The first Australian Community Managers’ Roundtable was founded by Venessa Paech, Community Strategist for Lonely Planet (BBC) and hosted in Melbourne in 2008. A professional Community Managers group was formed by Venessa, Alison (Quiip) and Scott Drummond as an outcome of the very successful first roundtable. The group participates in industry discussion using Facebook and Google groups as the platforms.

The professional ACM community has now been running for eight years and the group has grown to include over 4,600 professionals. If an organisation has a community – chances are they’re in ACM.

Our members hail from Optus, Vodafone, Oxfam, Greenpeace, Ubank, The Greens, NSW Gallery, Foxtel, Fox Sports, Sydney Opera House, JWT, McCann Worldgroup, Resonate, DDB, ABC, The Greens, AGL, Origin, SEEK, MYOB, Telstra, Coca-Cola, Sydney University, Melbourne University, Fairfax Digital, News Limited, GetUp!, NSW Transport and thousands more.

Alison is the gold standard of community managers. We met at the inaugural Australian Community Managers Roundtable and her leadership, expertise and passion have been indispensable to the life of our group. Enthusiasm is the easy part. Community management demands resilience, ruthless pragmatism, extreme patience, wisdom, integrity and an authentic duty of care. Alison has these in spades. I’d follow Alison into any challenge or scenario, confident I’d emerge a victor.

Venessa Paech
Community Strategist, Lonely Planet