[swyx]

so first of all i love the work you folks are doing to map out this very difficult problem, i think the 4 level orbit model is bang on and i tell everyone about it every chance i get.

objection 1:

this NRG formula – i dont know. as you already note, its kinda indirect what is attributable to product centric upsells, and content marketing SEO. i understand that you can make the case that all this comes from community work, but it can feel like a landgrab to the other people who already do this job and dont exist in the "community org". (of course people shouldnt be that political, they're all on the same team, etc etc). it's less useful because Product, Marketing, Community all could feasibly lay claim to this same metric, and importantly, when its not doing well, they each can blame the other.

objection 2:

internal politics aside, i think my primary source of discomfort comes from 2 angles - A) punting the "what is the value of community" question to the "what % of our signups are organic" question (which as we know is often up for manipulation/debate), and B) ARR from services doesn't count?

anyway, its no worse than the nothing we currently have, so i think a worthwhile exercise, even if not objective.

[tlarkworthy]

yeah if the metric goes up there is a difficulty of attributing it to particular team. However, I guess if that occurs in a local geographic region after a conference it likely it was the efforts of that conference.