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Building Vibrant and Sustainable Communities John Mark Walker openCollabNet Community Manager October 16, 2008

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Building Communities <ul><li>What is community building? </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Building relationships with a critical mass of people such that these relationships may be leveraged for current and future business </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Community development == business development for the 21st century </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Your success now lies in the hands of people with a non-binding relationship to your business

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How do you keep them engaged while attracting more to your community? </li></ul></ul>

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Community Best Practices <ul><li>Lose the fear </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Don't be afraid of a phenomenally successful community or project

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Commonly heard (mistaken) phrases: </li><ul><li>“But it will cannibalize our sales!”

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“Our #1 competitor is our Open Source product” </li></ul><li>Factor in the risk and go with it </li><ul><li>Majority will happily use free product and never pay for it

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While they may not buy from you, they're also not buying from your competitors </li></ul></ul></ul><ul><li>How do you attract a mass audience to your free project and still maintain a lucrative sales pipeline? </li></ul>

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Community Best Practices <ul><li>A: Don't be afraid to let your community develop its own identity </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Lifetime community user will be different from your enterprise buyer </li><ul><li>Will expect a more flexible, “hackable” product

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Do not like to be forced into a particular approach </li></ul><li>Bottom line: Community product will differ from enterprise product </li><ul><li>This is an opportunity! </li></ul></ul></ul><ul><li>What's the biggest mistake companies make when differentiating between free and something to sell? </li></ul>

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Community Worst Practices <ul><li>Let's Design Our Project to Fail! </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Boxing in your free product as a lesser competitor will ensure that it stays that way

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It's a self-limiting, self-fulfilling prophecy </li></ul></ul>Free product Enterprise Product

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Community Best Practices <ul><li>What to do Instead? </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Your community is where new things should be attempted

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Your community is not the place to design all facets of a product by PRD </li></ul></ul><ul><li>“Total Innovation Opportunity” </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Maximizing of innovation points around your product offerings

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Must increase the variety of people using your software </li><ul><li>cross-section of users, developers, tinkerers, etc. </li></ul></ul></ul>

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Community Best Practices <ul><li>“Total Innovation Opportunity” continued </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Maximize the points where your community participates in your project and product design

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Different types of users will touch the product at different stages </li><ul><li>A hacker / tinkerer / hobbyist might prefer a lighter-weight product in a less developed state

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A sysadmin can make do with a product that works but requires some manual labor

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Typical end user will want something that “just works”

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Product development must capture feedback at each stage

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All users will be capable of producing documentation </li></ul></ul></ul>

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Feedback Loops <ul><li>Feedback Loops </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Tinkerers should be engaged with your engineering team </li><ul><li>Do you have the mechanisms in place to allow for that?

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Do you have projects of interest for them? </li></ul><li>Sysadmins can engage with your developers, product management and QA </li><ul><li>Are there adequate paths of communication between them? </li></ul><li>End users can provide valuable feedback for QA and technical writers </li></ul></ul><ul><li>So now what does our product visual look like? </li></ul>

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Community Best Practices <ul><li>Side projects in the

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open

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Freewheeling

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community

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Solid enterprise

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product </li></ul>Enterprise Product Free Product Experimental UI New, open API

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Community Best Practices <ul><li>Total Innovation Opportunity </li></ul><ul><ul><li>New feature experimentation should happen in the community, where you can afford to make mistakes

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Side projects can also take place in the community </li><ul><li>May develop into product features, or not </li></ul><li>Development should happen at a faster pace in the community </li><ul><li>Corollary: development should happen at a much slower pace for your enterprise products </li></ul></ul></ul><ul><li>How do you identify which community participants fill which role? </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Much of it will happen without your interference

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However, demand generation does help – Eloqua, Loopfuse </li></ul></ul>

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Community Best Practices <ul><li>That's great, but how do I get more people involved?

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Be a part of the conversation!

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aka, The Community Development Long Tail </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Engage with outside groups

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Recruit internally those with a voice (or can develop one)

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Don't worry about strict adherence to corporate messaging </li></ul></ul>

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Community Development Long Tail <ul><li>Where and How should I reach out to other groups? </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Outside groups can be broken into 3 basic tiers </li></ul></ul>Tier 1: Groups with obvious connections - Partner companies, relevant consortia Tier 2: Groups with less obvious connections - Educational orgs, community-driven projects Tier 3: Find some common interests among your community members and invest in them

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Community Development Long Tail <ul><li>Tier 1 Groups </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Most obvious and should receive the most focus

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Should justify each example with tangible business opportunity </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Tier 2 Groups </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Community-driven projects related to your technology </li><ul><li>May be a quasi-competitor </li></ul><li>Educational organizations with a technical focus

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Might be able to justify each example with future business opportunities </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Tier 3 Groups </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Driven by common interests of your community </li><ul><li>Social causes, eg. political or charitable orgs </li></ul></ul></ul>

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Community Development Long Tail <ul><li>Rules of Engagement </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Identify strategic groups within each tier

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Within your organization find those who can express themselves

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Engage in conversations in and around strategic groups </li><ul><li>Blogs, social networking, community web sites </li></ul><li>Sponsor events and groups as resources allow </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Messaging is so 20th century </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Not all conversations are going to adhere to your messaging </li><ul><li>You need to be flexible, within limits </li></ul><li>Train messengers in basics, and then turn them loose </li></ul></ul>

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Community Best Practices Enterprise Product Free Product Experimental UI New, open API Pol. org Char. org

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Community Best Practices - Examples <ul><li>Red Hat Software </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Has successful enterprise product - RHEL

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Has successful, growing community with its own identity – Fedora </li><ul><li>Community product differs substantially from enterprise </li></ul><li>Invests in social causes – OLPC, FSF

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Leverages community value into $$$ </li></ul></ul><ul><li>But Red Hat is not my favorite example... </li></ul>

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Community Best Practices - Examples <ul><li>My favorite example – Google </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Google's Open Source Program Office is a model to be emulated by tier 1 vendors

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Google invests in many social causes

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Invests in many communities, whether there is a direct relationship or not </li><ul><li>Google Summer of Code </li></ul><li>Community experience very different from their premium product

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Net effect: developers around the world ready to pounce on initiatives like Open Social, Android, etc.

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Net effect2: Google gets a pass for some PR miscues </li><ul><li>Some press attention may be negative, but “people on the ground” very much revere Google </li></ul></ul></ul>

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Community Best Practices <ul><li>Potential pitfalls </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Product differentiation is good, but don't go too far </li><ul><li>Community users need a convenient path to enterprise

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If you want people to buy from you, must give them a compelling reason </li></ul><li>Don't over-invest in tier 2 or tier 3 community efforts

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If your product doesn't give people value, they're not going to join your community

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“Loose lips sink ships” </li><ul><li>turning people loose on blogs is great, but make sure they have adequate training on what is and is not acceptable </li></ul></ul></ul>

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Community Best Practices <ul><li>Key Takeaways: </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Creating an Open Source product means creating a different product, not just a downsized version of what you sell. </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>You must create an emotional tie-in between you and your community </li></ul></ul>

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Thank You Contact Info: [email_address] http://twitter.com/johnmark http://collab.net/community http://tinosc.blogspot.com