Yelena Jetpyspayeva gave a presentation about building developer community around BEM (Block Element Modifier), a front-end development methodology. She discussed BEM's history and components, including the methodology, toolbox, platform, and community. She outlined challenges in building the internal Yandex team and external global community. Her goals over two years were to strengthen the internal Yandex services using BEM and build an external community that could contribute to and own parts of BEM. She reviewed lessons learned, including the importance of infrastructure, communication, and devrel in growing a sustainable global community.

1. Building developer
community in Russia
Yelena Jetpyspayeva, @mursya
DevRelCon 2016, London

2. past — BEM Program Manager @ Yandex,
Moscow
present — Technology Marketing Manager
@ Bright Computing, Amsterdam
about.me/mursya
Who am I?
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3. Building BEM community in Russia and worldwide
What’s BEM?
A little history
Challenge accepted!
BEM way
Lessons we learned
We’ll talk about
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4. What’s BEM?
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8. Block__Element_Modifier = BEM
BEM as a methodology, invented at Yandex
BEM as a toolkit & a platform, all open source
BEM as a community
in 2015 BEM was team of 30 dev and 1 devrel
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What’s BEM?

9. Little BEM history

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11. Support someone else's code
Refactoring
Reuse
A lot of different frameworks & libs
No dependency management
Where pain comes from
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cat_type_red

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20. Block__Element_Modifier
Block__Element_Mod_ModValue
BEM naming convention
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22. Methodology — idea and architecture
Toolbox — tools and SDK
Platform — Libraries, templates, client-side js, etc
Community
BEM
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25. Challenge accepted!

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30. External — build community that learn by themselves, become
skilled enough to be hired, helps to develop, helps to test, develop
together, own parts of BEM, locally & globally
Challenge
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32. External — build community that learn by themselves, become skilled
enough to be hired, helps to develop, helps to test, develop together, own
parts of BEM, locally and globally
Internal — build infrastructure solution for services, win back client base,
improve communication, be transparent, grow internal evangelists
Challenge
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34. BEM ecosystem — self-sufficient
environment where processes work,
benefits are obvious, and community’s life is
not dependant on creators or evangelists

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36. 2 years 2 make

37. BEM way

38. External — build community that learn by themselves, become skilled
enough to be hired, helps to develop, helps to test, develop together,
own parts of BEM, locally & globally — 1st year
Internal — build for services, grow client base, improve communication,
be transparent, grow internal evangelists — 2d year
Goals
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39. › Core product team
› Yandex service teams — BEM users at work and in real life
› Developers outside Yandex — build with BEM / build BEM
Define ourselves
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40. Market
›No developer success stories
›Events for awareness / hiring
›Only what comes from the West is good
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41. Face the community, start to analyse
Lower quantity, better quality
From theory to practise
Move online as much as possible
Build infrastructure
Set the rules
Todo External
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42. Stable and tested product
Build whats needed — no code without a client
Transparent client-oriented communication
Engagement of internal community
Todo Internal
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43. Analyse everything — continuous survey
Internal audit — cost pro developer, hiring from the community
Meet and talk — discover user stories
Discovery
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44. User focused bem.info redesign where community plays bigger role
Events, blog, community dev, external contributors
FORUM
en.bem.info to give it a global tint
social media + working channels (telegram)
Infrastructure & communication
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45. From external conferences to own BEMups
From .ppt to live coding BEMups + webinars + lessons
From live coding BEMups to hackathons
From hackathons to NDA hackathons
Events
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47. Product — quarter planning, public log, release scope, feedback
Communication — internal BEMups with success stories both
from inside and outside
Inner BEM
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48. Lessons learned

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54. Aim global

55. Be trendy

56. Engage

57. Infrastructure matters

58. Devrel gives you more

59. But it needs more time

60. bem.info / github.com/bem-contrib
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61. Head of BEM.Dev at Yandex
HTML/CSS/JS/BEM 24/7
tadatuta@yandex-team.ru
@tadatuta
github.com/tadatuta
Vladimir Grinenko
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62. bem.info @bem_en #b_
mursya@gmail.com @mursya speakerdeck.com/mursya
Contacts
Yelena Jetpyspayeva
Technology Product Marketing & Developer Relations

63. bit.ly/b_devrelcon
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