Communities aren't funnels

In this session from DevRelCon London 2019, Josh Dzielak introduces the orbit model, an alternative way of thinking about developer roles within communities.

Video

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.”