The second day of CLS carried on with the same energy as Day one started. I got inspired by the talks of the first day and submitted a session called 'Measuring Community Management'. I am community manager for quite a few years now in the TYPO3 project, an OS Enterprise CMS very popular in Europe. My job started as required by the growth of the community and the consequent need of someone having the bigger picture of the project. Our governance structure changed last year and we now have an Expert Advisory Board deciding about the budgets also influenced by members of the TYPO3 Association. I set some goals and I report back to the EAB besides the monthly community reports I am already doing for a long time. As I find my job quite re-active I wanted to discuss how others set goals, do reporting and manage expectations. There was a fine mixed crowd of around 15 people that joined me for my session and were very engaged in providing feedback on the topic to each other.
In the session it turned out obvious that solid metrics depend on solid goals and that benefits of engaged community management show themselves by activity on twitter, blog posts, activity on mailing lists and forums. Increasing engagement in the community helps to increase awareness and knowledge and education.
Concerning community management we are still in the phase before it hits mainstream and the set of tools and best practices is not defined by far and also depends a lot on the varying kinds of communities, whether company driven or fully volunteer-driven. Especially in the latter case outcomes may vary as effort is based on spare time of those involved. Nonetheless this is largely a matter of setting expectations and should be based on retrospectives, inspecting and adapting those expectations in a scrum like fashion. Especially in community driven projects it is essential to keep one's finger on the project's pulse.
Every year, the art and science of community management is becoming more predictable.
said Jono Bacon, the Community Leadership Summit lead organizer.
Organizer Jono Bacon
One subject that was stuck to my retina and/or eardrum at CLS and at OSCON was community diversity and strongly connected to that outreach, which forms the basis of sustainable communities. Karen Sandler of the Gnome Foundation addressed the topic of diversity mainly from the female perspective with some examples from the Outreach Program for Women, Laura Powers of the CODE2040 initiative showed how today's minorities in the US will be majorities in 2040 and how CODE2040 creates awareness, and opportunities for top minority engineering talent today preparing for 2040. Europe is most likely to follow that trend.
One of the most inspiring keynotes of OSCON was by Mark Hinkle (Open Citrix). Mark talked about the Open Prosthetics Project, which produces useful innovations and shares the designs. It is a good example of taking the principles of Open Source to other worlds. The motto of the TYPO3 project, I represent, is 'Inspiring People to Share' and it is on my mind for years already to take this further than the software we are working on.
A personal highlight for me were the yoga classes by Sherry Montgomery (@pdxyogini). Obviously not meant for everybody but I recommend yoga to everyone as it is a prefect way to find some more balance, lose your ego and gain loads of energy. LOL. I also could never have imagined to get up at 6 o 'clock for yoga class, but it works for me now!!
Articles on the Community Leadership Summit 2013:
Andy Oram (O'Reilly) - http://programming.oreilly.com/2013/07/community-leadership-summit-tracks-the-forces-that-spread-ideas.html
Jason Hibbits (opensource.com) - https://opensource.com/life/13/7/community-leadership-summit-2013
Steve Holden - http://holdenweb.blogspot.com/2013/07/oscon-community-leadership-summit.html
