For fun, here is a wild guess of two personas you may run in to:

Jane the Ambitious – Jane has an uncanny ability to find the next big thing and quickly insert her self in the loop. Jane relies on firms to make selections based on lingo and buzzwords.

Sally the community builder – Sally is terrible with managing her career but her empathy and sincere interest in the matters of her community translate into trust and love among those who know her. She has a natural talent to find and be involved in the conversations that matter. Given a good venue, Sally will shine.

[...] Where Do Community Managers Come From? [...]

I think online community management is a bit like growing a garden.

Keep it going!

Betsy

I think a Community Manager is more of a Customer Evangelist, something that may require knowledge in more than one field (marketing,product, customer service, SEO, etc.) The primary problem is that a lot of orgs look at these folks as “customer service”, which gives a great deal of disservice to what they actually do on a daily basis.

I also think, IMHO, that the term “Community” is thrown around a little loosely these days & that there are some key differences as to what it means. Some companies, for example, look at their Community Manager as their champion at tech events (speaking, etc.); other companies look for folks to engage in multiple internal groups to find solutions to problems facing the company.

P.S. You didn’t receive my resume because I am quite happy:)

Thanks for the reply and I agree it’s still early to have an understanding for the web community organizer but occasionally, when faced with a design project that involves something new (read: all) the use of persona’s (a design artifact) can still come into play if one study’s analogous situations – creative research yields valuable insights – so, where do we find community builders?
-Union organizers?
-Political campaigners?
-Organizers of technical standards?
-Vertical marketers?
-etech/bar camp types?

I totally agree that it’s to early to find the best of community marketers on social networks but could the necessary qualities could be found in analogous situations where the dna lurks.
Early respondents to job listings or followers or emerging markets have other skills, the best community organizers may be too busy with their communities to follow this early market.

Community managers are a special breed, as social media impacts many departments in the company. In fact, it’s easier to list the departments they WONT interact with.

I agree, the personas are just on demographic. We could round out the research formally with psychographics as well.

I still think this role is evolving so putting an official ‘persona’ stamp may too early.

For fun, here is a wild guess of two personas you may run in to:

Jane the Ambitious – Jane has an uncanny ability to find the next big thing and quickly insert her self in the loop. Jane relies on firms to make selections based on lingo and buzzwords.

Sally the community builder – Sally is terrible with managing her career but her empathy and sincere interest in the matters of her community translate into trust and love among those who know her. She has a natural talent to find and be involved in the conversations that matter. Given a good venue, Sally will shine.

Marketers tend to be great at telling a story, but not always so good at listening. More than half the job of being a good Community Manager is listening (not just responding).

It would be great if you could publish the deciding criteria once you pick someone.

[...] Where Do Community Managers Come From? (tags: community management) [...]

I might call you and discuss this a but more for my http://www.webvisionsevent.com presentation in Portland in May. I won;t need to know identities, but would like to discuss some of the findings.