The post below was originally posted on YeurLeadin; it’s reproduced here as I found the platform we were using this time for our online meeting to be amazing. This isn’t paid product placement (I don’t do that). Just celebrating something that’s wonderful. As well as being fab for meetings though, I really feel this brand new product emulates much of the good aspects of an office:

• popping in and see if someone’s available
• responsive feedback from others
• co-create work (there’s collaboration features I didn’t even mention in the post below)
• being able to hear each other (no “winner/first to speak takes all” approach as with some other platforms)
• no limit on the number of meeting rooms and zero travel time

On with the blog:

So, the plan was to spend the time socialising last Thursday. You know, the now-ususal round of going to one person at a time on Zoom, and asking each other how they are. Nice but not exactly dynamic.

This is what happened instead:

There was some boggieing along to the dance track. Various people were whispering to each other in the corner (yep, we spotted you Alex and Mary!), whilst others were busy clapping (with sound!) those on the stage.

It almost sounds like a real life, in-person, event.

Looking back at the carnage of an hour, gone as quick as a flash, I was exhausting from having so much fun! All the features mentioned above exist on the virtual platform we were triailing, and it was intuitive. I missed Lynda and others who popped out of our room to build and decorate the new cafe (screenshot below, the morning after). I was too busy running around the building locking and unlocking rooms and then taking a quick moment to invite myself on to the stage, to actually socialise too much – it was exactly like the best aspects of a community group event (on the plus side no food wastage, but ok, I still miss the welcoming hugs).

So, what was going on?

Mary Scotton had invited us to play around with her new virtual platform, Nooks, which coincidentally came out of beta on the same day as our meeting. The YeurLeadin team had had a test run last month and we regard it as an amazing space to collaborate – whether that’s a virtual office (staff can have their own rooms for you to pop into), classrooms for school use, or for online meetings/conferences. We’re firmly sold. The platform has been clearly put together with love and joy at its heart.

So did you miss out?

Not entirely! As mentioned Nooks went live last Thursday, along with the announcement of a $5m funding round. It’s a fully commerical venture. However, Mary Scotton knows the Trailblazer Community and has previously been Trailblazer Equality VP at Salesforce, so if your group wants to use Nooks it’s free. Whether that’s a Salesforce Saturday or a Community Group. And it scales up for conferences too.

How to find our more and get your hands on this very special offer? Drop Mary a line and she’ll happily give you a tour and set up a login for you. This applies to any Salesforce Saturday or Trailblazer Community Group, but only while stocks last!

YeurLeadin are now going on a summer break (i.e. we haven’t yet confirmed our next date, and we have a speaker in mind but need to check that they are up for it), but the good news is, when we do return, it’ll be on Nooks.

YeurLeadin shares best practice and inspiration for Salesforce Community Leaders. Whether you’re on the organising team of a Community Group, Salesforce Saturday, Community Conference, an MVP or a Product Champion; or you’re otherwise deeply involved in the community, the aim is that we can all learn from each other. For more information, and details about our Slack channel, mailing list and forthcoming events, please check out our website.