Introducing Gravity - the Field Guide for Product Communities

We chat with hundreds of community teams and see a lot of folks reinventing the wheel—solving the same problems and crafting similar approaches from scratch. When it comes to the practices employed by product community teams, a lot of it never gets shared. They live (and die) within individual groups, disconnected from each other. Here at Orbit, we believe in empowering community teams. We do that through the Orbit Model and the Orbit platform, but we felt like we could do more to help those leading product communities and provide a means to share best practices.

That's why we're excited to announce Gravity. Gravity is a print and web magazine that explores the theories and practices of establishing and scaling product communities.

As companies increasingly understand the strategic value of community to grow their business, product communities' role is becoming more important too. A lot gets written about community in general terms, but less is written specifically about product communities. Community isn't a one-size-fits-all thing. Salesforce's Trailblazers, Roblox, and a Rugby club may all be communities, but they have very different goals, and the activities and tactics needed to nurture them differ wildly too. That’s why each issue of Gravity will focus on a specific theme related to product communities, with a mixture of long-form articles, interviews with experts, and other thoughtful content.

Issue 1: Analytics

We are tackling a tricky subject for this inaugural issue — analytics. Data is crucial to understanding how to build and manage communities, and we are approaching the topic from a few different angles. We've contributions from community pros across the industry, including Jono Bacon, Adam DuVander, Amanda Petersen, Erik Israni, and Jenifer De Figueiredo. And of course, there are plenty of observations and insights from the team here at Orbit, too.

Read Issue 1

Ordinarily, Gravity will be published in print first, with a web version coming some weeks later. For this first one, though, you can read it online now and grab a free print version (yep, it’s a real physical magazine!) for yourself or your team.

Contribute to Gravity

If you'd like to be involved in future issues, pitch us. Or, if you have ideas for topics you'd like to see covered, then let us know. We'd love to hear from you either way.

Whether you are a community builder, a developer advocate, an executive, or just someone passionate about product communities, we made Gravity just for you. We hope the stories shared in each issue will take hold, pull you in, and give you the knowledge you need to succeed. Enjoy!