Building Successful Local Communities: Insights and Best Practices

https://chicago2011.drupal.org/sessions/building-successful-local-communities-insights-and-best-practices

Developing a local community is about more than free beer and coffee. It requires a serious focus on developing a social community that is passionate, open, transparent, knowledgable, collaborative, and trustworthy.

The proliferation of new communities worldwide represents varying levels of success at community development. The organization and strategy (or lack thereof) arguably is one of the biggest determinants of success for new communities.

The user group in Lyon, France is perhaps one of the best examples of a local community that has effectively established itself as a major influence within its regional open source community and the larger Drupal Community. It has done so by putting in place new strategies, communications platforms, and organizational processes to achieve goals and objectives set by its members.

This session explores how Lyon and other local communities have grown in the last year. It aims to spur discourse and provide new insights and best practices that will help communities on both sides of the Atlantic be more effective in the years ahead.

https://archive.org/details/drupalconchi_day3_building_successful_local_communities

Transcript

1. Building Successful Local Communities: Insights and Best Practices Ivo Radulovski (segments) Austrian and Bulgarian Communities João Ventura (jcnventura) Portuguese Community Christefano (christefano) LA Drupal Jeffrey A. “jam” McGuire (horncologne) Germany / Italy
2. What does a strategic plan look like for a local community? • The People • Objectives • Organization / Legal Entity • Roles & Responsibilities
3. The People • Individuals • Service Providers • Clients
4. Objectives • Have fun • Meet people that share your Drupal passion • Share knowledge (Drupal, but not only) • Network • Cooperate • Have fun (again)
5. Organization / Legal Entity • Why is it important? • Handling Money • Signing Contracts • Local Branding & Marketing • Dealing with Contacts • Define a Team • Having Partnerships & Memberships
6. Roles & Responsibilities • Marketing • Event Organization & Logistics • Sponsorship Management • Website Development • Graphic Design • Translation Team • Social Coordination • Drupal Public Training Coordinator • Communication
7. Marketing • Universities • Press Releases • Media Partners
8. Drupal in Bulgaria in 6 months from zero to… • Drupal Meetup • 7 Sessions at the Sofia University • 3 Expos with Drupal Panels in 3 Cities • Drupal 7 Release Party • Drupal Camp • Coding for a Cause • Drupal Party • Weekly User Group Meetings
9. Drupal in Bulgaria metrics (6 months) • 25 volunteers at the camp* • 80 members in groups.drupal.org • +200 posts about Drupalcamp Sofia • 250 active members • 300 registered on drupalcamp.bg • 2000 registered users at drupal.org (+60% growth) • 20.000 Unique visitors in 2 months with ~5mins and ~6 pages per visitor on drupalcamp.bg
11. Déjà vu – Portuguese style • The community had to be restarted in September 2009, because it had been abandoned • These early members are still around, and some are now active members. • A community is a group of people with individual agendas – conflict is a certainty, given enough time. • Deal with it early, before it snowballs
12. Drupal in Portugal in 18 months • Monthly meetings • 3 Drupal sessions in 3 university / cities • Drupal 7 release party • 1st Drupalcamp in Lisbon: March 26, 2011
13. Drupal in Portugal metrics • 30 active members • 119 attendants registered in Drupalcamp • 158 members in groups.drupal.org • 3300 registered users at drupal.org
15. Get out! • Meet often, meet regularly • Monthly at least • Different types of meetups: • Meet in a bar (scalability problems) • Barcamp • ½ day DrupalCamps
16. Community channels • Usual channels: • groups.drupal.org • #drupal-* IRC channel on freenode • Your website • Other channels (not recommended): • Mailing lists • groups.google.com • Facebook • Twitter
17. Eat your own dog food • Create a website • Nice tool to create websites: Drupal
18. However… • You all know how to make GREAT websites • You have all this neat stuff that you can use But… • KISS • Get it done , and then grow it slowly • Because it will be created, managed and maintained by volunteers • It only needs to tell who you are, what you’ve done and what you’ll do • Don’t make existing channels obsolete
19. Strength in numbers • Establish ties with neighboring communities • Encourage the creation of new communities • Meta-communities • In Europe, there’s a continent-level group of communities organizing vertical Camps • The Drupal Hispano community gathers all the distinct Spanish-speaking communities
20. What did you think? Locate this session on the DCC website: http://chicago2011.drupal.org/sessions Click the “Take the Survey” link. Thanks!