Great stuff! And thanks for taking the time to share what you’ve done.
Do you know if the team working on the EA brand project would be up for talking with professional community builders? At EA Netherlands we’re working on our brand quite a bit at the moment, and I think a few other national organisations are too. Since national orgs are often the main entry point for EA in their region, I think this should probably be done in coordination with CEA to make sure we’re all aligned.
To speak frankly, I’m a little surprised professional community builders haven’t been involved in brand work so far. (This comment isn’t addressed to you Agnes, from what I understand it’s not your responsibility to keep brand stakeholders in the loop! Writing it here in case a relevant person reads it).
Hi James, I’ve been working on the EA brand at CEA, and appreciate you raising this! I’ll be at EAG London and would be happy to talk more, if you’re attending and want to book a 1:1 with me then, or we could schedule a call for afterward. It sounds like there’s some cool work being done at EA Netherlands that I’d love to hear more about!
To give some relevant context, until recently (March of this year), I was the only full-time employee working on communications at CEA—which was dramatically insufficient for the work to be done! As Zach mentioned in his Forum post on CEA strategy, we revamped our hiring process and have been working on building out the team. The exciting news is that we’ve made great progress and now have a Communications team of four full-time employees (FTEs)! This also means that we’re still in an early scaling phase, as people onboard to their roles. I share that context to clarify that the lack of more coordinated or in-depth engagement with different stakeholders was an unfortunate side effect of limited capacity and the need to triage my work heavily. We’re still figuring out how to best use our new and growing capacity, but we’re excited about broader community engagement as one of those areas.
A few points of clarification: community builders were surveyed as part of the brand association work that Agnes cites here. I know Agnes conducted lots of user interviews across the community and with people less familiar with EA to inform her work as well. In my role at CEA, I regularly keep in touch with community builders at various levels (city, national, university) and advise people in the EA community on comms strategy and media-related questions. I recognize this engagement can feel spotty in places, and not everyone has visibility into it. I definitely think the Comms team has room for improvement in communicating about our work, and I also want to be clear that we care about and track the perspectives of community builders and others in the community.
Thanks, Emma! And sorry for the rather curt comment. I typed it out while my phone was dying and I was on the move after a rough start to the day. In hindsight, it came across more strongly than I intended.
I really appreciate the context you shared. To give a bit of background from my side: it’s felt like things are moving quite quickly on CEA’s end with branding and related work (which is exciting!), but from where I sit, it’s sometimes felt like orgs like ours are struggling to keep up. I can’t speak for all community builders, but I usually try to follow CEA’s lead to keep things coherent across the ecosystem — so the lack of engagement has at times felt a little disorienting, and honestly, a bit disempowering.
For example, we’ve recently been putting quite a bit of time and money into revamping our website and visual identity. If we’d known more about what was happening at CEA, it could have helped shape our direction. A short note to CEA’s groups team, which could have been forwarded on, would have gone a long way — something like: “Hey, we’re working on EA brand stuff at the moment. It’s being informed by such-and-such findings. Here’s our rough timeline and broad direction. More soon”.
What’s made that feeling a bit more acute is that I’d actually tried to reach out a couple of times to find someone at CEA to talk with about this, but didn’t get a response. I almost certainly didn’t go about it the right way (in hindsight, I probably should’ve just emailed you directly), but that lack of feedback added to the sense of being out of the loop.
That said, I’m really glad to hear about the progress and new capacity on your team, and I’d love to stay in sync however we can. And sorry once again for the abrasive tone of my comment!
Thanks for this, James! No worries at all about tone—I completely understand how those kinds of days go.
I really appreciate you sharing more context about where you’re coming from. It sounds like there may have been some communication gaps or crossed wires here—I know I’ve talked to your co-director Marieke about comms more than once (most recently in February at EAG), and Britney from our team left some comments on one of your comms strategy docs recently that the Groups team flagged to us. But it sounds like there may be a disconnect between those conversations and what you were looking for, or maybe the information didn’t flow in the most helpful ways for your planning, which is great to know.
You also raise a really good point about proactive communication. As I said, we’re definitely still figuring out the best ways to keep stakeholders informed as we scale up our capacity and work, and this is helpful feedback in that.
Yes, setting up a meeting (or several) to ensure that the majority of community builders are aligned on the new branding strategy would be a smart move, I think. Thanks for suggesting this, James, and great work overall on the new website, Agnes!
Great stuff! And thanks for taking the time to share what you’ve done.
Do you know if the team working on the EA brand project would be up for talking with professional community builders? At EA Netherlands we’re working on our brand quite a bit at the moment, and I think a few other national organisations are too. Since national orgs are often the main entry point for EA in their region, I think this should probably be done in coordination with CEA to make sure we’re all aligned.
To speak frankly, I’m a little surprised professional community builders haven’t been involved in brand work so far. (This comment isn’t addressed to you Agnes, from what I understand it’s not your responsibility to keep brand stakeholders in the loop! Writing it here in case a relevant person reads it).
Again, thanks for this work, it looks great!
Hi James, I’ve been working on the EA brand at CEA, and appreciate you raising this! I’ll be at EAG London and would be happy to talk more, if you’re attending and want to book a 1:1 with me then, or we could schedule a call for afterward. It sounds like there’s some cool work being done at EA Netherlands that I’d love to hear more about!
To give some relevant context, until recently (March of this year), I was the only full-time employee working on communications at CEA—which was dramatically insufficient for the work to be done! As Zach mentioned in his Forum post on CEA strategy, we revamped our hiring process and have been working on building out the team. The exciting news is that we’ve made great progress and now have a Communications team of four full-time employees (FTEs)! This also means that we’re still in an early scaling phase, as people onboard to their roles. I share that context to clarify that the lack of more coordinated or in-depth engagement with different stakeholders was an unfortunate side effect of limited capacity and the need to triage my work heavily. We’re still figuring out how to best use our new and growing capacity, but we’re excited about broader community engagement as one of those areas.
A few points of clarification: community builders were surveyed as part of the brand association work that Agnes cites here. I know Agnes conducted lots of user interviews across the community and with people less familiar with EA to inform her work as well. In my role at CEA, I regularly keep in touch with community builders at various levels (city, national, university) and advise people in the EA community on comms strategy and media-related questions. I recognize this engagement can feel spotty in places, and not everyone has visibility into it. I definitely think the Comms team has room for improvement in communicating about our work, and I also want to be clear that we care about and track the perspectives of community builders and others in the community.
Thanks, Emma! And sorry for the rather curt comment. I typed it out while my phone was dying and I was on the move after a rough start to the day. In hindsight, it came across more strongly than I intended.
I really appreciate the context you shared. To give a bit of background from my side: it’s felt like things are moving quite quickly on CEA’s end with branding and related work (which is exciting!), but from where I sit, it’s sometimes felt like orgs like ours are struggling to keep up. I can’t speak for all community builders, but I usually try to follow CEA’s lead to keep things coherent across the ecosystem — so the lack of engagement has at times felt a little disorienting, and honestly, a bit disempowering.
For example, we’ve recently been putting quite a bit of time and money into revamping our website and visual identity. If we’d known more about what was happening at CEA, it could have helped shape our direction. A short note to CEA’s groups team, which could have been forwarded on, would have gone a long way — something like: “Hey, we’re working on EA brand stuff at the moment. It’s being informed by such-and-such findings. Here’s our rough timeline and broad direction. More soon”.
What’s made that feeling a bit more acute is that I’d actually tried to reach out a couple of times to find someone at CEA to talk with about this, but didn’t get a response. I almost certainly didn’t go about it the right way (in hindsight, I probably should’ve just emailed you directly), but that lack of feedback added to the sense of being out of the loop.
That said, I’m really glad to hear about the progress and new capacity on your team, and I’d love to stay in sync however we can. And sorry once again for the abrasive tone of my comment!
Thanks for this, James! No worries at all about tone—I completely understand how those kinds of days go.
I really appreciate you sharing more context about where you’re coming from. It sounds like there may have been some communication gaps or crossed wires here—I know I’ve talked to your co-director Marieke about comms more than once (most recently in February at EAG), and Britney from our team left some comments on one of your comms strategy docs recently that the Groups team flagged to us. But it sounds like there may be a disconnect between those conversations and what you were looking for, or maybe the information didn’t flow in the most helpful ways for your planning, which is great to know.
You also raise a really good point about proactive communication. As I said, we’re definitely still figuring out the best ways to keep stakeholders informed as we scale up our capacity and work, and this is helpful feedback in that.
Looking forward to chatting directly soon!
Yes, setting up a meeting (or several) to ensure that the majority of community builders are aligned on the new branding strategy would be a smart move, I think. Thanks for suggesting this, James, and great work overall on the new website, Agnes!