Context

Tech.Rocks is a French network that brings together leaders in the Tech sector (CTOs, Heads of Engineering, R&D Directors) in a community where they can share their experience, best practices and find answers to shared problems.

This network is managed throughout the year through events dedicated to its members, but also with the provision of exclusive content. On December 8th and 9th, Tech.Rocks will host an event for more than 500 tech decision-makers, and the team is also developing a mentoring activity to help members grow together.

Since 2018, Tech.Rocks has been using the inwink event management module for the organisation of its annual flagship event “Tech.Rocks Summit” gathering 500 Tech Leaders. In a hybrid format this year, the solution was deployed to create and manage the website as well as the event’s ticketing.

Historically, Tech.Rocks brings its members together on Slack. But this solution has its limitations, as the content is discussion-based, and ad hoc rather than long-lasting.

The Tech.Rocks teams then looked for a tool to publish and share “cold” content over the long term, and at the same time keep the conversational and experience-sharing aspects. Convinced by inwink Event, the team decided to use the inwink Community solution to manage its community space.

“We have a trusted relationship with inwink, which means that for us, in addition to having a tool that meets our needs, we also had a service with us who we enjoy dealing with, and we know that the solution will also evolve along with our needs.” Noémie Coget, Director at Tech.Rocks

Objectifves

The objective of this community is to end the isolation of Tech Leaders, by allowing them not only to exchange with their peers, but also to grow collectively, while highlighting the strategic role of their position.

The Tech.Rocks community website had to provide access to exclusive content for its members: replay sessions, podcasts, articles, newsletters archive, etc.

The goal is not to have the highest number of members, but the quality of its audience. For this, Tech.Rocks has set up a membership validation system for its community, whose membership is paid.

“For a long time, we had been thinking about having a space where we would make content available and where we could bring our members together. Today we have another tool where we gather members on hot content, discussions, etc… but it’s very fleeting content. So we were thinking about this idea of having a place, a virtual “home”, where we could gather both this discussion content and this long-term content: articles, podcasts, replays. That’s the context in which we set up inwink Community. We have a real desire to offer a media site for the tech ecosystem.”

Strategy

Creation of the Tech.Rocks showcase website with inwink Community

The possibility to quickly create a white label community website has reinforced the brand image of Tech.Rocks, which chose to switch its generic website to inwink Community.

“Today if you go to the Tech.Rocks website, you arrive directly on the site made with inwink Community. It’s a site with a member access. It’s a showcase website for us, and at the same time a media website where you’ll have content.”

Direct integration between the event module and the community module

The complementarity between the Event module and the Community module is also a differentiating factor that has contributed to Tech.Rocks’ success in engaging its audiences on an ongoing basis.

“On our inwink Community website, we have an event insert, which is our annual Summit page. We really reused the same codes, so that people who are used to joining us at the Summit are familiar with the community and to simplify the experience.”

Management and following of an editorial calendar

As far as the daily management of the platform is concerned, a member of the Tech.Rocks team is dedicated to running this community full time. Also, “power users” have been targeted to become the community’s ambassadors and bring together messages on specific topics.

On its online community space, Tech.Rocks promotes content, following a dedicated editorial calendar:

• 1 Meetup per week
• 1 podcast published per week: content published by Tech.Rocks only but with content contributed by community members
• more than 2 articles published per month. Members can also freely publish their articles, which will however be subject to a moderation system before being published online.
• 2 replay sessions published per month
• 2 newsletters per month, which are now archived on the community website

Results

A hundred members have joined this community only 1 month after it was launched. With time, the goal is to switch the 2,200 members present on Slack to this community space. Tech.Rocks also wants to take advantage of the Tech.Rocks Summit to make this community grow and perpetuate the exchanges at least over the year.

At the same time, to ensure that members interact as much as possible in a spontaneous and regular way, networking functionalities have been set up and the group and sub-group functionalities are envisaged to segment this community.

“We’re asking ourselves a lot of questions about how to segment the community: by subject, by location, by sector, by position, so yes, we’ll be able to make groups and sub-groups. You’ll be able to join groups with content and articles that will be proposed to you according to this group. We want to offer the most comprehensive experience for our members.”

Tech.Rocks is a community that is primarily focused on sharing content, and is well-known for this. inwink Community makes this expertise shine through by providing a unified and intuitive platform that meets Tech.Rocks’ goals of continuous audience engagement.

You can visit Tech.Rocks’ website here!