How AWS's Developer Community Grew 3,600 Builders Across 110 Countries ft. Jason Dunn

Two hands. A free Slack channel. A spreadsheet. That was the entire toolkit when AWS asked Jason Dunn to build a developer community. Jason Dunn spent five years on building something people actually want to belong to. He grew a developer community into thousands of members spread across more than a hundred countries, working with far less budget and tooling than you'd expect. This conversation digs into what separates a living community from a glorified contact list. Why your earliest members carry so much weight. When to keep the door open and when to guard it. How to prove value when your best wins resist a dashboard. Why technical people walk the second something smells like a pitch. And how one small, slightly absurd reward became a badge people chased for months. A Real talk on getting people to show up for each other. Josh is writing a book on building customer relationships. Follow his journey and insights at www.joshschachter.com --- What You'll Learn Why the first members you pick set the tone forever The day-zero choice: community for everyone or for someone How to measure community when it's basically a vibe The trick to getting members to report their own wins Gamification with a lowercase G (and why it works) The golden jacket story and pent-up demand Why developers reject sales and marketing pipelines Scrappy tools beat fancy platforms every time The AI warning every new community manager needs --- Want the playbook, not just the conversation? Subscribe for deep-dive, actionable breakdowns from every episode at unchurned.substack.com. --- Timestamps 0:00 - Preview and Meet Jason Dunn 2:22 - What community meant at AWS in 2019 3:45 - The day-zero decision every builder faces 5:05 - From 200 invited seeds to 3,600 members 6:39 - Keeping the gates too open, too early 9:12 - Defining high-value member activity 11:23 - Measuring & reporting up: output, reach, and Dev.to 14:53 - The Content Reporting Tool (CRT) 16:02 - The real motivation behind self-reporting 18:24 - The Golden Jacket origin story & 130 jackets in one quarter 21:28 - The AWS Community toolkit 23:42 - Advice for new community managers 51:00 — Don't fall in love with the tools 53:00 — Humanity connecting with humanity --- Where to Find the Guest Jason Dunn:   / jasonrobertdunn   --- Where to Find Josh: LinkedIn:   / jschachter   Unchurned Substack: https://unchurned.substack.com/