# Building a Developer Community in an Enterprise World {% embed url="" %} Laura Cowen (IBM) - DevRelCon London 2015 {% endembed %} ## Summary * **Define** your community * Challenge the **status quo** to reach where you want * **Fund** the work properly * Build the **internal sub-community** within the organization as well * Understand the development and marketing relationship * **Defend the target audience**, understanding their needs and advocating them ## Scribbles * Were more focused on Developer Experience but **developers expected community support**. * Wanted Java EE Developers to love their product (Liberty) so much that they tell their friends to use it too * *Created articles, resources, GitHub codes, YouTube videos, etc.* * *Created shared expertise within the community* * *Openness within the community - meeting developers at conferences, talking to people generally, sharing experiences* ### **Where did it start?** * Whiteboard session at Devoxx 2008 (Belgium) - comparing Java application servers - everyone complained about difficulties starting/ fixing errors and consulting fees. * Wanted to create resources for Liberty to get around this problem. * ***Realised that they need to create a more developer-focused website for their community.*** * Frequent updates, adding new articles regularly created engagement, people were coming to the website and interacting ### **Motivating the Internal Developers** #### Wanted to get regular content from internal developers * But this became difficult for them with a day job * One developer made in charge of maintaining fresh content, working a day a week dedicated to this. * As it grew, one person was hired full time for regulating this. * Made a strict weekly publishing schedule to maintain a regularity (Made a pipeline) * Executive director motivated developers to contribute to content around Liberty - it worked! #### Wanted to involve developers to be involved with Social Media, StackOverflow or go to conferences * Mentoring them to use the handles * Letting them know the use of hashtags * Creating guidelines around attending conferences * This cannot be forced - social media is genuine and if forced to post/ tweet, it reflects ### **Recognising complementary roles of marketing & development** * Developer Advocates were hugely protected by the marketing team * Marketing is good at awareness and hooking people to the product * Marketing helps the product to shine but developers need details as well * Added a trial for developers to try out the product * If registration was added to trial download, 60% of the developers turned away, if not the marketing couldn't collect leads. * Cold calls attracted negative reactions from developers. ### **Timelines** * Building a developer community is organic and long term. * Marketing needs to work on short term campaign ### **Metrics** * Quantitative Measures: Numbers of downloads, visits to the website * Qualitative Measures: Quotes from people, their thoughts on the product ### **Understanding the users and advocating for them** * Most difficult thing: Keep the focus on who is the end-user & who is the target. * UX Terms: Primary users, secondary users, tertiary users * Developers are the main users ### **Don't publish everything!** * It is difficult to say no, but things should be relevant to the target audience * Having a clear definition of what is needed, helps in this regard. ### **Is it working?** * Yes - Metrics are going up! * More people are talking about the product - getting feedback --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://scribbles.devrel.page/developer-experience/building-a-developer-community-in-an-enterprise-world.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.