Lessons on Community Management from the Open Source World, Angela ...Fostering the Drupal community is actually more important than managing the code base. ........ the success of healthy open source projects defies all logic. Scores of individuals from all over the world, all of whom have different skill levels, use cases, experience, native languages, and time zones, collaborate together in order to help make a project succeed. ........... How is it that all of this chaos comes together and creates something wonderful and useful? ........ a diverse, passionate, and vibrant global community. ......... Create a Great Community and Great Code Will Follow .......... the project's developers, but also to those who report bugs, review fixes, answer support requests, design interfaces, provide translations, help with marketing and evangelism, and write and edit documentation. ............. Many key individuals who are driving forces within open source projects got their start by fixing typos in documentation or answering other users' support questions. ......... A culture that values a well-written tutorial as much as a well-written application programming interface (API) is much more likely to attract and retain newcomers than a culture that values seasoned developers, or the marketing team, at the expense of everyone else. ............... the difficulty in managing a community of strongly independent individuals, each with their own motivations. .......... contributing can directly or indirectly lead to paid work which acts as another long-term retention tool. ............ people won't get the peer reviews they require to accomplish their goals by being arrogant, insulting, and demeaning towards others. ............ The sooner a frustrated user realizes that there is only a collective “we" where each contributes whatever they can to make the project better, the sooner the transformation into contributor can take place. Users then learn to channel their frustration into an effective force for change. ............ The same peer review process that lends itself to building a strong community and great software can be terrifying to newcomers. .......... The natural problem-solving methodology for perfectionists tends to be withdrawal from the community and working quietly in isolation until they believe they've achieved something that is immune to criticism. This brings with it a whole host of problems ........................ their work can get permanently trapped in "analysis paralysis" and never see the light of day. ........... Working in isolation eliminates transparency ........... In a worst-case scenario, the larger community has already developed a solution to a problem in parallel by the time the perfectionist is finished, leading the perfectionist to extreme frustration, particularly if coupled with a deep attachment to their own solution. ........................... vital to establish a strong culture of “release early, release often” ............ a lack of attachment to any one solution so that the best possible solution is found. ...... The key difference that separates healthy perfectionist contributors from unhealthy ones is the participation in a collaborative problem-solving process, rather than an introverted one. ................ Focus on the people, not the product. A team that enjoys working with one another will naturally be more productive. Take a "mental health" check of the people on your team. Is there animosity brewing between two or more groups that could be solved by them working more closely together? Is decision-making in the hands of a single individual, hampering the feeling of ownership by other, capable people? Resolving these kinds of issues should take precedence over anything else. ............. fight red tape in all of its forms. Remember that a frustrated person is often best poised to lead revolutionizing changes for the better as they have the motivation. Get the road blocks out of their way and empower them to get to work. ........... Put processes in place that help prevent perfectionists from getting trapped in their own heads, and get them working with others instead."
I have been part of a conversation at the Google Wave API Google Group where I have been trying to suggest community is as important as code, and so there has to be talk of the culture of the Wave developer community. Many have disagreed saying code is all that matters. Some have said community also matters but maybe you don't know enough to be talking community either. I don't know what I don't know. But vision and group dynamics are specialties all their own.
The last suggestion I made was, let's have 100 threads on purely technical issues, and I hope to develop my technical chops along the way, but let's have one thread where we talk about fluffy issues like vision and community. Code and community do belong at the same forum.
Once it is established that both code and community are important, we can then move on to studying the lessons of the open source communities past so as to distill from their best practices, because the Wave developer community, culturally speaking, has more in common with the open source communities than any of the corporate ones.
Building a community of developers is not just about code.
I am not trying to lead or follow. I am just trying to be part of the conversation, to learn from the conversation, to contribute to the conversation.
Google is about to get a vibrant developer community around Wave. This is a first for Google in terms of how big one can expect it to be. I guess the Android developer community also counts. The two can be considered the first among equals. But a mobile operating system was not something fundamentally new, Wave is.
There are about 20,000 people working for Google, many of them coders. Google has some of the smartest coders in the world. But not all of the smartest coders in the world work for Google. Most don't. It is a numbers game. Google is not big enough to house all the smartest coders in the world. Many of the smartest are soloists, or small group types who gutturally abhor anything corporate. The open source community appeals to many of them.
The Wave community will be a great platform for them. The top developers will make mega bucks. They will make much more than the late coming engineers at Google.
So if the Wave developer community is going to be larger than Google Corporate, and if many members of that developer community will make mega bucks, you have to ask, does that developer community need a culture? A codified value system? Will that evolve on its own? Or will each small group within that community have a slightly distinct culture and value system of its own?
Microsoft has had a developer community around Windows for as long as Windows has been around. The budding Wave community will be similar, only much, much bigger.
I take it for granted that a value system will emerge, just like a market will emerge. It will not be top down. It will not be something dictated by Google Corporate. It will be grassroots. It will likely be diverse. But it will emerge. It will have more in common with the unregulated, uncorporate open source community than Google Corporate. But that is no harbinger of clashes. The two cultures can create a happy symbiosis. That is precisely why just like it has been important to articulate the Google corporate culture, (The Google Corporate Culture) I think it is important to try and articulate the developer community culture.
Members of this developer community are more likely to show up for their local Wave MeetUps than jamborees at Googleplex, if only because the community will be global and scattered. Much of the community action will be online.
Wave and Android promise to be the two biggest technology news items for the rest of this year. That makes me take a renewed look at a company I have always been excited about: my interest has gone deeper. Google looks like is about to beat the likes of Twitter and Facebook in the buzz department. And Wave and Android promise to take over this blog. When I first launched this blog, I talked about Google often. Then I wandered away to talk about other things. Now Google is back with a vengeance.
Today I wanted to take a look at the Google corporate culture. What makes it stand out? How can a company start big, grow bigger and still stay at the cutting edge of innovation? Google might go the IBM and the Microsoft way down the line, but for now it reins supreme.
Look at how the work on Wave was done. It was done not by Google Corporate. It was done by a startup inside Google. Google Corporate incubated Wave. I am going to argue that is the only way it could have been done.
It is that same principle that gets applied to two other core ideas.
Small teams of three or four.
20% time.
Offering meals is another great idea they have. It is not a perk by a rich company. It makes business sense. They are a more productive, more close knit company because of that.
The in-house child care at Google, unfairly, is futuristic.
There are some things Google does that only a very rich company peopled by the best and the brightest can do. There are some things that Google does that make sense for a company of coders, hard core knowledge workers. But there are many other things that Google does that most companies could emulate because they make productivity sense. It is an attitude thing.
Corporate Information - Our PhilosophyGoogle's culture is unlike any in corporate America, and it's not because of the ubiquitous lava lamps and large rubber balls ...... "The perfect search engine," says Google co-founder Larry Page, "would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want." .......... growth has come not through TV ad campaigns, but through word of mouth from one satisfied user to another. ........ As we continue to build new products* while making search better, our hope is to bring the power of search to previously unexplored areas, and to help users access and use even more of the ever-expanding information in their lives. .......... Google may be the only company in the world whose stated goal is to have users leave its website as quickly as possible. .......... Others assumed large servers were the fastest way to handle massive amounts of data. Google found networked PCs to be faster. Where others accepted apparent speed limits imposed by search algorithms, Google wrote new algorithms that proved there were no limits. ......... Google ranks every web page using a breakthrough technique called PageRank™. PageRank evaluates all of the sites linking to a web page and assigns them a value, based in part on the sites linking to them. ............ The world is increasingly mobile ....... an on-the-fly translation system that converts pages written in HTML to a format that can be read by phone browsers. ....... No one can buy better PageRank. ....... The popularity of PDF results led us to expand the list of file types searched to include documents produced in a dozen formats such as Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. ........ we maintain dozens of Internet domains and serve more than half of our results to users living outside the United States ........ Google's interface can be customized into more than 100 languages. ........ work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun ........ Google Inc. puts employees first when it comes to daily life in our Googleplex headquarters. ......... an emphasis on team achievements and pride in individual accomplishments ........ Ideas are traded, tested and put into practice with an alacrity that can be dizzying. Meetings that would take hours elsewhere are frequently little more than a conversation in line for lunch and few walls separate those who write the code from those who write the checks. ........... highly communicative environment fosters a productivity and camaraderie fueled by the realization that millions of people rely on Google results. Give the proper tools to a group of people who like to make a difference, and they will. ...... Google does not accept being the best as an endpoint, but a starting point. Through innovation and iteration, Google takes something that works well and improves upon it in unexpected ways. ...... anticipating needs not yet articulated by our global audience, then meeting them with products and services that set new standards. This constant dissatisfaction with the way things are is ultimately the driving force behind the world's best search engine. ..... the farther we travel toward achieving it, the more those blurry objects on the horizon come into sharper focus (to be replaced, of course, by more blurry objects) Google - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaGoogle is known for its informal corporate culture, of which its playful variations on its own corporate logo are an indicator. Building a 'Googley' Workforce - washingtonpost.com To understand the corporate culture at Google Inc., take a look at the toilets....... Every bathroom stall on the company campus holds a Japanese high-tech commode with a heated seat. If a flush is not enough, a wireless button on the door activates a bidet and drying......... Generous, quirky perks keep employees happy and thinking in unconventional ways, helping Google innovate as it rapidly expands into new lines of business. .............. new offices in such cities as Beijing, Zurich and Bangalore. ...... a new product nearly every week, including some widely regarded as flops ........ culture of fearlessness ......... indoor gym and large child care facility ........ private shuttle bus service to and from San Francisco and other residential areas ....... employees are encouraged to propose wild, ambitious ideas often ....... All engineers are allotted 20 percent of their time to work on their own ideas. ...... corporate counterculture ...... plans to launch a free wireless Internet service in San Francisco. ........ "Maybe there will be a few that take off spectacularly. And maybe they're smart enough to realize no one is smart enough to tell which lottery card is the winner five years out." ........... a market value of about $140 billion and $2.69 billion in quarterly revenue ........ "If you're not failing enough, you're not trying hard enough" ........ just move, move, move. If it doesn't work, move on .......... In addition to glass cubicles, some staffers share white fabric "yurts," tentlike spaces that resemble igloos. ........ would install 9,000 solar panels on its buildings ......... Along interior hallways, employees scribble random thoughts on large whiteboards strung together. Outside, they whiz by on company-provided motorized scooters or mingle on grassy areas and chairs under brightly colored umbrellas. ......... Innovation reaches one corner of Google that most companies neglect: food. Each of its 11 campus cafes is run by an executive chef with a theme catering to the culture of people working in that particular building. This year Google opened Cafe180, a cafeteria that supports local organic farming by serving only products from within 180 miles of the campus. .......... rigorous hiring procedure similar to those used for admission to elite universities ........ "whether someone is Googley," said chief culture officer Stacy Sullivan. ...... not someone too traditional ........ Learning continues on the job across a wide range of subjects through Google's "tech talks" ........ In the back, a Google employee with a long silver braid held his pet African Grey parrot on his finger. ........ Our culture is one of our most valuable assets. Organizational Culture: Corporate Culture in Organizations Google's Corporate Culture Real Estate Broker's Survival Kit Tool #4: Google's Corporate... The perks at Google are Disneyland like and the compensation is lucrative to say the least. ......... Google disdains hierarchical order. ...... small creative teams highly flexible and extremely motivated
Thoughts.com Blogs - google corporate cultureGoogle is one of the fastest growing companies today. One of the reasons why they are successful is they have a unique corporate culture ...... allows employees to freely discuss any topic with any other employee. Because of this, google has a small company feel which allows employees feel like they are important to the company. How Google is changing corporate culture | Republic Publishing JD on EP: Elop, culture But the corporate culture which scares me most is Google's. I don't personally associate with people who work there, and haven't even visited their campus ....... It's really scary that Google has web beacons on the majority of the Web's pages, controls the navigational reality of the majority of web searchers, and owns secret ad-personalization databases which are bigger than any FBI spying program ever could be. ...... I hope Google turns out okay, for all our sakes. The Next Evolution: Corporate Culture for Innovation their culture of innovation is tailored to attract and most importantly retain a target talent pool ....... When we are talking about a corporate vision requiring innovation to grow revenue, it requires a much different culture than the vision for an industry that is going through a consolidation phase. ......... transparency. A culture centered on innovation seems best served by this management style.
I was not worried someone else might take away the Paramendra name - my parents saw Google coming, noone else seems to have that name - but I figured why take a chance? So I was on the case promptly after midnight Friday to get myself a facebook.com/paramendra vanity URL? Why have they been calling it a vanity URL? My name is not vain. It is just so much more user friendly, consumer friendly to have a URL like facebook.com/paramendra.
Put your blog's address down as your email signature.
Collect names and email addresses of everyone you know. These are people who can recognize your name and face. There are no other requirements. Reconnect with all of them. Send out one liner emails. More than one line and they might miss out on your punch line, the signature.
Every time you put out a new blog post, promptly feed it to your Twitter stream.
Sometimes feed the same blog post to your Twitter stream twice, with a few hours' gap.
You must give your visitors the option to subscribe to your blog's RSS feed. You must give them the option to subscribe with their email addresses. You can do both for free with Feedburner. That mailing list is key. They say, in the long run, that is the best kind of readership.
Read other blogs. Leave meaningful comments in their comments sections. Link to blog posts by others from your blog posts. That works great if they have the trackback thing. Zemanta makes it easy to link to blog posts by others. I got quite some traffic from the Google Wave Developer Blog that way. I have a feeling this post will get me a lot of valuable trackback traffic: Mashable Did It.
Engage those who leave comments in your comments sections. I recommend Disqus.
Find your passion. Find your niche. You discover your passion as the topic you blog about the most. Your niche is what Google Analytics tells you it is. If you are lucky, there is an overlap.
Once you find your niche, you have to work very hard to occupy it. There should be at least one word, one phrase - not your name - that when you google up, your blog shows up on the very first page. Work at it. You can do it. In the short run most of your traffic will come from the referring sites. But in the long run, if you are meant to be a professional blogger, most of your traffic will come from the search engines. That is why it is very important you discover and occupy your niche. You can have several sub niches, but you need one or two very well defined niches that you occupy.
Find a group or two to belong to in your niche. Do a search on Google Groups. Find one with a large enough membership. You have to be an active member of a virtual community or two of people who share your passion. That will bring you traffic. Some groups I have signed up for: Google Wave API, Wave Protocol, Android Beginners, Android Developers.Of course every message by you is going to carry your signature.
Say hello to Arianna at the Huffington Post. When she puts out a blog post, read it, and say something mesmerizing in the comments section.
Remember, every page hit counts. Just like every cent counts. Google makes its billions in cents, not dollars. You are going to 100,000 visits a month one visit at a time. Every visit counts. Every click counts.
Writing top quality, regular content is the number one thing to do to boost your traffic.
But that alone will not cut it. You have to go out there and network feverishly in your part of the blogosphere. You have to read blog posts by others, engage them in their comments sections. Ending up on other bloggers' blogrolls boosts your blog's PageRank. High rank means more show up in search results means more traffic.
Mashable did it. They rose with the rise of social media. While TechCrunch wanted to cover everything tech, Mashable honed on its niche. It refused to cover everything tech and instead honed on primarily social media. Mashable has aspired to be the bridge between the average person and social media. And they have done the smart thing of selling their own
ads. When you do that, you can ask for much higher prices.
Congratulations to the team. Pete Cashmore has been ubiquitous on Twitter, more so than Guy Kawasaki. Kawasaki has been more of a lone shark. Pete has zoomed ahead by building a high profile team around him.
People talk of Dell using Twitter as a marketing tool. I think no other brand name has used Twitter to its benefit quite like Mashable. That just might have been their biggest secret weapon, or maybe not so secret.
Mashable rose by demystifying Twitter for the average person. Mashable rose by having a hyper active Twitter stream.
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