Musings about Community Development, or "What I've been up to lately...."

Lately, I've had a chance to travel and meet with other eBay employees to talk about the role of Community Development.  This is the larger group that the blogging team is part of...and oh by the way, this travel explains my absence from the blog in a while!

Community Development is a unique organization, because eBay is a unique kind of company.  The way I describe our role (even staff ask us often about what we do) is that Community Development has 2 main jobs:  1) we are the internal advocates for the community who help ensure our members have "a seat at the table" when decisions are being made, and 2) we help keep The Conversation going.  What does The Conversation mean?  Well, I just made that up, but basically I mean that we do all we can to build programs (like Voices), write communication (internal and external), and plan events etc. that encourage the exchange of ideas between our company and our members. 

But why do we need a whole organization dedicated to these goals?  I believe it's because these things are essential to our business.  When boiled down to its essence, I like to think of us as a "relationship" company:  eBay has a relationship with our sellers and another relationship with our buyers, and our sellers and buyers have a relationship with each other, too.  All of these relationships have to work in harmony (i.e. just like a family, they can't be too dysfunctional or the family unit breaks down) for the marketplace to thrive. 

The challenge is that each of these relationships represents a different perspective with seemingly different needs.  Yet, for better or for worse, they are all interdependent.  If one stops working or takes off too far in one direction, the others are going to suffer.  Most importantly, they all require Trust. One important benefit of The Conversation is that it builds Trust and understanding among all the relationship partners involved.  It's also through this exchange that we often learn about nascent opportunities, and how we're first alerted to emerging problems. 

To illustrate, I'd say pick almost any issue and you'll find that -- when you dig in into the details and the varying perspectives and forces -- you soon find there are a lot of facets to consider.  eBay is like an ecosystem: You can't touch this without effecting that. Anyone who has ever had the chance to hear Brian Burke about the Feedback system probably knows what I mean!  Even when we've done our best to analyse every possible angle, we sometimes predict future changes in the ecosystem wrong.  (this is what led to the rebalancing the marketplace as Bill Cobb explained.)    So, it's complex .. and it's always evolving. 

Anyway, that's my take on Community Development (a subject which I love), and last month, I visited about 1,600 Customer Support reps in both our Vancouver, British Columbia and Salt Lake City, Utah offices to talk a little bit about these ideas.  I was truly impressed by the passion and knowledge we have within our CS teams. Talk about thinking about our members! Within this complex marketplace, their sole purpose is to help eBay members -- both buyers and sellers/those just beginning, and those who are experienced business people -- with their day-to-day needs. It's not easy, yet they take their commitment seriously, and their passion was contagious. I also got to hear a bit about the Customer Support leadership's plans for investing in more tools and infrastructure so that our reps can be more effective in their jobs.  They've made a lot of improvements in 2006, and they have a lot more to come in the works for 2007.

Another group of amazing eBay people I had the privilege of hanging out with were our international Community Development managers from around the world.  Last week, we held our third annual Global Community Summit in San Jose.  Colleages from 10 markets, including Korea, Singapore, China, Germany, Italy, Spain, London, Belgium,  and Austria had a chance to spend 3 days together.  We talked about our accomplishments in 2006, as well as the similar challenges we've all faced.  One of the most fun parts was learning about the community-focused innovations that are happening around the world. At the end, we spent a fabulous afternoon and evening in the beautiful city of San Francisco (which is only an hour north of San Jose).  Here's a picture of the lot of us standing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge, which I just learned is 3 miles across.  (my face is completely hidden by the shadows, but I'm in there!)