Some time ago I signed an Austin-based data company called data.world as a client. The team are building an incredible platform where the community can store data, collaborate around the shape/content of that data, and build an extensive open data commons.
As I wrote about previously I believe data.world is going to play an important role in opening up the potential for finding discoveries in disparate data sets and helping people innovate faster.
I have been working with the team to help shape their community strategy and they are now ready to hire a capable Director of Community to start executing these different pieces. The role description is presented below. The data.world team are an incredible bunch with some strong heritage in the leadership of Brett Hurt, Matt Laessig, Jon Loyens, Bryon Jacob, and others.
As such, I am looking to find the team some strong candidates. If I know you, I would invite you to confidentially share your interest in this role by filling my form here. This way I can get a good sense of who is interested and also recommend people I personally know and can vouch for. I will then reach out to those of you who this seems to be a good potential fit for and play a supporting role in brokering the conversation.
This role will require candidates to either be based in Austin or be willing to relocate to Austin. This is a great opportunity, and feel free to get in touch with me if you have any questions.
Director of Community Role Description
data.world is building a world-class data commons, management, and collaboration platform. We believe that data.world is the very best place to build great data communities that can make data science fun, enjoyable, and impactful. We want to ensure we can provide the very best support, guidance, and engagement to help these communities be successful. This will involve engagement in workflow, product, outreach, events, and more.
As Director of Community, you will lead, coordinate, and manage our global community development initiatives. You will use your community leadership experience to shape our community experience and infrastructure, feed into the product roadmap with community needs and requirements, build growth and engagement, and more. You will help connect, celebrate, and amplify the existing communities on data.world and assist new ones as they form. You will help our users to think bigger, be the best they can be, and succeed more. You’ll work across teams within data.world to promote the community’s voice within our different internal teams. You should be a content expert, superb communicator, and humble facilitator.
Typical activities for this role include:
- Building and executing programs that grow communities on data.world and empower them to do great work.
- Taking a structured approach to community roles, on-boarding, and working with our teams to ensure community members have a simple and powerful experience.
- Developing content that promotes the longevity and sustainability of fast growing, organically built data communities with high impact outcomes.
- Building relationships within the industry and community to be their representative for data.world in helping to engage, be successful, and deliver great work and collaboration.
- Working with product, user operations, and marketing teams on product roadmap for community features and needs.
- Being a data.world representative and spokesperson at conferences, events, and within the media and external data communities.
- Always challenging our assumptions, our culture, and being singularly focused on delivering the very best data community platform in the world.
Experience with the following is required:
- 5-7 years of experience participating in and building communities, preferably data based, or technical in nature.
- Experience with working in open source, open data, and other online communities.
- Public speaking, blogging, and content development.
- Facilitating complex and sensitive community management situations with humility, judgment, tact, and humor.
- Integrating company brand, voice, and messaging into developed content.
Working independently and autonomously, managing multiple competing priorities.
Experience with any of the following preferred:
- Data science experience and expertise.
- 3-5 years of experience leading community management programs within a software or Internet-based company.
- Media training and experience in communicating with journalists, bloggers, and other media on a range of technical topics.
- Existing network from a diverse set of communities and social media platforms.
- Software development capabilities and experience
