The Power of Community: Non-Linear Approach That Pays Off

Building a community is trendy these days. By gathering people around a great idea we gain much more than just an opportunity to sell our services or recruit top talent.

Loyalty is a strategic goal as it's the army of fans that makes a rockstar. More and more companies and people switch from linear approach ('let's sell/recruit now!') to building a non-linear strategy ('let's build an audience for ourselves and get what it may bring us').

How do we build a loyal community? How do we convert people into our supporters? How do industry leaders do networking? In this talk we'll share best practices from the most respected community leaders of the database industry.

Transcript

1. The Power of Community: Non-Linear Approach That Pays Off Anastasia ‘Stacy’ Raspopina (ProxySQL, Mad Devs) September 28, 2019 London Open Source Communities Meetup
2. WHOAMI: Spilling Some Stacyness (q) Here... • Doing IT events since 2013 (up to 1600 attendees, tens of events put together, 6 in progress this month) • The Percona Insider project (2.5 years) • Percona History Book • Ideation for popular tech talks to come from a non-tech brain Disclaimer: views are my own, ignore the T-shirt - it’s just freaking cool!
3. What do we mean by saying “community”? Is any kind of definition available?.. A group of individuals who (often voluntarily) work together to develop, test, or modify open source software products. (Source: IGI Global)
4. Giving it a second look... A group of individuals who (often voluntarily) work together to develop, test, or modify open source software products. - What about support / maintenance-focused roles? - What about product / project managers? - What about non-tech roles? Are they a part of the community or not?
5. ...And a third look... Let’s simplify it! Community = Software Product + All Friends Imagine that you have a contact who is an analyst working for some media and interested in covering your software. Will this person be a part of your community?
6. Let’s simply care about those who care for our product. They are our community. All formal roles aside.
7. Example: Students Why bother? No immediate / visible / predictable value! • Those guys are just asking questions. • They don’t have money to purchase anything. • They don’t have enough skills to be hired either.
8. Example: Students Why bother? They are new to the party! • They are active when it comes to spreading the word. • They will become your customers / users / partners sooner than you might think of it… • Probably you’ll become their first employer and spend years together at work! Sometimes they do research that puts your company name in front of the right people!
9. What is the purpose of our community?
10. What is the purpose of our community? Let’s speak like relaxed & honest people enjoying Saturday. Does it exist for... - selling products and services? - hiring workforce? - expanding our footprint & getting more money? - milking everyone who is around? :D
11. Making Mr. X rich is of no interest to community! Sometimes we want good guys to prosper. However, they need to prove to be good!
12. Quite an opposite approach: no purpose at all! • Our community isn’t here to please us. • It isn’t something we can fully control or manage. • Our community does include our competitors. • It’s a source of tough truth, not just praise or nice feature requests (negative feedback is more common).
13. The only tactic that works...
14. Linear approach vs. non-linear approach Linear Approach • Direct sales • Fast hiring • Speedy adoption Short-term goals Non-Linear Approach • Handling requests • Gaining trust • Collecting info Long-term goals
15. Acting linearly, you gain only what you were intended to gain - money, new hires etc. Non-linear approach brings you INFORMATION. INFORMATION = OPPORTUNITY. Loyal people also come to non-linear thinkers.
16. Care for Future Instinct Basically, people want to help those who create a better future for all - doing research, listening to people and improving processes for them. To get advancement, you need to give away at least 13% of your effort.
17. Advice from experts. What worked for them?
18. Lorraine Pocklington, Community Manager, Percona • Be authentic and use your own voice. • Stay empathetic. • Be humble. • It's not about you, it's about them. • Do measurements.
19. Frederic Descamps, Community Manager, Oracle MySQL Team • Maintain integrity. • Gain some respect. • Be recognized for your technical skills (if you have them). • Stay short and polite. • Never enter into sterile debates. • Consider everyone the same, a guru or a newbie. • But keep making noise on social media. • Promote your stuff but also help others.
20. Ksenia Romanova, Developer Relations Manager, Gridgain Systems • Create a homelike safe space filled with oxytocin. • Be top one fan of those with whom you communicate (for me these are internal people, speakers and their mentors). • Be a good listener and express gratitude to all people who share their feedback or ideas.
21. Valeria Kaplan, CMO, Data Egret • Care about your people. Listen...and listen again! • Have social skills that won't hinder from eagerness to dig deeper. • Pay attention to every detail. + Share community spirit: - understand the reasoning behind community values; - be aware of the vision your community is aiming to fulfil; - strive to promote these values externally and enforce them internally (evangelize them!)
22. Advice from myself (still learning…) • Never pretend that you are an engineer if you are not. Live on what you have, use your strengths. • Be generous and do the best you can for everyone sending a request. • Getting back to people fast is key. • Give credits to all creators. • If you feel someone could get offended, ask this person about it.
23. Thank you for your time! Any questions? Let’s keep in touch: https://www.linkedin.com/in/efeiyagrassie/