Community is the Arena - Newsletter #54

Community lifts you up, but not gently.

It does not hand you a title and send you to a keynote stage with teleprompters and perfectly rehearsed applause. It hands you a folding chair, a slightly glitchy projector, a room full of sharp minds, and says:

Okay. Show us what you know.

And that is where the real growth happens.

In tech, especially, community is the proving ground. Executives stand on big stages, and they should. They carry vision. They meet with the largest clients. They set direction. But the front lines, the people in user groups, meetups, hackathons, and regional conferences, those are the front-line speakers. Those are the ones in the arena.

When you step into a community event, you do not get to float on abstraction. You do not get to speak in slogans. You are talking to Practitioners. Builders. Engineers. Admins. Makers.

If you say something wrong, they will know.

And that is the gift.

Because community does not just elevate you. It holds you accountable. And it holds space for you.

Years ago, when I first started speaking in tech communities, I did not come from a developer background. I came from the theater. I understood stage presence. Timing. Storytelling. How to read a room. But when you talk tech, truly talk tech, presence alone will not save you.

You have to know your stuff.

You cannot rely on performance if you do not understand the architecture. You cannot hide behind charisma if you do not understand the implications. You cannot inspire adoption if you do not grasp what is actually being adopted.

Community forced me to lean into the technological side of my brain. I have always focused on adoption and end-user training, the bridge between tool and human. But the moment you stand in front of a room full of technologists, you realize quickly that you cannot translate what you do not deeply understand.

A few experiences deepened my tech journey in ways I could not have predicted.

Becoming a marketing executive for a Microsoft partner and running a 60-person, 13-office global team stretched me in entirely new directions. I credit my much younger, highly technical marketing department for getting me up to speed, specifically Mary Leigh Mackie, Chris Musico, and Eric Burniche. They sharpened me. They challenged me. They made sure I understood not just the messaging, but the mechanics.

Leading that team, building a brand with them, and traveling around the world to learn from our customers and our incredible marketing teams pushed me beyond surface-level knowledge. We were building products on top of SharePoint. That meant I could not just talk about outcomes. I had to understand what those outcomes were built on.

I also had the opportunity to travel with a colleague, Dan Holme, one of the smartest people I know in tech. Dan knows every product inside and out. He also happens to be a fellow theater person, blending deep technical expertise with performance instincts for decades.

Watching him was both enthralling and intimidating.

What impressed me most was not just his command of the material. It was his curiosity. When people asked him hard questions, he leaned in. He did not rush. He did not posture. He explored the question with them.

And he was generous.

He stayed until every question in the room was answered. He gave people his time. He treated every scenario as valid and worthy of consideration.

And as he did that, I realized something powerful. He was not just teaching. He was learning.

Through those questions, he was learning more about the end user. The IT professional who had been handed a piece of software and told, “Figure out rolling this thing out.” The admin trying to balance security with usability. The person in the middle of organizational change.

Community was his feedback loop.

Seeing that also changed me.

My first real foray into speaking about products in front of our tech community was SharePoint Saturday Utah. This time, I was speaking with a business partner, and because we were building software together, I was learning more about SharePoint's backend than I ever had before. It was not theoretical anymore. It was real architecture. Real constraints. Real code decisions.

By that point, I had already worked in the industry for over 10 years, running my own marketing consultancy and serving as a CMO and senior executive at two Microsoft partners, leading product launches, creating marketing and competitive materials, writing case studies, and producing and managing massive events as an event producer and logistics lead. I knew how to build momentum. I knew how to position products. I knew how to execute at scale.

But working at that partner and then working in a startup made me even more curious about the how.

Not just what the product did. Not just how we positioned it. But how it actually worked.

It moved me from storyteller of technology to student of it.

At the partner, I was not just marketing software. I was surrounded by architects and developers building on top of SharePoint. I was in the room for conversations about feasibility, security, and scalability. I was watching how decisions actually got made.

And then, in the startup, working side by side with an architect and a developer, I saw the full stack in action.

These experiences deepened the insights and illuminated all those previous years as an end user and consumer of the technology. Suddenly, I could see the layers. The why behind the feature. The trade-offs behind the roadmap. The tension between vision and feasibility.

Something clicked for me.

The theater training met the technologist curiosity. The marketer met the maker. The end user advocate met the backend reality.

My tech brain had cracked open, and there was no going back.

And the thing is, this community, the one we call the Best Community in Tech, also welcomes the learners. The curious. The first timers.

More often than not, I have been in an audience where the speaker did not know the answer when someone in the audience was asking really hard questions. Those moments can be terrifying.

The thing is at these community events; there are usually very smart people (other speakers) in the audience and who are more than happy to help answer a question.

I noticed that. It helped me learn that it is okay to say:

“I do not know.” “I can go find out.” “Does anyone in the audience know?”

And if you say you will find out the answer to a question, you make good on it. You follow up. You send the link. You close the loop.

Community does not expect perfection. It expects participation. It expects integrity.

It teaches you that expertise is not about having all the answers. It is about being committed to the answer. It is about knowing your depth and knowing when to invite others into the solution.

That is not a weakness. That is confidence. I tell this story to first-time speakers and my mentees all the time.

Better software is born when you are close to the people using it. Better projects emerge when you are accountable to peers who will challenge your thinking. Better communication happens when you have to explain something complex without oversimplifying it into nonsense.

Community does not let you stay comfortable.

It teaches you: Clarity over buzzwords. Substance over slide decks. Dialogue over monologue.

It also lifts you in ways no title can.

When you speak at community events, you are not distant. You are accessible. You are the person someone can approach afterward and say, “That helped.” Or, “I disagree.” Or, “Have you thought about this?”

That proximity changes you.

It humbles you. It strengthens you. It makes you better.

Executives may define the roadmap. Community shapes how that roadmap survives reality.

And in my humble opinion, every executive should be speaking on community stages. It is one of the best ways to show the community that you care about them and not just the products. It shows that you are willing to stand in the arena with them, to answer hard questions, to listen, and to learn.

Because that is where it changes you.

For me, stepping into that arena and bringing my theater training together with my curiosity as a technologist was the moment everything converged. The stage stopped being a performance and became a service. The slides stopped being decoration and became tools.

Community did not just lift me up.

It made me accountable to the craft.

And when you let it, the community will do the same for anyone willing to step into the arena, not as a distant voice, but as a front-line builder of ideas, software, and understanding.

Community does not just build better speakers.

It builds better software. Better leaders. Better companies.

And when you let it, the community will lift you up, hold you accountable, and make you better than you would ever become alone.

Community is belonging to something greater than yourself, and I have the SharePoint Community to thank wholeheartedly for that. After 25 years, I am so grateful for all of these moments. Thank you, dear friends.

Empathy makes us human; actions make us warriors.

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