Here are my rough notes from Community Leadership Summit 2017 keynotes. From what I could see there was video being recorded, so I expect that these will be published soon. I made notes, some people have already shared slides (and I’ve linked to them).

5 Keys to a Successful Contributor Program – Sherrie Rohde – Magento

• @sherrierohde / sherrie@magento.com
• monthly meet ups/chats – #cmgrhangout
• magneto masters (inspired by Lithium Stars – there is a community manager certification course). Super users. Top contributors.
• what is a top contributor program? Not an influencer or advocacy program in this context. People who help move the community forward
• Slides

5 keys to a successful contributor program:

1. Involve stakeholders in your planning early & often
2. Find value for everyone involved. What’s in it for the company? This is important when needing a budget. Don’t forget what’s in it for the contributors – ask what will make them want to be part of this. Have dedicated area of website to give them spotlight / showcase. Create a legacy together (don’t use them! Work together to bring more value to community)
3. Don’t shortcut your communication plan. Announce internally/externally. Know why they are selected
4. Keep an open dialogue. Have quarterly council calls. Find out what happens in their world. Talk about your world. Gathering place: hidden lounge on forums, slack channel
5. Analyze your results. Measuring is important. Demonstrate value of what you’re doing. Measure key objectives. What equals success? Increase in contributors? Survey your masters!

How to run a community publication – Rikki Endsley – Opensource.com

• @rikkiends / rikki@opensource.com
• RH community site with community + content. No author budget.
• make sure they are getting a return on their time and energy
• more than a million page views per month
• have roles. Let people earn status on the blog. In addition you can have role based badges (it works well for blogs, not going to motivate everyone but it does help)
• stay organized and maintain a schedule (they use a trello board). Don’t be so ambitious in terms for schedule
• reach out personally to writers
• people like lists
• give a strong lede. Let people know what they’re going to find
• make sharing content easy
• they also use adobe analytics

Metrics as a Trojan horse for real relationships – Matt Broberg – Intel

• @mbbroberg
• people are all that matter. We miss that when we measure things too closely.
• corporations true goal is to make money. Sales make money. Engineering make products. Marketing provides leads. Support provides loyalty for customers (net promoter score). Community? More hugs?
• accounting for cost? Why do I care if you got a talk or need to order stickers? Calculating ROI is hard. Hugs doesn’t fit into p&l stsfements.
• counting peanuts instead of building community – you watch instead of being a member of the community. Nobody wants a tribal leader who isn’t part of the tribe – that’s called a dictator.
• what’s worth measuring?
• same breath awareness with the top 1-2 competitors in the space in terms of % share of voice
• measure only what your business values. Ask a ton of questions to your organizational leadership. You need to know what success is measured in
• the minute we choose to measure we are choosing to aspire to it. Be choosy about what you measure. And what you share within the organization because you are measured against it
• community doesn’t org chart good
• community does not lead to revenue – but it’s so often the best way to get there. Catalyst effect.
• Ultimately we are story tellers but the metrics can give us validity in the organization
• slides

All Things Open conference – Todd Lewis

• @toddlew / toddlew.com
• answer the “why” of the conference
• what events really are? What results when you focus on the why?
• people coming together with a basic set of values. Manifestation of technology, oss, education, networking, community
• always start with the why. Why am I hosting this? Answer and convey honestly. Trust is the goal
• all things open has the “why”. They also have a code of conduct
• authenticity is vital and key, whatever the venue
• attendees tend to view ourselves as “we” not “me”. Trust helps overlook mistakes.
• do a speaker/sponsor dinner. Release of oxytocin. What do speakers get?
• technology adoption curve – Everett Roger’s – diffusion of innovations 1962
• got to cross the chasm – still applies to technology events. Each of these blocks build on another
• how do you get people (early adopters) on gut? Values!
• always say thank you! Be nice
• “it’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice”, “kindness matters”, “integrity is doing the right thing when no one else is watching”

Ask not what your community can do for you – Stephen R. Walli

• @stephenrwalli
• “If I build it, they will come” – you see big companies pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into this pit as well.
• The definitive act of creating open source is you publish your software with an open source license
• Choosing a license is a social contract. License reciprocity is not about software freedom; its a community decision
• How do you choose a home? What do you like about it? There are three sorts of neighbours in your community: people who simply want to live there, people that report potholes & trash, etc, the people that organise the block party, pick up the trash, etc. – in open source for every 1,000 users, 100 will file a bug, out of which 10 people may provide a patch, of which 1 actually read the contribution guidelines!
• Costs of entering & leaving communities!
• What does your 10-minute rule look like? You have to ensure your software does something useful in that time, otherwise they abandon your project or it becomes shelfware.

All Contributions Welcome – Katie McLaughlin

• katie@glasnt.com – KatieConf / @glasnt
• Leslie Hawthorn – how to find and keep contributors – #LABHR – https://hawthornlandings.org/2015/02/13/a-place-to-hang-your-hat/
• Have awards and acknowledgement within a project. E.g. If you contribute to Beeware, you get a shiny coin
• HappinessPackets.io / saythanks.io
• LinkedIn: recommendations & endorsements
• Github: only some commits count, issues and pull requests – see the commit info
• labhr.github.io

5 things I wish I knew before becoming a community organiser – Jason Hibbets – Opensource.com

• @jhibbets
• Shared purpose & passion
• Understand the talent and motivations of participants – ask them what they’re good at, ask them what they want to do
• Practice 2-way goal setting
• Say thank you. A handwritten note? Public recognition
• Listen more. Talk more. Be inquisitive.
• Remember that every interaction is a gift. Even negative reactions (you can maybe flip this)
• Incorporate feedback loops into every interaction. Try, learn and modify.
• Find your superstars and let them shine
• Empower and trust your top participants
• Gamification does not have to be a competition (on opensource.com there are badges and points)
• Show appreciation and gratitude, recognise those efforts (get them conference passes, travel support, additional rights, etc.). In person experiences are the ultimate reward
• Celebrate milestones (hard to do globally; be creative)
• Create a community awards program (beginners as well as experienced folk)
• Be prepared and communicate effectively
• Prepare as much in advance as possible
• Automate as much as you can, but understand when a personal touch is required
• Be short & concise in your messaging
• Don’t go to participants with an ask everytime. You don’t want to be that guy!
• Avoid engaging in endless debates (Slack vs IRC, which linux distributions to use, etc.)
• Community means something different to almost everyone
• Educate all the different audiences
• Be aware that part of the role as organisers is to balance value between community and company
• Document everything you do to measure success; trip reports, interactions, etc. document your Rolodex. Have a monthly report with standard metrics. Document the big wins that standard metrics don’t measure.
• Burnout is real (avoid it)
• Know and understand that community doesn’t stop at 5 o’clock on a Friday. Having flexible work schedules helps!
• Know signs of burnout for participants and yourself
• Have a plan of how to address burnout and recharge your batteries
• Be intentional on creating time for family, friends, etc.
• Grow your career and sharpen the stone. Get different ideas and bring them back in.
• Your most valuable asset: your network. Value and build your network. It goes with you no matter where you go
• slides PDF, slides ODP

Open Source as a Social Movement – Abigail Cabunoc Mayes – Mozilla

• @abbycabs
• Opening story: My Grandmother, My Work, and My Open Science Story
• Marshall Ganz – we turn to narrative quote
• Open Leadership Principles: Design for participation, share decision making, share code and content
• Explore the Mozilla network: Mozilla Pulse (mozillapulse.org)
• internethealthreport.org – what’s hurting and what’s helping the web
• Storytelling in movements
• Communicate values which give us emotions and that provides action
• Marshall Ganz, Public narrative, collective action and power – From Inertia to Public Action

Bonus choice tweet

#CLS17 folks, it diminishes Community to bash other teams. Please stop saying/implying negative things about sales, marketing, etc.

– VM (Vicky) Brasseur (@vmbrasseur) May 6, 2017

I’ve been an Audible subscriber for many years, but it’s only been in recent times that I’m listening to audiobooks a lot more diligently (cutting out many podcasts in favour of this; good production quality and it’s not conversational, means you kind of win in terms of knowledge and time). Why not try Audible and Get Two Free Audiobooks?

Today I’ll talk about two Gary Vaynerchuk books: Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion and The Thank You Economy. These were both very easy listens, and Gary is known as a social media maven with his WineLibrary.tv and now his agency. I didn’t quite enjoy that he went off-script a lot, which made these books very podcast like.

As for the positives? Learn how to build your personal brand, why great content matters, the importance of authenticity in your messaging, and how to monetise your passion and create a new life for yourself. I know social media (or at least I think I do; I was an early adopter of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.) so it may be useful for some but not necessarily all folk.

The Thank You Economy had a bit more for me:

• B2B buyers are really also individual customers – there is a human behind the purchasing decision. This is where social and a good relationship makes sense
• When you spend money, do you spend it back on your customers (i.e. Throw a party) versus spending it thru an intermediary (i.e. Run a billboard ad). This could be interesting from the standpoint of booth vs party
• Word of mouse (you click nowadays!)
• JDV Hotels took to social media very well and they have a program to wow guests (and they have empowered their employees). They comb your social media profiles and listen to you. Was very impressed by the authenticity.
• Handling a public customer complaint is better than praise. Handling criticism > praise. Social media is public. This is important.
• Business is personal. B2B too.
• Don’t be afraid to say what you think. But don’t forget to listen
• The humanisation of business is what social media is doing

There were a few other interesting case studies as well, so I can highly recommend listening or reading The Thank You Economy.

I also found the idea of having a Chief Culture Officer as an interesting idea. His bet on virtual goods, for me at least, wasn’t true (so I tweeted him) – the idea that we’ll all be buying lots of them pretty quickly.

Incidentally, this isn’t the first time I’ve written about him: An Entrepreneur’s Life Video had some notes too.

Many of these tips are timeless, and can be applied even if social media isn’t hot any longer. If you had to pick between the two, I’d go for the Thank You Economy. But why pick, when you can Try Audible and Get Two Free Audiobooks?

I just stumbled upon nushackers (formerly linuxNUS). Here are a group of people from the National University of Singapore, who organise weekly talks (Friday Hacks), as well as workshops (hackerschool).

I’m totally inspired by what’s happening, it kind of reminds me of the CSSE Student Club I was a part of back at my alma mater. The extension to that was GAUNIX, in where we controlled a machine supported by the university and gave folk shell access.

Great things happen when hackers meet up with each other. And here I’m referring to the hackers, not just the idea folk/business people. Just people playing around with new things, tinkering, sharing about new technology, building stuff. 

There used to be MyOSS meetups in Malaysia. Now there is WebCampKL, but this is a meld of people who are not exactly hackers.

I reckon this is what’s missing in the Malaysian space – it needs to be fixed. 

I just listened to Monocle 24, The Entrepreneurs episode #45 (forward 32:40-42:14). Short interview with Arnault Castel. He’s the man behind kapok, a brand gaining traction in Hong Kong. I think they just launched in Malaysia as well in the Gardens.

Why is this interview interesting? Quite simply because Castel ended up in Hong Kong by accident (from France), worked in banking (a French bank doing stuff overseas – he didn’t want to do military service after his business studies), built up Lomography Asia, continued his expansion to bringing in Moleskine/Rhodia/etc, and now does kapok. Key points to note? He did Lomo’s in 2001, Moleskine in 2004, and so on. He’s a retail trend spotter.

He’s also a bootstrapper: all his ventures started out of his home office.

The importance of frequent travel is probably brought up a lot in this interview too. Helps with the spotting.

He talks about building community & community marketing for Lomography.

Further reading.

I had an interesting conversation with Sheeri (who I’ve known for many years, so consider this friendly banter) on Twitter about my recent blog post titled: once again, a split in events.

Disclaimer/Bias Warning: For those that don’t know me, I write this as a perspective of a community member. I was the first ever Community Engineer at MySQL, followed by being a Community Relations Manager right up till I left Sun Microsystems. I now work on MariaDB which is a branch of MySQL, so naturally we are in competition for user base. But I’m writing this as a community member at large who cares about MySQL & the ecosystem.

First of, this is a focus on the user ecosystem. I think the MySQL developer ecosystem has never been healthier than it is today – so many branches, forks, features, development trees, etc. Developer ecosystems are for another post, this is all about user ecosystems.

On events during similar timeframes

Sheeri started with calling BS on my post. Great way to start a conversation. I for one didn’t say that Oracle split the community or that Percona did so. I’m not in the job of pointing fingers. I’m just looking at past evidence: London 2012 (Percona, UKOUG), September/October 2012 (MySQL Connect San Francisco, Percona NYC), April 2011 (MySQL Conference Santa Clara, IOUG Collaborate Florida). There may be more events but I can only think of these.

I’ve heard that the April timeframe is bad for Oracle to send engineers to conferences because they have a busy release month. Yet Collaborate in Florida was ok?

Yes, MySQL may be the most popular opensource database today. This is great for the ecosystem that I am in. We can & should have many events, so I totally agree with Sheeri. But do they have to be at the same time? Do they have to ensure that attendees have to choose one or the other?

On spreading MySQL

I am happy that free events now happen in places that previously had no events, like Nairobi & Kenya. MySQL presence was almost unheard of in South America (many users, but we never made it out there to meet with the grassroots), but I’ve seen great amounts of activity there. I’ve even written about this before: a tale of two conferences. London in 2011 was awesome for MySQL all spread by a week – Oracle and Percona had 2 events and there were 2 different audiences from what I could tell.

I was at MySQL Connect this year as well as Percona Live NYC. The amount of intersection in attendees was sparse. In fact, Oracle managed to gather an interesting new crowd for Connect, so all kudos to them!

My wish as a community member (on events)

I wish to see Oracle MySQL employees show up at all events. This includes Percona Live events. I mean a talk from someone developing InnoDB, for example, would be great. It seems that the official line though is: “Oracle is not willing to help other companies’ marketing“. Fair enough. Percona Live is a great marketing event for Percona.

In the same vein I wish to see non-Oracle employees, even those from competitors, show up at Oracle MySQL events. MySQL Connect had 2 talks from Percona. That’s a good start.

I also wish that I get the best MySQL & ecosystem related content at one event. Many people can only make one event (especially when they happen during the same time at different locations). As a busy DBA, I want “the one event to learn it all”. That’s what the MySQL Conferences in Santa Clara used to do. This was a home for people to meetup once a year. This is no longer the case, it would seem.

Keeping MySQL relevant

Another wish that is unrelated to events: I wish MySQL was still spreading.

I speak to many MySQL users. From humble developers to large enterprises.

Oracle’s enemy isn’t MariaDB or Percona Server or the ecosystem at large. MySQL’s enemy is the growing use of other databases. NoSQL solutions are a popular choice; when people realize they want something relational, they don’t think about MySQL as a migration path. Pretty much every migration story I’ve seen suggests it is a migration to PostgreSQL.

Many years ago, you deployed on MySQL first. Today, is it still the first choice for the developer? Is it the second choice?

What about enterprises migrating from the Oracle database? They are well aware whom the new owners of MySQL are.

I saw this published on Josh Berkus’ blog: MySQL-to-PostgreSQL migration data from the451.com. It is worth a read.

I have had many conversations with experienced MySQL DBAs who I would consider rockstar DBAs in the Valley who are now beefing up their MongoDB knowledge. Some job offers are now asking for more than just MySQL knowledge. The naive way to look at it is if you’re getting 2-3 job offers for MySQL work per week. That is today. What about next year? I would like to put on a long term view here.

One more thing

I am truly independent in this. I want to see MySQL succeed. I need it to succeed as I am an ecosystem participant (via MariaDB).

I have heard many people call Oracle ACE/Directors Oracle apologists. I know pretty much all the Oracle ACEs as friends and respect their opinions, so in no way am I going to refer to them as apologists or shills. 

Celebrate the Oracle ACE/Director like you would the old/defunct MySQL Guilds.

Let’s work together to make the MySQL user ecosystem healthy!

Thanks to Sheeri Cabral, Giuseppe Maxia, Henrik Ingo & Ronald Bradford for pre-reading this.

Watch An Entrepreneur’s Life: Gary Vaynerchuk. It is a little less than 8 minutes long, but it is awesome. Some quick points:

• Live life in lifetime value. There’s a great anecdote on looking to hang on to good customers rather than having to find new customers. He cares about who wins the war not the battle (similar saying: it is a marathon, not a sprint).
• Storytelling in business is underrated. Care about the way things get presented. Storytelling is important. Understand what the consumer wants, then backtrack. Tell a story and get them  there. This is the difference between marketing & sales. Steve Jobs was a good story teller.
• Content is king. However, content is also a commodity.
• During his Wine Library TV days, it is not just the 40 minutes a day he spent in front of the camera. It’s the 15 hours a week spent replying to every email, tweet, forum message. I guess this is the important thing about building community.
• What drives Gary? The climb to the top of his goal (owning the NY Jets). The journey.