my current job is vp of community & operations at metaversum gmbh, based in berlin, germany. so in my job, i am responsible for the following things at metaversum:
- customer support
- billing
- operations (basically IT – keeping the back-end servers running)
- community management
all of those areas are challenging, and for different reasons.
customer support is always tough when you have new technology where there are a lot of variable components. with young technology, you also encounter problems frequently, and maybe a large part of your case load gets escalated to engineering.
billing is actually the most straight forward. people agree to charges and they either get charged by credit card or they pay through some other means.
operations are relatively easy as well from the standpoint that what you need to do is fairly predictable. you monitor stuff and fix it when it breaks. of course, which pieces break is where it gets interesting.
community management is the area that requires the most finesse. having an ongoing one-to-many conversation is not a normal thing to do. first of all, you have to figure out what to talk about. there are many voices talking to you, and you either have to try to answer them all, figure out which question is the most relevant at the moment, or somehow listen to them all and synthesize a response to the common community sentiment. that takes a great deal of empathy, and it is in no way always obvious. plus, you are the advocate in both directions – the advocate for the community within the company, and the advocate for the company within the community.
so that’s my job.
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