Ana Hevesi

Bio:

I'm a New York native who dropped out of college to pursue my own real-world education in New York tech. I got my start working as the Events Director at New Work City, which lead to freelance gigs doing community & product management, and eventually to my current job, as Community Manager at Shapeways. At Shapeways, I get to help a new generation of designers and makers use 3D printing to create the world around them, which is incredibly awesome.

• Title: Community Manager, Shapeways
• Age: 25
• Location: Brooklyn, Prospect Heights
• Contact: @anoemi

In your blogpost on February 1st you mention that Shapeways will “be a new and different challenge from anything that’s come before.”  What would say has been the biggest surprise since you started there?

The biggest surprise has been how many more dimensions there are when your company deals with a physical as well as a digital product. Besides our web presence, we also have a supply chain. We take your CAD files, 3D print them, pack them, and ship them in boxes. It's a lot more layers to consider, and it means something very different in terms of customer expectations. It's also super exciting to be opening up a new creative outlet to the world, and be figuring out the logistics for it. But it was definitely a big new thing to wrap my head around.

How did you prepare for hurricane Irene?

I'm really lucky in that, being from around here, I got to call on help from my family for this one. I was raised in Kew Gardens, Queens and my folks are still there. I called up my mom, we did a little strategizing on what we'd need, and then I spent the weekend at their place. She did a fantastic job of stocking up and we were very well prepared for the hurricane that wasn't. Thanks mom!

In your opinion, what responsibilities fall under the title of Community Manager?

As a starting point, the Community Manager has to know and understand the users better than anyone in the company, other than maybe the CEO. You need to develop an honest empathy with them, you need to know what their needs are, and they should feel like they can look to you as an advocate. When there's big news for the community, you act as the company's public face. Finally, as the Community Manager you should be gathering the community's feedback, and sending it back to the rest of the company, so that it can be worked into the overall product vision and roadmap.

Read any good books lately?

I recently read Steven Pressfield's The War of Art, and that was awesome.  Pressfield has written some powerful military historical fiction, but this is his how-to on getting over your own BS so that you can build things that matter, be it a startup, or a symphony, and he just really got to the heart of the matter.