Community Connect 2024 was an in-person/virtual hybrid event for admins of both newer and established communities to meet and connect with one another and with Fandom staff across our Community, Product, and Engineering teams, and more. The event was held from April 28 to May 2, 2024 in Phoenix, Arizona. The goal of the event was to have direct, in-person conversations with a mix of editors and staff members to share what Fandom is working on throughout 2024 and to get direct feedback from community members.
For Community Connect 2024—themed "Gears of Progress" and held in Fandom's 20th anniversary year—we took a look at how we're honoring what makes the platform special and how we'll continue to evolve and improve it over the next several years.
What is Community Connect?[]
We’ve held a number of Community Connect events throughout the years, beginning in San Francisco in 2015. We’d done some individual admin visits to our office here and there, and they became a great way to have those admins and our staff get to know each other better, and have pretty constructive conversations about feedback, pain points, and where we were going as a company. Not that we didn’t have constructive online conversations, but so much gets lost in a text-based conversation: nuance, emotion, and intention among them.
So we wanted to make that even bigger to bring more and more people together. Since then we’ve held in-person Community Connects in 2015, 2016, and 2020 (January—before the pandemic!). The pandemic meant we had to get creative, so in 2021 we held not one but two virtual Community Connects. Finally in May 2022, we were able to go back to an in-person event. Each of these events were a hit that were enjoyed by staff and attendees alike.
Topics[]
The following is an initial was a list of topics covered at Community Connect, among others:
- "State of Fandom" — an overview of how Fandom has been doing over the last year, where we've seen success, and where we've faced challenges—and how we grow from there.
- Community Team Overview — an overview of how the Community team operates, how we're approaching community management and support as the platform evolves, and a look at Official Wiki partnerships now and into the future.
- User Generated Content — a look at the features that our User Generated Content team is working on, including updates around structured data initiatives.
- UX Feedback and Improvements — a look at ideas around enhancing and improving the UX of the platform, including important feedback already provided by Fandom Stars and the wider community.