Building Successful Local Communities: Insights and Best Practices

Building Successful Local Communities: Insights and Best Practices
Ivo Radulovski (segments)
Austrian and Bulgarian Communities
João Ventura (jcnventura)
Portuguese Community
Christefano (christefano)
LA Drupal
Jeffrey A. “jam” McGuire (horncologne)
Germany / Italy

What does a strategic plan look like for a local community?
The People
Objectives
Organization / Legal Entity
Roles & Responsibilities

The People
Individuals
Service Providers
Clients

Objectives
Have fun
Meet people that share your Drupal passion
Share knowledge (Drupal, but not only)
Network
Cooperate
Have fun (again)

Organization / Legal Entity
Why is it important?
Handling Money
Signing Contracts
Local Branding & Marketing
Dealing with Contacts
Define a Team
Having Partnerships & Memberships

Roles & Responsibilities
Marketing
Event Organization & Logistics
Sponsorship Management
Website Development
Graphic Design
Translation Team
Social Coordination
Drupal Public Training Coordinator
Communication

Marketing
Universities
Press Releases
Media Partners

Drupal in Bulgaria in 6 months from zero to…
Drupal Meetup
7 Sessions at the Sofia University
3 Expos with Drupal Panels in 3 Cities
Drupal 7 Release Party
Drupal Camp
Coding for a Cause
Drupal Party
Weekly User Group Meetings

Drupal in Bulgaria metrics (6 months)
25 volunteers at the camp*
80 members in groups.drupal.org
+200 posts about Drupalcamp Sofia
250 active members
300 registered on drupalcamp.bg
2000 registered users at drupal.org (+60% growth)
20.000 Unique visitors in 2 months with ~5mins and ~6 pages per visitor on drupalcamp.bg

Déjà vu – Portuguese style
The community had to be restarted in September 2009, because it had been abandoned
These early members are still around, and some are now active members.
A community is a group of people with individual agendas – conflict is a certainty, given enough time.
Deal with it early, before it snowballs

Drupal in Portugal in 18 months
Monthly meetings
3 Drupal sessions in 3 university / cities
Drupal 7 release party
1st Drupalcamp in Lisbon: March 26, 2011

Drupal in Portugal metrics
30 active members
119 attendants registered in Drupalcamp
158 members in groups.drupal.org
3300 registered users at drupal.org

Get out!
Meet often, meet regularly
Monthly at least
Different types of meetups:
Meet in a bar (scalability problems)
Barcamp
½ day DrupalCamps

Community channels
Usual channels:
groups.drupal.org
#drupal-* IRC channel on freenode
Your website
Other channels (not recommended):
Mailing lists
groups.google.com
Facebook
Twitter

Eat your own dog food
Create a website
Nice tool to create websites: Drupal

However…
You all know how to make GREAT websites
You have all this neat stuff that you can use
But…
KISS
Get it done , and then grow it slowly
Because it will be created, managed and maintained by volunteers
It only needs to tell who you are, what you’ve done and what you’ll do
Don’t make existing channels obsolete

Strength in numbers
Establish ties with neighboring communities
Encourage the creation of new communities
Meta-communities
In Europe, there’s a continent-level group of communities organizing vertical Camps
The Drupal Hispano community gathers all the distinct Spanish-speaking communities

What did you think?
Locate this session on the DCC website:
http://chicago2011.drupal.org/sessions
Click the “Take the Survey” link.
Thanks!

Building Successful Local Communities: Insights and Best Practices

by João Ventura on Mar 29, 2011

Accessibility

Categories

Upload Details

Usage Rights

Statistics

Building Successful Local Communities: Insights and Best Practices Presentation Transcript