The document discusses essential considerations for building a developer community website, focusing on five key forces: clarity of goals, understanding the target audience, content importance, community characteristics, and connection with users. Effective strategies include creating high-quality content, fostering user participation, and providing timely feedback mechanisms. The document emphasizes the need for patience and engagement to cultivate a thriving community.

1. Building a Site for your Developer CommunityLauren CooneyGPM, Web Platform & StandardsMicrosoftlcooney@microsoft.comwww.twitter.com/lcooney

2. Who Am I? Not Evil Microsoft (Web Platform & Standards, Developer Division)- IBM (Apache Geronimo; Info Management CTO Office) BEA Systems (dev2dev)

3. Apache Foundation

4. Eclipse

5. CodePlex Foundation

6. Advisory Board, Web2Expo SFPorter’s 5 Forces?

7. Cooney’s 5 Forces of Site Community

8. #1: Clarity

9. Why am I building this website? What are my Top Level Goals?Questions to ask:What need am I addressing?Does my company already have a site that addresses these needs?What results do I want to see?How am I going to achieve these goals?What does success look like?

10. #2: Customer

11. Who is my Target Audience?Address: Who is the target audience? Is there another community out there that fits these needs (competitor/partner?)Do I partner or do I create my own community? What is my differentiator & how do I create that (is there one of value)?

12. Who is Your Customer? Customers are different than “target audience.”

13. Figuring out your site customer involves segmenting the target audience

14. Both of these audiences require different types of content and different types of websites and communication mechanismsHow do I Segment my Audience?Less is More:Tips and Tactics (on the cheap)Look at competitor sites.

15. Data is available on lots of different websites for free or a fraction of the cost of analyst reports/DevTrackers

16. Scouring public blogs, wikis, research sites

17. Sometimes analysts offer up free reports

18. Talking to people in the industry#3: Content

19. Content: At the Core of WebsitesWhy Content is so Important:Content is KING

20. Good content is absolutely critical; poor content means you’ll lose customers (no repeat visitors)

21. Helps new users or current customers learn about news, new products & information critical

22. Important in helping customers build out their skill set

23. Core way to get developers plugged in/bought in. What Content is Good? What is Good Content?Less is More (Good Content v Bad Content)

24. Developer websites need code

25. Interactive content is good (but keep it short & to the point)

26. Short Videos

27. Learning tutorials

28. Demos

29. Step by step articles/how to