Sometimes it’s hard to find answers for work‐related questions. This difficulty is compounded when one lacks the means to engage with a community of peers who face similar situations and problems. As institutional repository (IR) managers, we found ourselves with access to resources and listservs that didn’t quite fit our needs. Available discussion spaces were either too general in scope, drowning out repository‐specific concerns; or too narrowly focused on platform‐specific issues and technical details. Lacking an appropriate forum, we decided to create a discussion space for IR managers. The IR Manager Forum (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/irmanagers) is designed to foster a community of practice for reposi- tory managers, regardless of software implementation, institutional setting, or technical expertise. Using the Goo- gle Groups platform, members can post and view threaded messages in an online interface or by e‐mail. Conversations in this space have the potential to help IR managers develop their repository policies and local practices. The authors hope that the forum will also support cross‐platform comparisons to identify useful fea- tures and limitations of various software, areas for practical improvement, and larger trends in institutional repos- itories that speak to their future direction. This paper covers how IR managers from the University of Florida, University of North Texas, Texas A&M University, and University of Massachusetts Amherst created the IR Man- agers Forum. It also gives an overview of the forum’s usage and growth over the first year and a half, and lessons learned along the way.