i.
Advocate, not architect.
Communities aren't engineered top-down. I listen first. The community tells me what it needs and what's fluff. My job is to hear that signal and clear the path.
I am the voice of your community inside the company.
Senior community leader. 30 years building organic, durable communities — listening first, advocating up the chain, finding the top 1%, and turning member signal into product, marketing, and engineering decisions.
Book a 20-min call →
01Credo
"Community cannot be controlled, only guided."
It's organic. My job is to listen, advocate, and clear the path — until the community runs itself.
- 01A community listens. Without heart, it is just a tool.
- 02Anybody can build a product these days. Not everyone can build a community.
- 03Community isn't about a company. It's about a culture.
- 04Community is the antithesis of ego.
02Approach · How I think
Communities aren't engineered.
They're listened to.
Six convictions earned the hard way.
ii.
Audience → community → advocates. In order.
An audience consumes; a community contributes; advocates carry the message further than any campaign. The work is moving people through that chain — and creating the conditions where they want to.
iii.
Self-sustaining is the win.
A community that needs me in the room every day isn't a community — it's a show.
iv.
Voice of the community, inside the company.
I represent your members in the rooms they aren't in — roadmap, marketing, engineering — with receipts, not opinions.
v.
Find the top 1% — make them load-bearing.
Every community has its advocates. I identify them, give them what they need, and turn them into the engine.
vi.
Advocacy compounds.
One welcome message doesn't move a roadmap. A hundred — surfaced to product, marketing, and engineering with the receipts to prove it — does. The work is being the member's voice in the rooms they're not in, repeatedly, until the decisions actually shift. Trust is built by showing up. Influence is built by translating what you heard into something the company can act on.
03Outcomes · On record
Six builds. Three decades.
Whether starting from zero or reviving what was already there, the pattern holds: communities that flourish — and stay flourishing.
R / 01 · Intel
Built to last
A Fortune 50 community, still flourishing.
Hired as Chief Community Advocate, Intel Graphics to seed advocacy ahead of Intel's discrete-graphics push — finding the people before there was a product. Built the Discord that became Intel's official graphics community. Foundation strong enough that the program runs to this day.
R / 02 · ctrl+alt+create
Active · now
Building, in real time.
ctrl+alt+create live: my current vibe-coding community for non-technical builders. Weekly Thursday streams, monthly hybrid events in Seattle, growing Discord. Strong early signals — the kind of organic traction that shows the work is current, not historical.
R / 03 · MakerDeck
Twitch Partner
Status the platform itself awards.
MakerDeck Twitch + Discord, built from zero. Reached Twitch Partner — a designation Twitch hands out, not one you can buy. The platform's own validation that the community held together.
R / 04 · VloggerFair
YouTube & Intel
An industry-first event, from zero.
VloggerFair, 2013, Seattle: the first-ever industry event for vloggers. ~1,300 attendees. Sponsors: YouTube, Intel, Yelp, Ford. Brought together iJustine, ShayCarl, and CTFxC at peak early-YouTube. A new community category, convened in person, from nothing.
R / 05 · Gnomedex
"TED light"
A tech conference series that ran a decade.
Founded and ran Gnomedex annually 2001–2010 — a single-track tech conference in Iowa, then Seattle. Speakers like Adam Curry, Dave Winer, and Microsoft execs. Press dubbed it “TED light.” The kind of room you only convene if the community trusts you.
R / 06 · LockerGnome
Still asked about
The community that won't let go.
LockerGnome: started 1996 as a tech newsletter. Largely dormant now — but people still reach out about it, three decades later. Members migrated with the work across mailing lists, forums, Twitch, Discord, and Substack. Same people. Different platforms. The work outlasts the venue.
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04Technical communities · On the record
I can hold a technical audience.
Most community leads can't credibly hold a developer or IT audience. I can — and the trust I have with technical communities took 30 years to earn. It can't be hired around.
I started as a tech journalist, ran a tech-news brand (LockerGnome) read daily by developers and IT pros for two decades, hosted live shows where engineers actually showed up, and built community programs for chip vendors, security companies, and creator platforms.
I'm not a developer myself. But I've spent three decades in the room with them, translating between technical reality and the rest of the org. When your community leans technical, that fluency is the difference between credibility and cosplay.
01 / 06
05Inside the company
Advocate first.
Built to shift decisions.
Four ways I show up inside your team.
i
Voice of the member, in every room.
Roadmap, marketing, engineering, leadership reviews. I bring the member perspective to the rooms it usually doesn't reach — with receipts the team can act on, not vibes.
ii
Translator, both directions.
Engineers to community, community to leadership, customers to product. I translate technical reality into community trust, and community signal into business language the org can move on.
iii
Top-1% activator.
Every community has its load-bearing advocates. I find them, give them what they need, and turn them into the engine — so your reach compounds beyond what any single hire can do alone.
iv
Built to make myself replaceable.
I'm the advocate, not the org chart. My goal from day one is documented norms, trained moderators, and members who onboard each other — so the program runs without me.
06Engagements · How to hire me
Four ways to
bring me in.
Pick the shape that matches the moment. All three lean into advocacy work.
i
Fractional Head of Community.
Ongoing, part-time. I sit in your roadmap and marketing reviews as the standing voice of the community. Best for companies who need senior advocacy without the full-time hire.
ii
Interim — launch, crisis, or transition.
Defined window. I parachute in for a launch, a community crisis, a leadership gap, or a platform migration. You get a senior advocate while you hire the permanent one — or while the storm passes.
iii
Advisor to founders & senior leaders.
Lower-touch, higher-leverage. Monthly strategy, audits of existing community programs, and translation of member signal into board-deck language. For founders shaping community-led GTM from scratch — or rescuing a program that's drifted.
iv
Full-time — the right team.
For the right company and the right mission, a permanent senior community role. The bar is mutual: a team that wants member advocacy taken seriously at the leadership level, and a mandate to actually shift decisions.
07Signoff
Open for hire
Let's build something that flourishes organically.
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