I’m excited to celebrate our Gainsight GameChanger’s Community reaching the amazing milestone of 10K members! I also thought this would be a fun opportunity to revisit some of the key events and participants in our nearly 9 years of Community history. (And, I hope those with a better memory than me chime in to correct any of my mistakes! )

While my own involvement with Community management began about 7 years ago, it was actually my current manager @emily_mcdaniel_629a86 who launched the community back in December 2014. At the time, she ran our Support team, and like so many other initiatives the motivation and inspiration for Community was born in Support. 

Throughout the community’s history we were very fortunate to have @karl_rumelhart, now our President of Products, Technology, & Global Operations, as a strong proponent of Community. Indeed, Karl led by example when it came to encouraging our whole product team (as well as the various depts within CS) to be involved and engaged in the Community. Whenever I talk to Gainsight customers and community members, they often express appreciation and a sense of being heard by the Gainsight team, in part because of their experiences with sharing product feedback in the community. Although we can’t take up every feature request, customers have seen that their input is considered, and quite often acted on by the product team.

Initially, Community ownership bounced around a bit between Support, CS Ops, and Education, before landing in Product Management. The first full-time Community Manager was @sai_ram, who came up through QA & Support at Gainsight. I had the good fortune to work with Sairam to help manage and grow the Community from 2017 until 2020. It was during those years that we migrated the community from GetSatisfaction to Sprinklr, before happily landing on the InSided platform (which Gainsight later acquired and is currently known as Digital Hub!). We both learned a lot, experimented often, and got to know many of our customers more closely because of the community. 

We also had a college intern one summer, Jessie Sacco, who helped set up our first system of badges and ranks which are still in use today! (Jessie loved her experience with Gainsight so much that she later returned to Gainsight as a Teammate Success Business Partner.) 

In late 2018, Gainsight acquired Aptrinsic (which became the Product Experience or PX app), which led to an opportunity to partner with @harshibanka to expand the Community to include PX users. And so began another round of experimentation, cross-functional collaboration, and growth. 

In Sept. 2020, I had the opportunity to take over leadership of our Education Services team, so I handed off the reins of Community Management to @dan_ahrens, who ran Product Operations at the time. Dan’s first role at Gainsight was as a Customer Success Director, and he quickly established himself as one of the most active employees and knowledgeable product resources in our Community. It was under Dan’s supervision that the Community Management team expanded to include @anirbandutta, who has helped take the community to new heights. 

When Dan moved on from Gainsight, Community ownership shifted again to CS Ops, and the steady hand of @seth Wylie. Seth is another Gainster with a long history of community engagement that started when he was a Gainsight Admin at InsightSquared. Seth also brought on board the super creative and energizing @revathimenon to support the community in partnership with Anirban. It’s awesome to see the energy and ideation that this dynamic duo bring to the table. Under their watch, we’ve launched Community Groups including one for Beginner Admins, developed a strong connection between our in-person Pulse events and the online Community, and so much more. 

These days Seth’s embarking on a new adventure at Gainsight to build a Value Accelerator program, and we’re lucky to have @Kenneth R step in to oversee Community operations. Kenneth wore the CSM and Community Strategist hat at InSided for several years, so he’s in a good position to provide strategic guidance as the community continues to evolve.

As I write this, I can literally see how launching and growing a community has taken the whole Gainsight village. 🙂 But the one thing that hasn’t changed over the years is how lucky we are to have savvy, engaged customers who push us to do more and better all the time. Because of the Community, I’ve gotten to know Gainsight Admins like @darkknight, @travis_floyd, @matthew_lind, @alizee, @heather_hansen, @waynedilworth, and so many others as not just usernames in the community, but as people that I’ve had the pleasure of meeting at Pulse conferences, interviewing over Zoom, and even partnering to develop training! It is the community, composed of both Gainsight employees and our customers, that makes our work so rewarding.

So, thank you all for being part of the community, and congratulations to us for making this a creative, thoughtful, giving space that so many benefit from. And, here’s to many more years and members!