How to Manage an Online Community - My Learnings

Managing an online community can be daunting. I shared some tips on how I have managed and grown Devcenter's community from 200 to over 1,800 members in under a year.

Transcript

1. Managing an Online Community By Osioke Itseuwa Community Manager, Devcenter
2. a distributed community of software developers, designers and PMs across Africa, helping clients build world class software.
3. Hello, I am Osioke Onoarue Oarue-Itseuwa (aka Sprime). • Traveler • Street Photographer (see https://instagram.com/ganinigeria) • DIYer • Life Hacker (see https://spracks.com) • Explorer (see https://blog.ganinigeria.com) • Open source lover In one sentence: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. I am Jack.
4. Me exploring and having fun
5. Street photographs and pictures of places I explored
6. My Community history 2009: Member of the defunct FOSS NG, Founder of the defunct OpenIT Community, AIESECer. 2013: NYSC IT trainer. 2014/2015: Google Local Guide community lead, Open source project community lead (States & Cities and later Disease Info). 2016/2017: Community manager Devcenter Square, Together with Google Developer program, and a GitHub Super Fan.
7. Community focus: Devcenter Square 400+ people talking weekly, 750+ people active weekly, 2,400+ members, 40+ sub-communities.
8. Screenshot of the Slack community
9. Screenshot of Nov 2017 stats for the Slack community
10. Screenshot of all time stats for the Slack community
11. How Can You Do It In one sentence: Make your community comfortable. • Create code of conduct, guides and community docs ◦ After creating them, make them very easy to be seen by members • Discussions and chats arranged into different channels ◦ And make sure members stick to this • Moderation should be on fleek ◦ DO NOT JOKE WITH MODERATION. • In the early days, welcoming new join ins, personally. Try to do it from time to time even as the community goes larger. ◦ It helps them bond in faster, and makes them fill more settled.
12. Tips and Resources • Join other online communities, study them, be active in them, and learn from them. E.g. Feverbee (experts.feverbee.com), CMX Hub on Slack and Facebook (cmxslack.github.io), Buffer on Slack (buffer.com/slack), Devcenter Square (devcenter-square.github.io) • Read and research a lot. Favourite places to go to: Feverbee.com, CMX Hub (cmxhub.com). ◦ Books: Hooked by Nir Eyal & Platform Revolution by Geoffrey Parker
13. Tips & Resources • Understand a little of User Experience design, how people behave (behavioral psychology), product design and people management. It will help you create better processes for your members. ◦ Sign up for hackdesign.org’s class ◦ Read through productpsychology.com and nirandfar.com ◦ Play some games on beinternetawesome.withgoogle.com to better understand internet bullying and how bad it can be ▪ Also read this post - https://medium.com/humane-tech/the-immortal-myths-about-online-abuse-a15 6e3370aee
14. Thank you @osioke bit.ly/dcs-slack