A look back at key themes from #CMXSummit 2025

The #CMXSummit 2025, held on May 1-2 in Redwood City, California, was a landmark event that united community builders, business leaders, and change-makers under the common goal of harnessing the power of community to drive growth. For 2025, the event took a different approach by offering more than speeches; it facilitated collaboration, innovation, and actionable strategies among attendees. 

As one of the Innovation Sponsors, Movate (Kristen Hein, Gary Chen, Nick Sylvanus) was delighted to be part of a vibrant gathering focused on community engagement.  

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“Community isn’t just a strategy but the thrust of innovation. Attending #CMXSummit reinforced that investing in people-first ecosystems unlocks sustainable growth and authentic engagement. The summit was a masterclass in aligning purpose with practice.” – Nick Sylvanus, Customer Success & Operations, Movate. 

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The 2025 event offered a practical digital action guide for helping attendees interact and implement what they’ve learned. Considering the developments in AI, the heartthrob of the event was the ‘human connection’ factor in technology to bridge authentic connections and enrich engagements. 

The event focussed on the efficiency of customer engagement via different community personas to drive tangible engagement. Enterprise customer success and community pros shared hot takes covering feedback loops, onboarding of new customers, goal-oriented success of a beta community, ‘working backwards’ approach to RFPs, or soft launch of a community, value of a community and understanding their pain points.  

Rallying the support of senior leadership is essential for fostering and sustaining effective community engagement! Being in touch with your audience (their interests, needs, and motivations) is key to articulating the community’s strategic value to the business in a compelling story-like narrative. 

The objectives of a well-managed community include: 

• Enabling users to find relevant information swiftly and proactively deflect common support queries. 
• Sharing best practices to enhance the user learning journey and encourage knowledge sharing. 
• Driving product adoption and engagement to reduce churn, improve retention, and increase upsell opportunities. 
• Supporting product engineering teams with data-driven insights by connecting Voice of the Customer (VoC) feedback to CRM systems for more informed product development. 

Businesses can transform users into passionate product advocates and loyal brand ambassadors by speaking in the community’s language and directly addressing their pain points. 

Here are the top 7 takeaways. 

1. Design communities that run themselves: Paz Pisarski shared how to build self-sustaining communities by empowering members with ownership, streamlining processes, and creating clarity in team roles using her “P3 Method:” People, Processes, Plan. 

2. Break silos to unlock budgets: Gianna Scorsone emphasized that aligning community with go-to-market (GTM) teams leads to stronger executive support. Building cross-functional relationships unlocks budget and strategic buy-in. 

3. Don’t over-hype engagement metrics:  Gianna Whitver advised on centering the ‘experiences’ of members and not the ‘metrics’ per se. Word-of-mouth is the biggest indicator of a community’s value and the passive members or ‘lurkers’ might be referring the community despite what appears to be a lack of engagement or low participation from their side. Focus on ‘value’ and meeting members at their point of need and the engagement metrics will rise organically. She stated that it is us who owe the community everything and they owe us nothing. 

4. Product equity is a must, not a bonus: Zaki Barzinji urged builders to involve marginalized communities throughout the product lifecycle to ensure ‘equity’ from problem definition to deployment. 

• Christina Hug introduced the AWE Framework (Anchor, Weave, Elevate) to craft events that go beyond surface-level connection and spark genuine, memorable engagement. 
• Pete Heslop showed how real-world UX, drawn from hospitality and urban design helps create intuitive and welcoming community spaces—from the first click to lasting connections. 

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“CMX Summit 2025 illuminated new strategies for customer engagement as it echoes how Movate empowers a global community of millions of product users and their experiences.” – Gary Chen, Movate. 

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5. AI is a tool, not a strategy: The “Community, Rewritten” panel advised starting AI integration with time-consuming but low-risk tasks. AI should enhance, not replace, human-driven community practices. 

6. Feedback is the foundation: Armin Pop, Maria Encinar, and Whitney Marin championed feedback loops not just as tools but as the heart of community design, thereby ensuring that members feel heard and valued. 

7. Make friendships stick: Kat Vellos presented the “Seeds of Connection” framework: Compatibility, Frequency, Proximity, and Commitment to help community managers foster real friendships and lasting bonds among members. 

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“Movate OnDemand is more than a gig platform. It catalyzes community-driven opportunities. At CMX Summit 2025, the message was clear: scalable communities thrive when individuals are empowered with flexible, purposeful work. Our platform does just that by turning skill into impact and independence into collective progress.” 

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The event was the perfect setting to showcase Movate’s commitment to community innovation. Brushing elbows with peers and immersing themselves in thought-provoking sessions allowed the team to share their vision of a ‘stronger community’.  

Well after the event was over, the vibes, experiences, and learnings continue to resonate thanks to an inspiring, provoking #CMXSummit.  

Here’s to building stronger communities together!