But then being involved with itand nurturing it, that's a
different story, right?
So there are people that dothis, you know, community
managers and people that grow it, and I have a wonderful one
(23:14):
that works with me and he's inthat all the time, helping
people to feel welcome in thecommunity and doing a fantastic
job, and so that's it's anongoing effort.
But, look, I know that we'reable to do good things with it
and we can create kind of thesewin-win scenarios with people in
the community meeting eachother and also getting to know
about Planarama as well.
(23:34):
We don't make it a hard sellabout what we do at Planarama,
but people know that we're there.
But, more importantly, we getto see folks thrive and that's
exciting.
Eric Eden (23:44):
That's great.
I will link to that in the shownotes so people who are a good
fit for that can check it outand really appreciate you being
with us today and sharing yourstories and your insights.
Thanks for being on the show.
Matt Genovese (23:57):
Thank you, Eric.
I had a great time.
It was really nice to take thislittle bit of a trip down
memory lane for me on thecommunity side.
I've been doing this for
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