Test & Learn Community (TLC)

The year was 2012. The view was of the Pacific. The venue: the xChange Conference hosted by Semphonic where I had been invited to attend as a huddle leader by Gary Angel. The conversation topic: what else? Experimentation. But, mid-conversation (mid-revelation, really), their time was up and they needed to move to the next “huddle.” An audible groan of disappointment arose. So I encouraged everyone to continue the conversation via email. From that email chain, we decided to have a monthly teleconference—I called it a “tele-huddle". Eventually, I decided to expand to include others and shifted to Zoom. Each month, we'd meet on Zoom to support each other with whatever topics we were working on in our respective jobs - sometimes with planned topics, sometimes just mentoring each other. Always with the purpose of teaching and learning. People dropped out and others joined along the way with the size of the community staying around 20-40 people for the first several years until we decided to start the Slack community and change the format to invite industry leaders to present and have live recorded panel discussions. (Shout out to our friends at measure.chat and the analyticshour.io for those inspirations.) The one thing that has always remained true to the original intention of the community - the TLC was designed as a place for people to teach, learn, and converse. And it remains so today. No sales or solicitation of members is ever allowed and all questions are welcome and encouraged. The environment should be welcoming and no one should ever feel worried that they'll get bullied for asking a "dumb question". That's not what the TLC is. Everyone here wants to help - and if anyone is not helpful, they'll be invited to leave. Because of the welcoming and encouraging atmosphere of sharing and learning, the TLC has grown to a community of well over 1,000 members and is continuing to grow. Members include industry leaders and those just getting started from research, an