Recipe for building community: start with smarts; add in some savvy; and top it off with plenty of sass. Put those together in a leader and you have Lani Rosales, Chief Operating Officer of The American Genius, a technology and entrepreneurship publication. She is also one of the founders of BASHH (Big Ass Social Happy Hour) and Austin Digital Jobs. The latter is one of the most thriving communities on Facebook, and THE place to go if you’re looking for a job in Austin that involves tech.
I had the absolute pleasure of chatting with Lani Rosales about how she builds the community around her three endeavors, how they tie together, and what unique elements keep all three thriving. Our conversation did not disappoint.
Short on time? Cliff’s Notes below so you can skip to what sounds interesting. Spoiler: it’s all interesting!
- 4:00 How Lani got to where she is now with a shitty poem.
- 6:30 Marketing has always been the core of what Lani does in life
- 7:15 Why we should be thanking the Californians for moving here
- 8:00 Austin Digital jobs–a meaningful Facebook group 6 years in the making
- 12:00 Competing against hundreds of thousands of bajillions of groups
- 14:00 How the Digital Jobs Facebook group feeds into other endeavors
- 15:30 Give them what they want…and hey, they’ll hang around
- 17:00 Having an honest voice and a very thick skin
- 19:05 Keeping things human and organized through specific content
- 21:10 Austin needs it, so someone has to do–community altruism
- 21:35 Spinning digital into in-person events
- 23:05 “I thought Twitter was stupid and I didn’t want to do it.” Networking for those who hate networking
- 25:45 Keeping the online culture in person because we’re not good at turning on our filters
- 27:45 What’s next in Lani’s world–retirement? Expansion?
- 32:30 Where to find Lani, ADJ, and The American Genius
You can follow The American Genius on Twitter, and request an invitation to join over 38,000 members in Austin Digital Jobs (just behave, because Lani will bring the ban-hammer down).
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