This month, TSPA turns two—and it’s been an amazing year! Over the last twelve months, we’ve been laser-focused on building our community of practice, and we’d love to share some of this year’s highlights.
Since our last birthday, we’ve hosted 21 events supporting the professional practice and public understanding of trust and safety. From public panels about transparency reports and the distributed web, to members-only sessions about org structures and employee wellness, to Q&As about career paths in trust and safety with leaders in the field, we’ve worked hard to make TSPA a place with something for everyone.
TSPA was founded to bring our community together, but in our first year, this mostly had to be virtual. This year, we were delighted to start hosting in-person networking events again: we had great events in Washington, DC, San Francisco, Dublin, and London. We’re looking forward to doing more in Year 3; Singapore, New York, and Seattle are next! (Be sure you’re subscribed to our newsletter to hear about upcoming local events near you.)
This year, we introduced a lot of new ways for professionals to connect and learn from each other. We created new working groups focused on two important issues for our field: the Compensation Survey working group and the Vendor Directory working group. We also opened the TSPA Community Slack Space and the TSPA Member Portal, giving members the ability to connect with their community and professional resources in real time.
Our community has grown significantly in the past year! We opened independent membership to ensure trust and safety professionals can join without a corporate supporter membership. In addition to bringing on individual, affiliate, and student members, we’re proud to have welcomed teams from nine new corporate supporter companies to our community.
How are we doing it? We doubled the size of our team! Ileah Vazquez now manages membership and runs our events, while Amanda Menking coordinates our working groups and expands our programming. We’re excited to be building a strong team to make TSPA’s vision a reality (and in case you missed it: we’re hiring!)
Critically, Year 2 was also when we received our first round of constructive criticism from members. A few members told us we need to make it easier to participate in events and working groups at APAC-friendly times; in response, we’ve expanded meeting times for our working groups and are working to host more events during normal APAC working hours. What’s important to you is what’s important to us, so we want to know when you need something new or different. We love fan mail when things are going right, but it’s equally important for us to hear what more we can be doing to support this community – that’s why we’re here!
What’s in store for Year 3? Right now, we’re in full swing planning TrustCon with our TrustCon Working Group volunteers, and, in collaboration with Stanford Internet Observatory, we’re organizing the Trust & Safety Research Conference. Because TSPA has a global member community, we’ll also be working with many of our new members to bring more international programming online in the months and years to come.
As we celebrate our second birthday and anticipate all we’ll do together in the coming year, we want to thank our supporters for making all of this possible. We are so grateful to every team who has dedicated some of their hard-earned budget to helping the TSPA community flourish. Finally, we want to thank you – our members. A community simply cannot exist without the nourishment and care of its members, and you continue to deliver every day. It is our great honor and privilege to serve you.
