# 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