Building Community vs. Facilitating Community and the Work of Belonging in Digital Communities

Josie Ahlquist (0:00)

Josie and the Podcast is produced by the team over at University FM. They are the higher ed podcast agency, helping communicators build community, share research, and inspire thoughtful discussions with stories that resonate. Podcast with ease and elevate the stories of your institution today. Go to university.fm or click the link in the show notes to start. Josie and the Podcast is also sponsored by Element 451 They are the leading student engagement platform for higher education. It combines AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants, workflow automation, and modern marketing tools to hyper-personalize student communication and boost team productivity. The easy to use platform can help you optimize the entire student journey experience from application to graduation and beyond, ensuring that every exchange between your institution and its learners is meaningful, personalized, and engaging. Go from the noise to relevancy with timely personalized communication on every channel. Welcome to the era of student-centric engagement. Visit element451.com for a demo and join the future of student engagement.

Hello, and welcome to Josie and the Podcast. I'm Josie, and I'm so happy to have you here with me today. What does it mean to lead and just overall live in this digital space era with heart and humanity fully intact? On this podcast, I spent time answering that question with heart, soul, and lots of substance. My goal is to share conversations that are going to encourage you, empower you, and we may even try to entertain you to rethink digital strategy for yourself and the organizations you support.

Happy New Year 2024! I am so excited that you're joining me here today to talk about something that is just very near and dear to my heart and where I get to geek out about. But talking about the new year, right before I started recording, I stumbled onto this article about the reels of 2023 Reels with E-E-L-S called from The Washington Post, if you didn't share recap video, did 2023 really happen? This is by Taylor Lorenz. I love her work as a journalist and as an author, and honestly, the kind of work she does in the digital space is also a bit on the researching side. And I did also happen to put out a recap video on Instagram. It was much earlier than, you know, well, I think it was like December 27th, but she calls this, this trend, cause it used to be our top nine, that people would put those grids together. They're seeing this as the TikTokification of life. Kate Lindsey, the co-founder of Internet Culture Newsletter Embed, which is a newsletter I highly recommend that you subscribe to and check out. And it just got me thinking for a moment, and even the real that I put out there, what would make up your real, real? And not even like, okay, now I'm not gonna show the really big highlights, cause I think highlights are very much real, but I didn't include in there, for example, how we were sick solidly for two to three weeks in December, or maybe some family health issues that happened in September, but maybe those real reals are something that we just have for ourselves, so we really know what that encapsulates. Well, no matter what, if you put out a real or real real or not, I am in the new year feels, which actually is always this push and pull between all the things like drive for achievement and overarching feel of anxiety.

And maybe that's just like my every day, but I wanted to share with you some of the things that I am looking towards in trying to call them resolutions, goals, ambitions.

This is what I'm trying to read more than watching TV. And if you've been listening to the podcast, this isn't actually a new one, but it's easier honestly to turn TV on than open a book. And that sounds weird, but that's the vibe I'm going for. I'm gonna try a low spend spring. And this is actually a trend I stumbled into on TikTok. There are a lot of people doing no spend years. And there's systems to this where there's some tracking, there's some things that you obviously like basic needs, you have to allow yourself to buy things on. I am always susceptible to the holiday spirit that kind of gets into the problematic side of commercialism and capitalism. And so I am six days into the new year and I haven't bought anything. Non-essential, so yay for me. I'll keep you posted on how that's going. What I am wanting to increase though is protein. And I am a red meat eating all the meats, but in a variety, in more strategic ways, because I'm doing a lot more weights. I hear as we get older, we need to increase weights. I'm not like maxing out on squats or anything or like dead lifting more like lower rep stuff. So I'm bringing that energy in. And then a little bit more of a sassy one is big eggplant emoji business energy or the peach emoji. I want to come into my own as a business owner with embodiment, with confidence, security and sustainability.