# Communities aren't funnels {% embed url="" %} Video {% endembed %} ## Summary: * Software is adopted not sold in the year, 2020. * If you work in dev rel, you work on adoption and adoption requires a different way of thinking. * As the funnel is to conversion, the orbit is to adoption. * Identify your developers with the highest gravity and make a plan for extending their love and reach even further. ## Scribbles: * Developers have enormous power to choose the tools that they work with from amongst a vast amount of proprietary and open source options. * Developers are drawn to tools that do a difficult job well that have great documentation, complete SDKs and very importantly have a welcoming and knowledgeable community. * Developers adopt software first, and often long before they buy it. ### How is adoption different? * Happens slowly over time. * It can take a developer months to truly adopt new technology. * People expect to get value out of a product, out of new technology for a long time before they actually go and buy it. * Discovery happens with word of mouth and community is really the engine at the centre of all this. * Providing both resources for people to learn how to adopt the thing. * DevRels work on adoption, we also work closely with marketing and sales teams who are a lot more established. * And as a result -- DevRels are forced to think about adoption with that 122-year-old lens, the funnel. * And this leads to problems. * Applied to adoption, the funnel turns into a downward spiral. ### Regularly asked Questions #### “How many leads came from our last meetup?” * Why is it so painful? * From a meet-up even a really successful one, the number of leads that you can say you got is low. * Could be because you didn’t feel comfortable making every attendee give you their email address just to get in the door. * You don’t feel like leads are the right way to judge the success of a meet-up. #### “Can you share that developer's contact information with the sales team?” * These awkward questions come from the funnel mentality, so they’re going to be hard to answer by people like us who work on adoption. ### Orbit Stuff * The Orbit Model is an alternative to the funnel that's designed specifically for community-driven adoption. * The goal of the funnel is conversion but the goal of the Orbit is adoption. * The Orbit Model helps you explain what you’re actually trying to do as a dev rel. * Helps you identify and prioritize the developers who should be working with. * “Who’s in my community, and who matters?” * Help you measure and communicate your impact. #### Orbit Terminologies * Gravity equals love x reach. * Everyone in your community has some amount of gravity, some ability to attract others. * And the gravity that that person has is a product of two things, love and reach. #### Love * Love is their love for what you do. * Expert Knowle * High Satisfaction * Part of the thrive #### Reach * Reach is a measure of how well they can help spread love. * Well-connected * Respected by peers * Passion for teaching #### Orbit one * Reserved for ambassadors. * Communicate with them via one-on-one, email, even WhatsApp or texting or DMs on Twitter and Slack * Don’t need many of them, but because each Ambassador counts for quite a bit like their own little community because of the love and the reach that they have. #### Fans - Second Level * Folks are passionate about our technology. * Can easily explain what it does and how to use it. * Are connected to some kind of work community or local community. * Might not have the love or the reach of the ambassadors, but can do so, someday. #### Users - Third Level * Folks who have some kind of working integration. some kind of sustained activity. * Most customers fall into this level, and there can be thousands of them. * Helps drive adoption for the community, * Find the ones that can be promoted to fans and learn how to motivate them. #### Observers - Fourth Level. * Folks who have read our blog posts watched our talks, kick the tires with one of our sample apps or just followed us on Twitter. * “At some point in the future, many of these observers might need our technology for something.”