Community Member Update: Q1 Advisory Board Meeting

We introduced our very first WTS Advisory Board back in August and just had our first of four advisory board meetings!

Our members are the reason this community exists and thrives, and we aim to keep you all up to date and involved as we learn, grow, and continue to guide the WTS community.

In that vein, here’s a recap of some of the themes we discussed in our very first WTS Advisory Board meeting...

Lean even further into being community-led

Our community members show up time and time again to support each other within our values and collective goals.

You all flood our Slack #introductions channel with warm welcomes for newcomers, provide helpful and kind answers to each other’s questions, amplify each other’s work, share opportunities, advocate for WTS and so much more.

It was never more apparent how much this community belongs to every member than after a half dozen members got WTS tattoos together after WTSFest Philadelphia this year:

Source: LinkedIn

Our board made sure to emphasize how much we need to continue to keep members involved in how we run and make decisions for WTS.

We want to find more ways to enable the 10k+ voices that make up this community to be heard and acted upon and help you to support WTS in the ways you wish to in addition to receiving value from the community (what we call “give and take” which you’ll hear more about in the coming months).

For us, leaning further into being community-led means:

✔️ Continuing to run feedback for all our initiatives and an overall yearly community survey (coming soon - and we can’t wait to hear from YOU!). That also means sharing our action items off the back of that feedback like we recently did for our Berlin and Philadelphia WTSFests.

✔️ Building resources and an advocacy program that helps WTS members know what they can do to help give back to the community - we get so many of you brilliant people asking how you can help support, and we want to give you the tools to do so.

Keep our focus on members, everything else will follow

This is something we’ve known, truly believe in, and we keep hearing echoed back to us over and over again.

WE ASKED OUR BOARD: How do we maintain a sustainable, profitable business model in order to keep our community going strong?

THEIR ANSWER: Focus on the members, the rest will follow.

Trying to fund this community, make it sustainable, and keep it free for all members is probably the scariest part of our roles at WTS - knowing at the moment it takes two full-time people and a handful of freelance support to keep us going.

But we do truly believe that the power to do that lies in our primary focus staying on the value WTS members get out of each other and the WTS Community as a whole.

For us, keeping our focus on members means:

✔️ Staying true to our values and The WTS Way

✔️ Centering our 4 collective career goals of

➡️ Connections

➡️ Education

➡️ Amplification

➡️ Opportunities

✔️ Getting consistent community feedback (as mentioned above) on what’s working, what’s not, and what’s missing in order to get closer to achieving our collective career goals for all

Tell our stories

Our board helped us better understand that there’s no amount of KPIs or CEO-friendly reports that can communicate what a community truly provides for the people who are a part of it.

We have to tell our stories to keep infusing new voices and perspectives into our community by attracting the right people to help us continue to evolve in the most impactful direction.

For us, the stories we’re keen to tell are:

✔️ Our mission, vision, and values - which we’ve been working to hone and you’ll see launching in our new About page by the end of this month.

✔️ What’s behind the curtain of our closed community - so folks have more information to understand if they will find the value they’re looking for there

✔️ Your stories as members - of the connections, education, amplification, and opportunities that have come your way from being a part of our WTS Community

Thank you to our advisory board

We appreciate each and every one of you showing up and lending your experience to help us continue to work on our ultimate goal - creating a recipe for belonging built on centering diverse voices within our little piece of the world - SEO, marketing, and tech.

WTS Advisory Board - Year 6

Want to help?

We have a lot of work to do, but that doesn’t scare us – we know y’all show up to support us everyday and we’re never alone in our journey to continue to support WTS in thriving and evolving to serve our members.

The things that will help us most over the next quarter:

✔️ Make sure you’re a part of and invite others to join our free WTS Slack community space, subscribe to our weekly WTSNewsletter, and attend any of our 5 upcoming WTSFests.

✔️ Go welcome our new members in our Slack #introduction channel, ask them what they’re hoping to find in WTS and help connect them to it

✔️ Ask questions in Slack and help provide helpful and kind answers when you can

✔️ Share your WTS stories and journeys on social, with a colleague, with a friend

✔️ Ask your company to sponsor a WTSFest or join us as a WTSPartner

✔️ Make sure you lookout for our upcoming yearly Community Survey in Slack and add your voice to help us better WTS for all of us