 Welcome everybody. All three of you know I'm kidding. Thank you everybody for coming. I'm Kim McMahon. I'm with the RISC-5 project, one of Linux Foundation projects. And I'm going to talk today about some of the techniques and things that we have done to grow using visibility and community as we've been really accelerating here with RISC-5. So a little bit for the people who don't know what RISC-5 is. We are a global nonprofit as I mentioned. We are one of the Linux Foundation projects and we focus on open hardware. We are the part of open hardware. That is the instruction set architecture. So what is an instruction set architecture? It is basically a model of how the CPU talks to the software. And so there's a couple of them that you've probably heard of, X86, right? X86 is a CISC architecture. ARM and MIPS are a RISC architecture. We are the open architecture for the RISC solution, which means, so if you're going to buy an X86 chip and put it in something, you're probably going to pay a license fee and you're probably going to be limited on what you can do. Ours is open source, so you take the instruction set, you choose the extensions that you want. Extensions would be things like add and subtract or memory loading or whatever. And then you put those into your computer board, into your chip and your computer board. So the benefit of the open source is you get to choose what you want and then you license it yourself. So I did put a couple drawings up here. I thought they were really funny. I asked Akira, Akira if you're listening, our wonderful ambassador said, hey, do you have a picture of an instruction set architecture? So he sends me this thing on the left and I'm like, I have no idea what to do with this. So I put it in there because I think it's hilarious. And then I found the fairly simple one on the right that really is saying that what we're doing is we're managing that layer there between the hardware and the software with an open source project. So we've seen some really incredible growth over the last five years and I'm going to just show a couple charts to show you, to demonstrate what this growth is. One of them is in our members. This is in the number of cores or processors, risk five processor, I've put my glasses on to make sure I see that, CPU cores by 2025. This number is 80 billion and it's up from, I believe it was 50 billion when they did the survey last year. And when you think of a core, it's virtually in every single thing that we use. It's in your earbuds, of course it's in your phone, it's in your refrigerator, if your refrigerator talks to you. And in the case of my laptop, it has multiple cores, right? So we're seeing this incredible growth of cores within risk five. And then on top of it, you just don't run hardware, you need software and that is expected to grow to over a billion dollars in the same sort of time period, people writing software applications extensions and et cetera to work on the risk five. So I showed you these numbers because I wanted to set the stage for how we are expanding. When I joined the organization last year, we had two people, we had our CTO and a program manager. Excuse me, CEO, Clista back there and our program manager, we added a CTO and myself around the same time of year and then we added three more technical headcounts, a marketing headcount, a community learn headcount. And so I come into this role and I'm building on what they have all done. What this team of two and Ted on the marketing committee as a volunteer has been doing for risk five. So I kind of relatively blank slate when I looked at building out our visibility and our community programs on how we were going to show our adoption and our growth and grow membership. So and the things I'm going to describe you in this presentation are things that I did with risk five. You can do these on another project. You can do these as your own organization and you can do these as a business unit if you have a business unit launching. So the things that I'm going to describe that we do, you can incorporate that into almost anything that you're trying to launch. So the first thing that I think that we always need is a plan because you need a plan. You kind of need to know where you're starting and where you're going to go so that you put together the activities you're doing make sense. So I have a friend, Ted. I already referenced him in the audience. He has a new book. He's making me do this. But he actually, he wrote this book and it's a really great book. It's super simple on the seven steps for marketing simplified and it's the things that Ted and I talk about. But as he says, to do marketing makes no sense. To do marketing just for marketing's sake makes no sense. It's a waste of time. So if you know Ted, he's never won the mince words. He's a great guy. You should meet him and talk with him. But what we're really saying, or any experienced marketer is saying is that, like I mentioned, you need to know where you are and where you're going so that you don't do a bunch of activities that just don't make sense. So I started out here with our organizational goals, our goals that Calista have set, our RISC-5 organizational goals. And then I put together my visibility and community plan. So I have a couple of examples to illustrate this. One of them is the goal from Calista, grow membership, grow product revenue and that whatever. And then when I look at the things I was going to do, I was going to retain our current members, look at satisfaction, add new membership through maybe personal outreach, cultivate a pipeline for membership, deepen member engagement, keep that retention going, things like that. And then the little green box on the right were some specific things that I was doing within my strategic plan, which is the darker green box on the left. But another example, deepen community engagement. So best practices, geographic and advocate-led programs, alliances, for example. And then put together part of that plan was on the right, how am I going to do that? And another, the third example, and these slides will be available so you can take a look if you want to copy my marketing plan. But broad visibility and adoption. So, you know, talk about member successes, talk about technology progress, what is going to be our PR plan, all those kinds of things. So we're taking this broad goal, bringing it down to the area that I'm responsible for and then talking about how to do it. So, our plan will also have metrics. You know, there are metrics associated with this and I didn't go into detail here with that because it can be a long conversation. But you know, there are metrics I was driving towards, percent membership growth, percent membership retention, for example. So if you want to talk about metrics, I'm happy to, you can get me on Twitter. My Twitter handle should be somewhere at the bottom of some of these slides. Or find me here at the conference and I can talk through metrics with you. So, the next thing we did was messaging. And they had, Mirs 5 had good messaging as what I'd like to say is a scrappy startup. They used words like disruption and revolution and note, these are not the images that were being used in the marketing. But, you know, once, when we're looking to mature and step up from more of a startup to proving to the world that we are a viable go-to-market product, we needed to up our game with our messaging. So, the first thing we looked at was, well, what do we want people to know about us? So, we want people to know that we are changing computing for the foreseeable future. That open collaboration is important. That we want them to know about the technical components of the ISA and the extensions. And that we, you know, RIS 5 is cementing the strategic foundation of supercomputers. So, we up-leveled our messaging a little bit and this is what we are using now. You'll see this kind of all over our materials. Next year, we will probably change this again. You know, as we look at where we are currently in the market and what we need, what we should be saying after that. So, okay, we have our plan. We have our messaging. Time to get started. Well, but in reality, I got started right away. And that, how I did that was with social engagement. I mean, the plan is really important, but you're not going to halt all of your visibility and community activities while you wait for your team to build out the plan. So, like as I mentioned, started with some low-hanging fruit, social engagement. You know, talking to people on Twitter and LinkedIn. And while I'm hanging out and watching what's going on on our social media channels, I am finding really great content that was written by the community and we're back to sharing that on our website. So, we did start with some things that we, you know, start with some things right away as the plan was being built. So, I just really kind of wanted to point out, you know, you can do two things at once. You can execute and plan it together. So, when I started, we were re-sharing community news on our website, publishing a few blogs, but if we're going to up our game, we needed to make a slight change. And that was high quality, relevant, timely community content that we're publishing on our blog and in the news. And these would be new products, things the community hasn't heard about, innovations. And as we were finding this, you know, we're not only getting excited, but the community is getting excited about just this amazing growth with risk five. So, and then blogs. Blogs are awesome, but for us, we wanted content above quantity. We didn't want to publish a bunch of blogs that were not great. We wanted to make sure that we were publishing, I think we're losing it, huh? We were, oh, okay, that we were publishing really good content that the community was watching. There's not sales pitches. They're not just regular stories. They are really exciting stuff in those hidden gems. And we had been, so we have been providing this content on our website. And our web metrics show that we're getting a lot more people coming to our website looking at risk five as being the place to find content on that topic. So for social, we were posting regularly. We were posting good content. We had an outsourced team that was working with us on the content. When we added team members, we brought in a lot more engagement and we also up-leveled our social posts. We were talking more about the product, more about risk five. We're more technical about it and doing a lot of re-sharing. Now, and as we were engaging, the metrics that we saw in that is we were at about a 1% of an engagement rate before I joined. We're now at 1.6%, which is just awesome. And then what we were finding is we were sharing things, we're finding things on Twitter. We're putting it in the news. We're re-sharing that in the news or that blog on Twitter. And then it's getting re-shared again and then we're re-sharing it. I mean, we were just finding this really great circle of sharing and posting of content going on. So amplification of technical progress and these slides are not going to totally match up, but they will all make sense when I finish this paragraph. But that's where you're really going to change the game is when you have somebody sharing their successes and anybody who's been in marketing for any length of time knows how hard it is to get customers to talk about their product successes, which is where that rock picture came from. So I have a couple of things for you all to think about. One word, persistence. I mean, you just got to keep asking. If you find a good case study, just keep asking, can I publish it? Can I help you write it? Do you have any information? Can you share it with me? I'll write it for you to look at. Like anything, just kind of stay in their face so that you can tell that story. And then the second thing is why it's good for them. So case studies, end users may not want to share it or your vendors may not want to share it because they're giving away proprietary information. But actually it is good if they share it because it brings more awareness to the product, which more people buy, which brings more awareness to their products as well. So telling them why it's positive for them will help you get those case studies. Okay, let's see. I don't know what's going on there. There we go. So events have been really interesting. So who's excited that we're all back in person? Now, people at home, you can raise your hand. Sorry you're there. But then we also have a lot of people who can't travel because of restrictions or who aren't comfortable traveling. So it's an interesting time for anybody doing marketing and trying to do events. Now, the last thing I wanted to do was one more long-form virtual event. We did one in September of 2020. That's when they were still good. People were going. They knew they had to get that content. But I just saw it just dropping off by the end of the year. People did not want to sit there all day long. They're going to wait until it goes to YouTube and plan to watch it and maybe watch it and never you're nodding. You know exactly what I mean. So what we did instead of a long-form virtual event, I mean, we looked at what's going on and we pivoted. We did what we call these short-form, single-topic virtual events. That's these forums over here on the right. And they were super successful. We did one on security and developer tools and embedded technologies and vector. And I got sponsors for those events because we are a nonprofit. So my goal is to get a sponsor to pay for the cost of whatever we're doing. And they were super successful. We had over 50% of the people join and the sponsor got those leads. So by pivoting and looking at something that the community wanted to hear about, and then those are high-quality leads that come in. So whether you're doing your own business or whether in this case giving it to a sponsor, they got leads in this area that they could cultivate in the security area, for example. It's not like they're going through their whole OSS list and trying to qualify a lead and figure out what you're going to talk to them about. So that was a good pivot. And my pitch, RISC-5 Summit, I think I have it over there on the left, it is December 6th through 8th. Anybody wants to learn more about joining us at RISC-5 Summit? Stop by our table in the exhibition center. So community, there's a lot on the slide and there's a lot for me to read here. I'm going to put my glasses back on. But community programs are about getting broader participation from the community. Not from the people you know, but really extending beyond the people you know. Thank you, Gordon, for nodding. Deepening engagement with the existing community members. We have people that are contributing and really showing appreciation for them and getting more engagement from them. While we are also growing, more community members to participate and then finding those advocates who are your fans. So I know we have a lot of fans, but how do I find them and how do I engage them and take them to the next level? So I have a couple on that left there, the how, a couple steps. Good credible, authentic content for your technical audiences and a good getting started guide. That's one of the ways that you're going, it's kind of like two ends of the spectrum. You get people trying to use your stuff and then people who already are. But that's how people are going to get engaged in the community because if they know where to go and where to find information. For example, our technical team, they hired a doc writer to create templates for documentation and clean up our existing documentation. We have upped our game. We are on a never ending update to our getting started page. Anybody who's in market, oh, I got more nods. Yeah, like you never, like that never works, right? You're always trying to improve your user experience and your getting started page. So we're doing that. And then our technical team, do I have one minute? Okay, our technical team now has a wiki and that's where they go and find information. Wow, that went quick. Evangelism, can't do it alone. We have 12, oh, five minutes. Okay. We have 12 ambassadors. We just added two more. We added our first female ambassador. Yay. And so those are our advocates. And if you, Drew Faustini is one of our ambassadors. He's here at the event. If you have a chance to talk with them, please do. He's amazing. And they help a lot. They are on social. They're talking to people in the industry about risk five. So get that advocate. Outreach programs such as we have a technical collaboration with Chips Alliance. So I work a lot with Chips Alliance, another LF project, to promote what we're doing with risk five and promote what they are doing with risk five boards, for example. And then doing events, developer conferences, hackathons, meetups, bringing the community together one of the ideas I have is to do a meetup with maybe people who are interested in blockchain. We just launched a blockchain SIG. There's a lot of chatter going on about that. So maybe we do a meetup with just blockchain, not just risk five blockchain, but partner with Hyperledger, for example, and get blockchain enthusiasts together and talk about what their issues are. So really kind of thinking outside of the box on things you can do to get the community talking about your stuff. So the end result, that you're always going for is to grow that community, make sure everybody feels welcome and included and safe that they have a place to come and share what they think about your product. In our case, what they think about risk five. Come to us for information and be in that boat with us. They're excited to be there helping to make this a success. So that went really quick. Oh, there we go. So the importance of diversity and inclusion. From what I experienced so far in our community, it's pretty low. I know it's better in some of the other tech areas. But it's definitely something that needs to be improved. And when you talk about improving diversity, why? What's in it for me? And the chart on the left shows that when you have a more diverse team, your innovation improves and communications and your documentation like things just improve all around the board because you have diverse thought. So that's why you do it. And then I pulled this chart on the right and I just thought it just kind of scratched my head that the difference between how men and women see issues in tech was just really kind of mind boggling to me. So we had just launched and I have a talk at 12.25 today. We just launched the Open Hardware Diversity Alliance. And this is precisely what we're trying to do. We're working with other open hardware communities to try to provide programs and learning and tools to bring more diverse faces into the open hardware community. So you can check that out. You can also go out to the website diversityhardware.org if you want to help and join. So bottom line, diversity is important. It's going to help you with the innovation and diversity of thought. And in summary, this is where you take a picture if you want. Anyway, in summary, your strategic plan, know your value for your message and with strong messaging. Make sure you have good content. Social, don't just sit back and watch, get out there and share and amplify. Make sure you're talking about your successes such as product successes and technology successes. Do events that make sense. Don't do an event just to do an event. Do something where you're going to be in front of the audience that you want to be in front of. Think about your community programs and some diversity. And with that, I'm done. I'll take some questions if you want. But do come visit us in the sponsor showcase. Kalista, model your t-shirt. Come pick up the most gorgeous t-shirt. We're going to win Best Conference t-shirt. Any questions? Yeah. Kalista, do we have those charts? I know you were working on yours. You have a talk at 5.25. Yeah, so Gordon asked about adoption and Kalista was sharing these charts are showing the cores but that I think you said 23%? Nearly a quarter. Nearly a quarter of products are going to have a risk 5 corner in the next two. Oh, already happening. And her and our technical person, Stefano, have a talk at 5.25. 4. 4, whatever. I'll be there. Follow Kalista. It's at 4 o'clock and she'll be going through those numbers and those numbers are also on our website. If you go to our about page, we have these charts as well as other charts and then after this conference I'll be updating with the new information that we've gathered. So. Yeah. So we are wrapping up if you have questions like I mentioned. If you want to talk diversity, come at 12.25 to 5.02. If you want to talk with Kalista and Stefano, what room? I don't know either. But I can tell, we can tweet it out and yeah, thank you all for coming. I'll be around.