Friends Talk Tools: Discovering Tools You've Always Wanted to Learn but Never had Time to

Community sits so cross-functionally in an organization, and as such, as community managers, we often need to adapt or learn tools that other teams use. Whether it’s a shared project that needs a project management tool, a design tool to put together assets with marketing, or even a CRM for visibility into deals, there are tons of tools out there that aren’t necessarily community tools, per sé, but are still utilized in the community world.

Additionally, oftentimes there are tools that you’ve heard of and wanted to learn about, but haven’t had the opportunity to. Whether it’s because your company doesn’t use the tool, or you’ve had no real need to, that lingering curiosity and desire to continue learning has stuck around and been in the back of your mind. I, for example, have always wanted to learn Airtable but have never done so because none of the companies I’ve worked at have used it.

With the value of ‘Always be learning’, this is why we’re launching the Friends Talk Tools series, a monthly get together to learn about a community-tangential tool.

What is Friends Talk Tools?

Friends Talk Tools is a 12-event monthly series where a fellow community builder will show-and-tell a tool. It will include a general introduction of what the tool is, as well as a few real-life examples of how to use it with your teams, aiming to have a few applicable use cases you can take with you. There will also be opportunity for Q&A to ask the speaker at the end of the event.

The events will be hosted by Talkbase Friend Valentina Ruffoni, a freelance Event Strategist, Producer, and Emcee specializing in both virtual and in-person events of all shapes and sizes.

Why are we doing this?

We are all community nerds here who are operationally minded, and a huge part of this is tools and platforms. We want to provide a space for our Friends to learn about tools to help set them up for success in their current and future roles. Plus, aren’t you just generally interested to learn about these tools? 🙂

Who’s involved and when is this happening?

We have an amazing lineup of tools and people for the Friends Talk Tools series! This is the current lineup, subject to a few additions and confirmations. For the most up to date schedule, be sure to check out https://talkbase.io/company/talkbase/events.

• January 16th - Asana with Joel Primack
• February 22nd - Zapier with Andy Mantle
• March 6th - Talkbase with Klara Losert
• March 19th - Notion with Nicole Long
• April 17th - Figma with Gareth Wilson
• May 9th - Canva with Céline Riemenschneider
• June 11th - ChatGPT with Todd Nilson
• July 9th - Social Sprout with Silas de Smit
• August 21st - PowerBI with Emre Karabulut
• September 10th - Webflow with Kyle Pitocchelli & Lacey Kesler
• October 10th - Hubspot with Adrian Speyer
• November 12th - Butter with Paz Pisarski
• December (date TBD) - Airtable - (speaker TBD)

I want to be a part of this!

There are an infinite number of tools out there, and we’ve only covered 12 of them! If there is a community-tangential tool that you are an expert in and want to share with the Talkbase Friends Community, we’d love to discuss the opportunity to have you speak and share how you use it in your day-to-day as a community manager. Reach out to us in the Talkbase Friends Community or at community@talkbase.io.