For me is hands down the Autodesk community. It is so old no one knows anymore exactly when it started, but for sure was around in the early 90's already. In my early career I used Autodesk software as a CAD operator for Land Surveying, Architecture and Civil Engineering projects. It was my place to go to troubleshoot issues and to learn from those more skilled that I was. Eventually I also helped others, as a peer and later providing technical support, demos and training for a software Reseller and then becoming an Autodesk Authorized Consultant. Always hung around in there.
Then in 2009, after joining Autodesk and moving to Switzerland in 2005 as a top tier Technical Support expert in their Civil Engineering software (posting in the community as an employee), I had the opportunity to transition to managing strategy and programs for the entire community. I had already dabbled in creating a blog and Twitter handle to communicate with customers and I leapt into this new digital world.
I managed it from 2009-2013, we had 1.5M unique monthly visitors - today it must be well over 5M I'd guess. I developed an early ROI model for support cost-deflection that won a Gartner award in June 2012.
In my time there, I remember a long-time SuperUser who passed away, and the outpouring of condolences for his family and stories of how he'd helped others through their careers was truly inspiring.
