Catching Up With Dani Weinstein
Dani Weinstein is an accomplished community builder, strategist, and advisor through multiple leadership roles over the past 14 years. Dani will join Todd in this episode of Talk About Your Community to cover:
- Current community trends
- CMX Summit
- His new role as Director of Community Strategy at SAP
About Dani Weinstein
Dani is a community builder, strategist and advisor enabling customer success through community leadership since 2008. He’s held multiple leadership roles at two pre-IPO unicorns, Kaltura & Domo (B2B) and Hewlett-Packard (B2C). Dani recently joined SAP as their Director, Community Strategy. Dani is a regular speaker at customer meet-ups, conferences, webinars and podcasts and is considered a hashtag#community thought leader.
Dani's LinkedIn
Show Notes
2:24: Dani starts with an overview of his background in working with HP, stating most roles were global in nature. One large project included launching seven separate language communities in 15 months. He also speaks to other projects over his extensive career.
7:52: Switching to SAP, Todd touches on his own history with the company and asks about Dani’s journey. Dani is now the director of community strategy. With the company celebrating its 50th anniversary, Dani saw an opportunity is to do a refresh of the experience. He speaks to the great visibility in the management chain. He recognizes B2B companies are coming to community to uplevel their skills AND tech is allowing talent to grow in new ways.
15:49: Jenny asks about keeping your spirits up dealing with layoffs in the community professional world. Dani recommends pausing and reflecting on what you’ve accomplished to remind yourself of your value. Put a plan together around your dream job, refine your pitch, and leverage your community. Todd suggests ABN, always be networking!
24:01: Todd asks about exciting and challenging changes in the community space. Meeting the customer where they’re at is essential, Dani states, to be aware of the conversation on what’s out there. He also mentions the opportunity in finding power players in both in-person or hybrid meeting spaces. However, there’s still work to be done in the industry of getting respect at an executive level; community is more than a ‘nice to have’ aspect. It’s a core operational function to drive value of a business. He notes he’s seeing burnout in those that aren’t getting the resources they need.
32:59: Dani touches on critical elements in the community are the employee base and the partner base. A big opportunity in SAP, given the size of community, is addressing that there’s not a lot of localization. Todd asks about noticing a decrease around attention to community. Dani answers around challenges in the marketplace.
38:35: Dani mentions events coming up that he’s attending and/or participating in, both in-person and online.
