 Hey everyone, thanks for joining me today for this virtual session on creating community messaging strategy for events and beyond. I'm glad that you'll be joining me today. So just a brief introduction of who I am. So my name is Jen Madriaga. I sit in corporate marketing on the events team and I also have a dotted line relationship to the open source program office under the office of the CTO. Before I went into tech, I had a background in higher education and arts administration. And I'm also a published creative writer in fiction and poetry. So I managed a lot of community events, some large and a strategic importance to the company. So I'm embedded in the daily workflows of both corporate and community. And it's a slightly schizophrenic existence, but I love it. I wouldn't have it any other way. And so one of the things I'm grateful for is the fact that I get to connect stakeholders from very different areas within community and within corporate units. So today we're going to talk about creating clear messaging places where to present this messaging. And I'm also going to talk about how to create collaboration with corporate stakeholders since that's something that comes up time and time again when we talk about messaging. So as I stated earlier, I'm a writer and so as a writer, I'm very interested in stories. And if you ever took a class in literature or anything about stories, you know that there are key questions that you usually ask. So when telling a story or reading a story, you know, and that's what, why, where, when and how. And so we're going to talk through each of these questions in terms of what to think about when you are creating messaging for your community, whether it's new or established. And before we go through those questions, I did want to share some observations that I've made in collaborating with a number of communities over the past several years. One of the things that I've noticed when people come to me that assist with their messaging or with their marketing outreach is that when they come to me, they're already focused on the how, like how to use it, you know, blogs, speaking sessions, that type of thing, but they haven't done very much work on the other questions that I brought up. And so there are a lot of gaps when someone comes to me and I'm like, you know, actually we need to back up a little bit because I need more information. So there may be like an overabundance of information in one area and not enough or any information in the other areas. And so that's part of the reason I want to walk through it step by step today. And then something to remember, even if you have an established community, you're always going to have net new people who are introduced to your community. And so you want to make sure that your messaging is as clear as possible. And even this familiarity with your community may need a refresher. So the entire goal when you create messaging is making sure that it's easy to understand no matter who encounters your messaging. And then of course messaging should always include a call to action. The ultimate goal is that anyone who encounters your messaging should be able to understand at a high level, even non-technical people, and actually especially non-technical people, because sometimes non-technical folks are decision makers and can be very, very big influencers in terms of making decisions. So you want to make sure that you keep those folks in mind. And I would say even practice on family and friends who have no idea what the technology is if you're presenting a technology, because it's an easy way to sometimes do some independent vetting if you need that kind of feedback. So I've been to lots of events and there are times when there are companies or organizations that want to introduce a new community and they'll have stickers and maybe a mascot, a lot of wonderful things around promotion. But I'm still left asking what is it? And I can't begin to tell you how many times I've encountered it over the years and it's funny because sometimes I think it's just me and I'll ask another attendee and they're like, that's interesting but we have no idea what that technology or community or project is. And so whenever you do any kind of messaging you actually want to be very, very basic and describe what is your technology? What is your community? What's the project? What does it actually do? What problem sets does it solve? What scenarios would I use this technology community? And it's just so interesting to me that this very basic question of what it is is often overlooked in so many events that I go to. And I'm going to walk through some examples. These are website examples because I think it does a good job of kind of encapsulating things much more concretely than me describing things event by event that basically demonstrate each of these questions. And so I'm going to highlight two communities that are very different. The first is the open organization ambassadors. And so they describe, you know, what they are. And you're very direct about the fact that there are a group of community members dedicated to teaching others about the ways open source principles can enhance and ultimately reshape organizational cultures. So right away they're already telling you what they're all about. And then I'm citing another example that's different and it's more technical in nature. And that's Qvert. Community have worked with a lot. So both open organization ambassadors in Qvert have worked with both of them. That's why I'm citing these examples. But Qvert, you know, basically says that if you want to adopt Kubernetes but you have existing virtual machines that can't be easily containerized, Qvert is what you're supposed to use. So you can see in these two examples that already you know what exactly Qvert is and what open organization ambassadors are. And again here with Qvert, they also talk about, you know, places where you can use their, use various scenarios. And I think that's, you can also include that in the what. The other thing that sometimes is overlooked and I know this may sound curious to folks is that sometimes we're not told why I need to care about this technology or community. Why does it make my life better and, you know, or easier? Why would I contribute and or use those things? And it's very, very important because you're trying to have people buy in or make an investment in your community that you tell them why you think it's important. Some folks think that by launching, you know, into the how that that will answer it. But really, you know, part of it is that you're trying to, you know, win the hearts and minds, so to speak. And so you need to address the why in your messaging. And so with the open organization, what they've done with their why is they've actually outlined the commitments they've made by becoming ambassadors. And so they've got four key areas that they're highlighting, which is learning, helping, translating and engaging. And so right there, you already have some very easy bullet points that points to, you know, why they exist, why you would want to be involved, why you might be interested, because those areas may be things that you may want to invest time in or learn more about. And then they go into a little bit more detail about how they do that. With Kuvert, they talk about, you know, why you might want to use Kuvert. And they're basically talking about the fact that there are a lot of benefits with it, right? And so basically what they're saying is that, you know, life is being made easier by using Kuvert. Also you want to talk about, you know, where the technology or the community sits in a stack or scenario. Where can I use this technology? Where can I find more information on how to use and how to contribute? Where does it intersect with existing technologies and communities? And I think it's very, very important to describe the where of things. One thing that I want people to keep in mind is that if, you know, your technology community has intersections to really highlight those intersections. So for instance, of course, Kuvert is about Kubernetes for virtual machines. And, you know, they already cite Kubernetes, right? So you're able to kind of hang your hat if you're familiar with Kubernetes. Like, oh, okay, instead of using containers, Kuvert is using Kubernetes for virtual machines. Okay, got it. So one of the things I always tell people is that if you can find facets of familiarity that your attendees may have, so that people can kind of place in their mind some context of how this fits in to their own life or their own scenarios. And if it doesn't fit in for them, at least they can socialize it out to other people who may, you know, benefit from this community or benefit from this technology. And so this is part of the reason why you still want to be clear about where and why you want to introduce these particular intersections. And so open organization ambassadors, they talk about, you know, where you can find information. You know, they talk about how you can speak to other people, to other open organization ambassadors or with people from opensource.com. And then they also talk about their values. And so you can see that there's intersections of these different questions that are, that I've highlighted that are spread out. So it doesn't have to be, you know, just what, where, when, and why. Like, isolated, you can actually incorporate those different facets in your messaging. And with Qvert, this is on their website. What I kind of liked here, so messaging can also encompass graphics. You can see that they show instances where you would, can use Qvert. You could try it out. They've got on Katakuta, on Minikube, on KIND, and then on various cloud providers. And then they also highlight where you can find them on social media. So on Twitter, you can find them on Slack. And they also have a GitHub repo that they highlight. So those are types of things that you can point to when talking about the where in your messaging. And here also is the documentation section and points directly to the GitHub and to places where you can get help. So I want to talk a little bit about the when. So they're too fast to the when question. And so I want to talk about like an announcement or launch specific to new communities because that's a scenario that I encounter pretty commonly. Is that, you know, when do you announce that this new community is being established? And part of the reason why I want to get into that is that sometimes there's, you know, there's a chicken and egg component, of course, when you launch a new community. Because when you launch it, you're hoping to get contributors and or users, you're trying to get folks involved in the community. But I have seen some scenarios where an announcement was made around a new community and the community actually wasn't formed in any kind of way other than as an idea. And what I've seen when that happens is that sometimes they can cause frustration and sometimes doesn't engender a lot of trust when you do that. So one of the things that I do ask folks to consider when they want to announce a community or something new is, you know, how ready is it to really be socialized? Because people have a lot of questions. And so if you are not able to address some of the other questions I've already brought up with the what and the why and the where. I would really, really consider, you know, whether or not you need to put a little bit more thought or a little bit more preparation into announcing the creation of a new community. Because part of it is that you already want to have a kernel of something for people to hang on to. And so I mentioned just because it's a scenario I've seen a few times and I think it's worth noting. Also, you want to talk about like if you've got messaging related to your community or to something that you're launching a relationship to your community, whether it's a new release or a project or something else. Look at whether or not it can tie in with any announcements that are already coming from your corporation or organization, whether it makes sense to do that. You know, a lot of people come to me because they want to tie it in with an event. And one of the things that I'll ask them is that, you know, does this event have anything to do with what you're announcing? Some people want to just attach it to something. And I would say be very discerning about when you do launches or announcements like tie it in with a place or an event or an announcement that makes sense. It's going to be of interest to a larger demographic than, you know, not tying it at all. So that's one thing that I would always suggest is to look for opportunities for collaboration and partnership. You know, whether it's with your company's PR team or marketing team or events team. Look for those opportunities because they're always interested in amplifying. I know that I am like, I'm always interested in amplifying things as much as possible. And so be sure to look for those partnerships. And I'm going to talk about how to develop those partnerships actually in the second part of this presentation. And then when you are messaging to potential users and contributors, you do need to give a timeline. You know, if you do announce here's a net new community, you know, answer when they can be involved, like give a timeline about when they can be involved. Because I think it's super important. And if you can't give that timeline, like I said, I would pause and maybe give a little bit more time to have that a little bit set up. And then also, when is this technology available to use? And as sometimes we're talking about things that we're anticipating down the road. Again, I think it's very important to give a timeline if at all possible with that. Like I said earlier, I always feel like when communities come to me, they already have the how figured out about how to use technology. A lot of people already have like demos they want to do. They want to do speaking sessions. They may already even have a blog, which is great. And like I said, as long as you've got all that material along with answering the different questions with the what, the why and the where and the when, then the how is really great. Like it will do a good job of supporting all the things that you've already put in place. And as I cited with the keyword example and also the open organization ambassadors example, it's really nice if you already have a website set up. I know that some net new communities, they want to go ahead and push things out without having any without any kind of website presence. I would really strongly encourage folks to have that set up with some basic information, have, you know, a pointer already to if you have got an existing repo, have a pointer to any social media, and also points of contact. Now I want to talk a little bit about points of contact because this is something that I've seen personally in terms of like trying to kind of when you're trying to grow a community, you usually have to have people interface. And I've seen with like smaller communities or maybe there's not a lot of people already involved or maybe there's some bandwidth issues because there are not that many people involved. You do have to establish a workflow related to points of contact in terms of how you're going to handle it new inquiries questions. You need to have someone who's going to be dedicated to it. I don't know that it works as effectively when you have just, you know, like kind of an amorphous group that says I'll get to it. What I've found is sometimes because everyone's involved, no one answers a question. And so I would say really spelled out within your own team about who's going to be handling on different points of inquiry. So these are just some other examples of the how you can see the open organization ambassadors have nice little buttons on their website that direct you where to go. You can do their newsletter and download guides, that kind of stuff. And then keyword, this is just a screenshot of their how to videos. So these are different ways that the how part is supported. So now that you've created your messaging, you've already answered the what, the why, the where, the when, the how. Now's the time to start thinking about, you know, how are you going to highlight your community? And like I said, a lot of people come to me because they want to highlight their community and the messaging around what they want to present at events. And of course, events are really different now. It's a little bit harder to socialize things. I'll be honest, we're still trying to figure out the new virtual world with like buffs and meeting greets and social hours. So we don't have that same kind of interaction like we did when we were all meeting in person, but it's still possible to have that. Yes, there's a lot more tweaking involved, but events are still very, very important in terms of announcing and socializing your community. And another thing that I want to also emphasize is the importance of partnerships with other communities and also business units and other organizations. If your messaging is nice and tight, you know, if you've gotten everything squared away with those questions I introduced earlier, it makes it a lot easier to demonstrate the value of partnership with other communities. And particularly if your community, your project, your technology intersects with other communities. So for instance, if you have a community that intersects with the Kubernetes community, if it intersects with other things within it, you want to reach out to those communities and tell them about what you have and how you want to partner with them. And, you know, usually folks are more than happy to do some cross-promotion because it promotes them too. And so, you know, that's part of the reason why I put so much emphasis on trying to make sure that people answer your questions around the messaging points that I introduced earlier is it makes it a lot easier for people to have buy-in when you're trying to demonstrate value. And, you know, partners are actually one of the most important stakeholders that you will message to. And people sometimes don't realize that they think they're looking for users and contributors, and that's true. But you're actually also looking for partners to help amplify that message. And so, and like I said, I'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment, particularly if you're a community member and you need to interact with folks in the corporate stakeholder field like within sales and field marketing, product marketing. Of course, don't overlook, you know, setting up your own website. Like I said, I strongly recommend setting up a website. Look at blogs that you can put out. A lot of companies have their own blogs where you may be able to feature things about your community. I know at Red Hat we have a community blog. I think we also have another blog, next.redhat.com. Check it out. Talks about the latest and greatest in new emerging technologies. Also, you know, think about like avenues like YouTube and Twitch. I know those are two things that have been utilized by communities. And then, of course, think about social media. So social media is actually a really great way to amplify. I've listed several here. Honestly, Twitter is probably the most important and most effective. I've seen one of the presences on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. But usually that's not really a community presence as much as it is an individual community presence where a community member is talking about their work. And that's still really important to amplify. But Twitter, your community should have a Twitter account. If you're in tech, you should have a Twitter account. I'm just going to say it. And then not everyone is really crazy about doing a social media presence. But I know that I'm a very heavy Twitter user, and I make all sorts of connections on Twitter. One of the things that I like to do is if there is a net new community or even a established community that's looking to amplify messages. Partner with folks that have a very strong social media presence. It may be your corporate Twitter handle. At Red Hat for a community, we actually have a dedicated Twitter handle at Red Hat Open that we partner a lot with. And they'll partner a lot with individual community Twitter accounts to amplify their messaging. So don't overlook that and also don't overlook people who have strong individual fallings of their own on Twitter. If you have a relationship with them and they have a reason to care about your community, care about the announcements that you're making in relationship with your community, be sure to connect with them. I would even set up a meeting with folks who are really active in social media to create a social media plan and to help create content. I know that creating content is not always the most favorite thing for people to do. But it's important to be able to create at least a few canned tweets to share with community members, have individual folks tweet stuff out in addition to those official community and company accounts. I find that individual Twitter users, they tend to get a lot of traction. They're also just viewed, for better or for worse, as having more credibility, maybe because there's an attached neutrality to someone who's an individual, they're just giving their honest opinion about it. So now I want to talk a little bit about collaborating with corporate stakeholders. This is something that I wanted to talk about in relation to QE messaging, because I find that one thing kind of flows into the other. The success of QE messaging means being able to collaborate with corporate stakeholders. And who do I mean with corporate stakeholders? So folks within corporate marketing, which is where I officially set, folks within product marketing, people within field marketing, even people within sales. And so I put these graphics up to kind of just show that there is sometimes a tension between community and corporate interests. And that there are, and I love this slide by Matthew Broberg. It's one of my most favorite slides I've ever seen when explaining community and then corporate stakeholders is that sometimes community is seen as kind of an outlier. Community is more about hugs and more hugs. And I say it a little bit tongue in cheek, but it's real. It's a real situation where you may have folks within sales and marketing groups, particularly product and field marketing, where they may feel disconnected to community. They may not fully understand what community is all about. And so I kind of want to help frame a conversation, because one of the things that I think is very common with communities is that sometimes there's not an existing relationship with corporate stakeholders. And it's something that I really, really want to encourage and, you know, and I think involves a little bit of guidance and context. So one of the things that I want to tell folks when they're talking about messaging, whether it's corporate messaging or community messaging, that really it's all part of the same animal. So I like this particular graphic. It's a bunch of blindfolded people feeling the different parts of an elephant and they're convinced that what they're feeling is the right answer to what it is that they're experiencing. So one person says it's a rope, another says it's a spear, another says it's a wall. And the thing is, is that this graphic, this cartoon demonstrates that sometimes people only have a certain piece of the story, right? And it's not a complete story. So one of the things that, you know, we're, you know, we're having to do, particularly in the community side, because I think for our first, sometimes it unhisses on community to educate corporate stakeholders, is that you want to present the story of community. You want to present your community messaging as part of that same beast, as part of the same story. I like to view everyone's messaging on a continuum, right? Like it's actually one part of this whole story that we're trying to tell. I think it's very, very important for everyone to have a good idea on how to do that. So before you have the conversation, I mean, one of the things to do is you've got to kind of do an assessment. And you have to do a really honest assessment. You know, one of the things that I think you have to address are underlying fears and concerns, right, from both sides. You know, and I put a couple of examples here that I think are really common. You know, an example from corporate stakeholders is that maybe community technology competes with product, you know. So you have to just call it out, right? And then another from the key side is that corporate messaging will alienate community. Again, you have to call it out when you have a conversation. And so part of identifying these underlying fears and concerns is also identifying these gaps in knowledge. There are things that probably both sides don't know that they need to know. And so try to figure out what those gaps might be. You'll probably discover more of them when you actually have the conversation. But you probably have pretty good sense about what those gaps are. And of course, you know, when identifying those gaps, you know, try to think out complementary components to find an overall strategy. And then also seeing good intent or at least defensiveness when you come to those conversations. I know that's not always the easiest thing to do. But like I said, what you're trying to do is cultivate partnerships, cultivate allies to make your community more successful. So these are some of the components that I personally had to explain to other folks who sit within the corporate marketing arm within Red Hat. You know, because we've got a lot of new people coming into marketing and they may not come from an open source background. They may not have been with Red Hat for a long time. And so one of the things that I'm always having to do is to explain what community is and what it does. And like one thing that I always explain in a community is that, particularly in an event setting, that the emphasis will always likely be on the technology, not the product. So for instance, a lot of the events that I run, we will get a top tier sponsorship and there will be a keynote slot that we're assigned as part of that sponsorship. And one of the things I always have to explain to folks who are new to open source and new to open source events is that we do not want to do keynote focused on products because that's kind of the no-no and it will be heavily frowned upon and it undermines our trust and credibility because a lot of the folks in an open source audience are really looking for information on how to do things better, not looking to buy anything per se. I mean there may be decision makers in that audience, but most likely it's someone who's maybe technical in nature that's really looking, how do I get this problem solved? And a product pitch is not what they're looking for. And so you have to sometimes explain that to the field, to sales, that there are particular events dedicated to Q&A where you don't ever want to do product pitches and also you may also have to explain privacy issues, why you might not be able to drill deep into people's backgrounds or what have you because of privacy concerns. So one of the things that you have to explain about Q&A is also just the culture, right? That the values of open source need to be upheld and culture is greater than code. I think those of us who've been in open source for a while know that the Q&A is not just a term, it's really kind of a value system, it's actually a lifestyle, it's something that we really believe in in terms of values of respect and collaboration and transparency. And so we have to explain that sometimes the people that we're collaborating with are doing mind share with that those folks may be competitors. And so we've got co-opetition rather than competition in the Q&A side. And so one of the things we have to explain, why would we do this co-opetition versus just straight competition is that these conversations enable integration, innovation right across different technologies, like I like to use like Fedora and OpenSUSA as an example. OpenSUSA has traditionally sponsored Flock, which is our Fedora contributor conference, they'll come. They're usually awesome and they bring beer to in-person events and they're some of my favorite people to hang out with even though, you know, SUSA is considered to be a competitor of Red Hat. There's a lot of conversation that happens between OpenSUSA and Fedora contributors about how to make things better, right? And so sometimes you have to explain that part of what makes the product better is what makes community better, right? Like community has to be strong and there has to be a lot of conversation. And there's just also just a lot of straight talk that happens because people are really concerned about what works, like that's the bottom line, what will work, what can make my life easier, right? And then you have to talk about the fact that, you know, these collaborations mean a diversity contribution, which means a diversity of solutions. And of course, as I said earlier with that community, there is no product. You need community in open source if you want to have a product. Sometimes sales and field, they want to feel like you can control community, but that's not how it works, right? It's its own kind of organic entity. And so there sometimes used to be some explanation that it's not something that any one company can direct. Like there's no directive that really it's a conversation between a lot of different people who are usually interested in doing the right thing for the community and for making sure that we find solutions that can benefit the most people. So when you're framing your story with corporate stakeholders, a lot of them are going to want to know the quantitative story. Yes, we don't always do leads like on a community event. You know, you may not be doing leads like related to a DevOps event or, you know, a Linux Fest or anything like that, but you are going to have to provide something related to quantity. So, you know, ways to quantify your community, you know, how many contributors, how many users, and part of that just kind of gives them a bit of scale for them to kind of wrap their minds around, like, you know, how big your community is and what, you know, what it is. If you're talking about events, you can talk about, like, how many attendees come to these events, but I also want people to also think about, like, you know, who are your attendees? You know, there are personas in marketing and they fall into two categories, influencer or decision maker. And sometimes you'll have more influencer and a community, usually it's more influencer than decision maker, but sometimes it's both, right? Like, especially if you have a startup, or a smaller company that's coming in, they may be both. They may be both an influencer and decision maker. And so, it helps to kind of track, you know, who these people are in terms of where they work, are they competitors, are they collaborators, or are they both, right? So, part is you want to be able to kind of quantify, like, hey, you know, sometimes we collaborate people from, you know, VMware or maybe Oracle or whatever. You want to, like, list out all those companies so that they can realize, okay, here we have these existing interactions on the community side. So, we're touching these organizations in some way. That's actually very helpful for folks on the corporate side to kind of quantify what that presence is. And also, you want to talk about any use case stories. I know that use case stories can be a little problematic on the community side, because you don't always want to socialize some of those use case stories, because maybe, you know, it doesn't quite agree with the sales story, but it's still important to share those stories at least for internal knowledge. And you may find that there are some stories that are appropriate for external sharing. And then the qualitative story. I think the qualitative story is very, very important. One thing that I always like to remind folks about is that community creates a social capital, and the social capital includes trust, respect, and credibility. And honestly, none of those things can be bought or sold. That's, I think, one of the greatest benefits of being involved in community and being good community members is that if you're a good community member, you build a lot of relationships, right? And so when you're telling this qualitative story, you know, one of the things that I like to remind people is, like, you know, remind people how your community, how your piece of technology has made people's lives better. You know, so they're the individual stories, because of X community, I'm able to save time at work and devote more time with my family and friends. I'm going to call out one of the communities that I always get these stories from, and that's Ansible. Like, I can't tell you how many cis admins come up to me and tell me Ansible has made their life better, because it's created more time for them. You know, those are the types of stories that people love to hear about. And then there are the societal impact stories, where I just put X technology enables health organizations to share information more quickly. And actually, I'm thinking specifically about OpenShift and OpenStack, enabling the Massachusetts Open Cloud to be able to share information. In this case, it's radiology images, pediatric radiology images. And we actually have a really cool story that was created about this project. And it's called Project Chris, if anybody wants to Google and check it out. But it's a really awesome project. So there are lots of great stories on the community side that deserve to be socialized and to be amplified. And sometimes your corporate stakeholders may have no idea any of that's going on to tell them. So when building relationships, meet people, make introductions on the corporate side. One of the things that may take a little bit of investigating is whether or not you've got counterparts on the product and marketing and field marketing side. They're probably interested in knowing who you are. You may have to ask around a little bit. For me, I'm usually a point of contact for folks because I have relationships with the field and my product and corporate. And of course, I have relationships with the community. And one of the things that I like doing is like, I like connecting people and having them have a conversation. It makes my life easier to be honest because it helps me make sure that the messaging that I give at events is coherent and cohesive and there are no contradictions or weirdness that's involved because people have talked to each other and come into agreement like, oh yes, this is a story you want to amplify. And then people come to consensus. At least that's what happens in the ideal world. And so, you know, identify opportunities for collaboration. One of the most common things that I've seen asked for is like how CUMIs can be involved in the upstream. And that usually involves doing presentations, maybe to customers or even internally to stakeholders about explaining how it's done. And that's I think a pretty nice segue sometimes to intersect with kind of that customer story because a lot of customers are interested in contributing to upstream. And then also offer to provide consulting advice, like, you know, be open to having yourself as a resource for folks. People do remember that. And it's part of building that relationship. And then I just want people to realize that sometimes it takes time, it takes persistence, it takes consistency. It's not something that happens overnight. For me, it took several years for me to really build trust and credibility with stakeholders. And then of course, listen and acknowledge. It's always the basis of any good relationship is listening and acknowledging. So anyway, thank you for spending time with me about creating corporate messaging and creating strategy. If you want to connect with me, here's my email at Red Hat. I'm also very active on Twitter. So follow me at Gen Innovate. And I'll follow you back and then we can have a conversation. And you can also connect with me on LinkedIn. So anyhow, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope to connect with you at a future event, either virtually or maybe ideally in person. So thank you so much. Bye, everybody.