Building Communities From Zero
I've built community functions from scratch multiple times across different contexts:
Mambo/Joomla!
Translatior, local community organizer (virtual and in-person)
My first community experience. I contributed to the Mambo open source CMS project with (Dutch) translations, then followed the community fork that became Joomla! in 2005. This was my introduction to how open source communities work: the governance challenges, the passion, and how open source communities can build software that competes with commercial products.
Key Achievements
- Early contributor to what became one of the world's most popular CMS platforms
- Learned open source community dynamics firsthand
- Ran the local Dutch community portal, organized meetups and the yearly Joomladays conference.
Dutchento / Meet Magento Netherlands
Founder, Association Board Member
I founded the Dutch community for the Magento e-commerce platform when there was no local hub for developers and merchants. What started as local meetups grew into Meet Magento Netherlands: an annual event scaling to 600+ attendees that sparked a global event series in other countries.
Key Achievements
- Scaled from local meetups to 600+ annual attendees
- Organized 11 editions of Meet Magento Netherlands
- Received Community Builder Award from eBay CEO John Donahoe
- Co-created a model replicated by Meet Magento events worldwide
- Founding Board Member of the global Magento Association
CRO.CAFE
Creator & Host
I noticed the conversion optimization community lacked a consistent interview-format podcast where practitioners shared how they actually worked. I created CRO.CAFE as a side project where I had1-on-1 conversations with people from agencies, brands, and tool vendors about their real work. The show attracted sponsorship and spun off into Dutch, Spanish, and German versions hosted by other specialists.
Key Achievements
- Produced 200+ episodes
- Received Experimentation Culture Award for community impact
- Expanded to four languages with other hosts
- Built sustainable sponsorship model
- Created multi-language network reaching global CRO community
Spryker
Employee (Senior Director, Global Business & Technology Evangelist)
Built the enterprise community function from scratch, serving 130+ B2B clients and their developer ecosystem. This was community building in a different context: enterprise software with no freemium tier, where community size is tied to sales rather than organic growth. Required different strategies: Customer Advisory Boards, MIT-licensed module ecosystems, and structures that translate community intelligence into product decisions.
Key Achievements
- Built community platform serving 130+ enterprise accounts with 3-person team
- Launched Customer Advisory Board connecting enterprise clients directly to product teams
- Established MIT-licensed module ecosystem, creating a vendor-independent innovation layer
- Community-driven initiatives now influence 25% of product roadmap decisions
- Multiple hackathon projects adopted into core product
"Unlike consumer communities where you can grow through free trials, enterprise B2B community requires different strategies. I learned to create value for a smaller, higher-stakes audience."