 So this is the community management is new customer service creating community happiness using all those lessons you learned during your first summer job Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our presentation. We very much appreciate you joining us here today Just to kick off introducing ourselves. My name is Leslie Hawthorne. I've been a community manager for the past six years working with various open source projects Most notably working in community management managing the Google Summer of Code program And I'm Amy's Kaverda. I come from the project management side of the world, but I've been in Drupal for the past four years So I'm kind of here to talk about how Drupal fits in with this idea of community management so Also, you can feel free to interrupt us at any time come up to the mic And we are fully capable of being able to have a conversation with you at the same time We are interrupter of inhumans So feel free to interrupt whenever you need to we sure are and we want to start off Presentation with a conversation about our you know weird summer jobs I was up in Alaska for one summer trying to work with people in terms of There are various expectations of what their Alaskan experience was going to be like and what was actually going to happen awesome Really quick before I kind of kick off into my customer service background. How many folks in the audience have worked retail? All right, how many of you have worked in a restaurant food service? Okay, how many of you your first job was like hacking on Drupal or doing something technology related and everything that we say about retail is gonna confuse you Awesome, you can take the customer perspective very nice So I my first job when I was in high school was actually working at roundtable pizza Has anyone eaten roundtable pizza? It's tasty and I was working at the flagship store of the chain for the the founders son and he had a Very strong emphasis on a high quality of customer service And then my next job after that was working at a Noah's bagels slinging bagels and I was a shift leader there And one of the reasons why this talk topic I thought was really important to discuss was I realized that getting my start in community management where I had no previous experience in community management Was actually fundamentally because I had a great background and grounding in customer service jobs So we're talking about our open source community management restaurant after a fashion and We kind of wanted to lay out where we're going here We're going to talk about welcoming well making sure that you're bringing people into your community Menu accuracy making sure that your menu matches your dish getting your order correct about just you know Focusing on listening dealing with fussy eaters keeping your store clean taking care of your regulars and completing the transaction And we're going to try to stick towards an open source community management theme But you may wander off from time to time we wander. It's what we do that being said also the restaurant metaphor We have to stretch sometimes, but that's okay. It's after lunch. So none of you will be hungry So welcoming well How many of you have ever walked into a restaurant and there's a podium for a host or hostess and yet there is no one standing there and And there's no sign indicating whether or not you want to see yourself and Perhaps even someone walks up behind you and just goes around you and goes around you and sits down That's an incredibly uncomfortable feeling. You don't know what the protocol is You don't want to be offensive. You're actually there to fulfill an immediate need right? I need food and Yet you're not really quite sure how to get started And I actually think that Drupal is an excellent example of a project that welcomes well Let's just take a look at the front page of Drupal.org, right? There are actually two Vectors of entry for getting started. So if you've never been there before you already have an example of where to go And you have a sample protocol, right and even better. You've not only got the small one up there for people Are used to looking in navigation buttons. You've got Giganto button Hooray a Drupal and it also says why why you choose Drupal at the same time just above there So you have a good idea of what it is that you're going for So part of welcoming well is setting the expectations of what it is you're going to provide if you are in fact a steakhouse Say that you are a steakhouse If you're a vegan restaurant say that you're a vegan restaurant people going to either one expecting that you're going to be able to get steak at a vegan place and You know amazing grilled tofu at a steakhouse these might be possible But they are not going to be something that's going to make all of your customers happy be what it is that you are and stick with it and It's also especially important to when you're being clear about what you're doing and you know setting expectations for your community We all get great ideas about things that we can do to improve the various projects We work in and we often have more enthusiasm than we have time and that's totally cool This is going to happen to everyone in every community at some point So if you've got an amazing idea and you've gone out and you've told all your friends and you've tweeted about it We've posted about it on Facebook Google Plus and you've made you know a big charge like this is the greatest idea ever And we should totally do it and then you don't get around to it. That's okay Make sure you're posting status updates. Make sure you're letting folks know that you're still thinking about this That way you have set expectations for what you're providing and you're actually keeping people engaged Even if you're not able to deliver as quickly as you'd like you're going to create investment This is a good way to be able to keep that Keeping along with the same theme in terms of setting expectations appropriately If for example, you know if you know someone turns up at your steakhouse asking for delicious vegan treats How many of you are familiar with the subversion project version control system? Okay, great. I used to share a desk with one of the founders of that project a gentleman by the name of Carl Fogel And he told this incredibly fantastic story about the importance of having a mission statement for your project And he basically said that you know the subversion project to paraphrase decided that they wanted to be a compelling replacement for the CVS version control system and You know not long into the projects, you know Childhood I guess Somebody came along on their mailing list and was just Infuriated and said you guys are going down the wrong track completely. You should be trying to fix CVS I don't understand why you're doing this And the response was very simple point to the mission statement Our mission is not to improve CVS our mission is to provide a compelling replacement for CVS Similarly when you get folks in your community who have Misaligned expectations about what it is that they're going to get out of their experience from your open-source project Being able to point to your mission statement and say I am sorry We cannot provide you with your delicious vegan treats in our steakhouse is a really effective way to diffuse tension and send folks along on Requests so that they can go to the place to get the things that they need when you're not going to be the one to provide them So one of the great things that Drupal does to be able to meet the mission statement is create beginners groups And again that getting started just making sure that people can get the lay of the land To understand the functionality of software and what a can and can't do again lots of points of entry in here There's online IRC being able to go into groups that Drupal.org and scratch their own edge and find whatever it is they need to Meetups that happen in person like support groups the conferences like we're here now being able to do camps clinics barn raisings and Barn raisers actually really cool And I put this up here from Seattle where they go when they basically build a site in a week with people that haven't done it before So you really get your hands on you can go in and see exactly what it will do And then some of what it won't do at the same time So another key aspect of beginners groups is not just Pringing people in so that they're able to make better use of the software that you're producing It's also to help them You know on the path to becoming new contributors if that's of interest to them, which is great I think one thing that folks don't necessarily touch on as really important about beginners groups is They actually help to keep down the noise for those on your project who are heads down getting things done Not saying that these folks don't want to be actively engaged with the wider community but there are times that you actually simply need to focus on the project that you're working on and Nurturing the new ones into your community isn't necessarily going to be a priority for you. That's okay Provided those folks who are just getting started do have a place to go to get that guidance And at the same time you also want to be able to have people that have been around for a long time come to the user experience groups and Beginners groups to be able to see how it is people are just walking in Perceive what it is that you're doing is just landing well for the audience that you think you wanted to land well So given the number of folks in the audience who said that they've had a background in food service or retail I'm pretty sure most folks are familiar with this term upselling Okay, a few hands-on just just for the folks who in the audience may not be familiar with that term Upselling is the idea of suggesting additional Products or services that your customer may wish as a means of increasing your transaction total So for example, would you like fries with that? Yes? I was totally gonna use the tomato example, but that was way better So fundamentally it's about creating a desire or a need in your customer or your user Or your would-be future contributor that wasn't actually there before and For Drupal, I think about this is core is fine on its own and that's great But if you provide a path towards you know core and all of the various contrib modules and all the custom things that you Can do with it so you can build your very own Taj Mahal on the internet Then you're able to create a path towards contribution you're be able you're able to bring people in generally it's you know Communities are a lot more comfortable and a lot healthier when you have a direct path towards Becoming a user and then becoming a major contributor along the way And a big part of the community management task is to actually be a bridge between those various steps along the ladder Because folks need encouragement right they just need to know kind of where to go next and even if there was a clear model for Contribution those few like you know yep. Yep. Yep. Go go go those things are invaluable. Oh, this is my pet peeve All right, we will talk about fussy eaters later in this talk. I am a fussy eater so about 15 years ago, and I'm still mortified about this I wanted to an Applebee's with my mother and father for dinner, which was probably not the wisest decision. I've ever read and I was trying to eat much more healthily So I looked at the menu and said hey green salad. I like green salad so I ordered a green salad and I was returned a dish that had some iceberg lettuce in it to very sickly-looking carrots a whole bunch of hard-boiled eggs About I don't know four or five ounces of cheddar cheese and some bacon Love bacon Not big fan of the eggs and the cheese and what I could not fathom was why on earth each of these ingredients wasn't listed out on the Menu so I'd have the opportunity to make an accurate decision About the dish that I was ordering So for this one Let's say like you're at the beast review and you've decided that the Caesar salad with blood orange. It's gonna be your thing today And you end up With a wonderful little McDonald's salad with a Caesar salad with the heart in it So this is a wonderful mismatch of documentation and reality You've said that your community does things and it's in your documentation your mission statement your IRC channel topic all of that and If you end up delivering something completely different it creates a mismatch of expectations And it's also worth noting that we're very much aware of the fact that documentation is always going to chase development. That's inevitable However, you know, there are ways to actually make that clear to folks who are new to your community and make it easier for them to Navigate that process even something as simple as you know, our documentation isn't always up to date We would love your help to improve it on each documentation page. That's very simple to display That helps people to understand wait a minute my expectations didn't match reality Oh wait, my expectations have already been reset for me This is no longer a poor customer service experience for me And what's great about being able to welcome people in is that you can those newer Contributors can actually point to the things that are missing that you've lost over because you've seen it a million times You're like, oh, I totally know what that's supposed to be in there And they'll be able to flag those holes for you to be able to make it better So it's pretty much what we've been talking about. It's got documentation is how you communicate with everybody and it's not just What's on your website? It's everything from the read me file to the maintainers to the comments in your code All of those sort of things point towards what it is that you're about And I think that Drupal does an excellent job of this but I've worked with several hundred open source projects over the last few years and One of the things that I have noted is that Projects that don't focus on documentation tend to waste a lot of cycles Simply saying the same things over and over again Which can lead to burnout among community members, which is a topic that will address in a few minutes but imagine again, you're in a restaurant and Your server comes over to you and lets you know about the daily specials and leaves you with the menu and you order optimal transaction if You aren't actually putting out your documentation what you have is you have folks coming into your restaurant and each and every time They want to order you're reading off the entire menu to them Because you haven't provided it to them You're providing the same information over and over and over again They're becoming confused because no one could possibly follow along with an entire menu's worth of information being spoken to them Frustration abounds on both sides. No, I explain one of the other ways to think about Drupal is that It is like a family diner and that there are so many things you can order off the menu And there are so many things you can get involved in as well And there's it does a lot of different things being able to balance the many needs of you know Developers project managers people that are working on core people that are working on contrib Themers people that want to be able to do mobile well You get the opportunity to be able to focus on one thing you can focus on many things You can be interested in all of it. You can be interested in just some of it I think that if you look at Drupal in comparison to like let's just take another Project that is you know web content management like the Django project I was just hanging out with a bunch of these folks two weeks go up high con and if you look at their approach to The basically the same problem space their idea is to focus completely on the code That's it. If you want to do any kind of extensions improvements, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera making it beautiful. That's Not really a part of the Django project the Django project is really just about the web framework So, you know, it just depends on your focus Drupal is the family diner Django is the awesome food cart where you can go and get the world's best burrito But all you're gonna get is a burrito. All right, so So a huge part of you know having a good transaction with your customer is actually getting their order correct Right, so someone says to you that they'd like such and such such and such and such and such It's pretty good for you if you return to the table with exactly what they asked for Similarly with being a community manager. It is all about listening and Listening well and making sure that you're hearing what people are saying and it's also about effectively Anticipating needs like really having a good understanding of your community the issues the players involved so that you can synthesize all that into being someone who's highly available Responsive and reactive so if you think about it in the context of Being in a restaurant if you see your patron looking in your direction They probably need another cup of coffee Why not show up with another cup of coffee in your hand just to show that you're being proactive and that you're engaged and that you care The key to good community management is having people know that you really genuinely are invested and that you care And once you've heard that Create the things your community is asking for provided that it's sane and it's rational and it's in keeping with your project mission If you create the roadmap of where you're going It's a lot easier to be able to bring contributors in and say hey these a piece of we're working on right now These pieces that we're doing in the future and these pieces you can get involved with if you don't have time now Here's where you can jump in later. It's not the end of the road Think of your roadmap is your opportunity to repeat your order back to your customer, right? Did you actually order fries with that if the answer is no? I didn't get order fries with that then your response should be that's great Let me revise that order quickly Mind you a great part of community management is making sure that you're revising that order in a sane and rational fashion and that's going to involve an open dialogue with your community around their expectations and Reality again the mismatch of documentation reality and expectations of reality is one of those important things that you're going to be Balancing as a community manager. Oh fussy eaters. That would be me How many of you have seen the TV show Portlandia? We have to bring this up because we actually live in Portland So all of those things that you may have heard about on the internet about folks inquiring about the name of the chicken that they are About to eat for dinner. I've seen it happen. Sorry. It's true. It's true So inevitably in your restaurant business, you're gonna get fussy eaters, right? And fussy eaters are difficult because guess what there that whole fussy in there does imply a certain degree of difficulty So you're gonna get those fussy eaters and you still want to make them happy, right? They're still your customers. They're just gonna need a little something extra But at the same time these fussy eaters might also be some of your really productive folks They might also be the people who are the most invested in this particular project They're you know, think about the difference between a fussy eater and a foodie. You might just have a secret foodie on your hands instead of a fussy eater or Or you might have a troll as everyone in the audience familiar with the term troll All right, awesome. They're the people who come into your community and make life not so fun So imagine and I have totally been here to witness this and wanted to crawl out under the table in Mortification, but have you ever been to out to dinner with someone who will order something? That's not on the menu entirely or create their dinner based on like an amalgamation of six different foods Welcome to Portland. This will happen to you So Trolls, you know that you know, maybe that person is a secret foodie more than likely. They're just a troll I want to see what I can get away with I want to push some boundaries, right in your community Trolls may operate in a variety of ways, right? They may simply take up all the oxygen in the room by being overly vocal and not letting anyone else have an opportunity to share their voice They could do something that creates a stir that drives other people away if you can imagine your fussy eater You know standing up and declaring, you know all out anger about the fact that they got champagne vinaigrette instead of balsamic And they really wanted balsamic Well, not only do you have to soothe your fussy eater and or take care of your troll problem In the meantime everyone around you in that restaurant just wants to leave Somebody's making a scene. It's something pleasant Yeah, and you don't want to lose out on The contributions of those who remain invested because you have a fussy eater see your troll But at the same time It may also be someone that has a different expectation of what it is you do So what happens if you say something a different way is this is just a difference between like, you know a cultural mismatch Are you being hooked by the language that they're using and you can't take them seriously because of that? Look around that and see if again. They're just someone that's going to be a great investment But they're just not they're quite yet Again going back to our earlier theme about you know sending folks along on their quest Some customers are just going to be a bad investment How many of you have had that one person who kept coming back and finally just went to your manager and say it said Please tell so-and-so to never come back again I've totally done it And it's totally fine It is important to invest time into members of your community who may not you know fit the general bell curve of who you're expecting to Be there they again, maybe some of your most productive folks or your secret foodies On the other hand, it's totally fine to be like yes. Thank you, but no, thank you We don't need your business mind you. There are much more playways to say that For example the another example from the subversion community There was a new contributor who came along and was extremely excited and was highly productive But eventually people just got to the point where they were overwhelmed because this person would reply to every single Email sent to the mailing list. I mean every single one of them. They were always polite They were usefully usually constructive messages, but every single post They finally ran some stats and figured out that you know of three thousand total posts I believe this person had sent seventeen hundred in one month Like that's taking up all the oxygen that's not good for your community Even if someone isn't trying to be a bad investment as a customer, they still can be The resolution to this was actually that somebody picked up the phone gave the gentleman a call and said, you know We really appreciate your enthusiasm, but unfortunately given the stage that the project is in right now I think that we really need to focus more on Code rather than discussion and if you could stop posting every reply to every message That would be really great and incredibly helpful to us and you know Again with your secret foodies people who are really passionately invested this individual's response to say I'm so sorry I had no idea I was causing these difficulties for folks happy to rein it in which is a great ending to that kind of story Keeping your star clean How many of you had to mop the floor every day when you were done with work? But you just wanted to go home because you were done. Yeah Done idea not doing that again So this is really just sort of an encapsulation of all the best practices that we've been addressing so far in this presentation If you don't keep your store clean when your restaurant, what do you get? mess and rodents rodents rodents rodents of unusual sizes things with same things with legs that you do not want and no, it's just not good If you don't keep an eye on things keep your store clean keep your house clean in your community You're going to end up with trolls or possibly rodents So you want to be keeping in mind always that you're this is about keeping your dialogue positive. This is about resolving disputes Effectively this is about keeping you know being in keeping with your code of conduct if you're working with a project That doesn't have a code of conduct for goodness sake. Please make one. That's part of keeping your store clean and This is important not just in terms of being welcoming to new folks But also just creating a tone that makes it useful for folks who have been around long-term to continue to feel comfortable If your store isn't clean No one's going to come in let alone come back So part of this means don't let things fester as you see an issue deal with it If someone is dancing on the bar in your restaurant and is very drunk you should probably take care of that Similarly if yeah, if you see somebody trolling you should probably deal with that as well as someone that's just really lost and They're probably going to need some help as well taking care of things quickly also empowers other people to be able to Do this as well because you're modeling for them You're modeling that this is an okay thing and this is something that we do here if you see something say something Difficulties also just don't impact like the people involved. They have that ripple effect to be able to carry out so I Think you should discuss the airing of grievances because I have never aired So the the the other big thing is being able to have a space where you can air grievances where you have Birds of a feather sessions where you can bring up things at big conferences where you can have those core conversations about things Challenging for you, but also where you can have an issue queue and being able to have many different spaces to be able to bring up As many things as there are and get it resolved quickly. It's easy to be able to have a conversation in person Then it will be online Think of this how it is think of this as your chance to either talk to the store manager or talk to your server or fill Up the customer comment card How many folks have ever worked on an open source project? It felt like they were experiencing burnout Ah Excellent. We have all been there So core contributors and major leaders in every project are at some point going to experience burnout Every human being at some point is going to experience burnout And so when we talk about taking care of your regulars when one of the things that we want to focus on is Being aware of the fact that your most productive community members are going to be your most likely targets for burnout Right, okay, that's so that seems semi-obvious, right? But you want to make sure that your regulars your core contributors your project leaders. You're incredibly enthusiastic volunteers Stay happy. So how do you go about taking care of your regulars? They these might also be your fussy eaters sometimes You're gonna be more difficult to please but they're gonna be your heaviest tippers And their needs can cause ripples they can you know imagine the kitchen eating produce a not in the menu extra every single night In the middle of your rush But again, there's some of your most productive people So you balance their needs and you have to be able to tell them when their desires are gonna need to be able to take a backseat And if you've already got a roadmap you can put that on your roadmap and say hey I know that we're not gonna be able to get to this right now, but we'll be able to work with it later and Again when you're dealing with your regulars or core contributors the folks in your project or most productive You've already built a rapport with them. So having some of those difficult conversations about you know Hey, I'm sorry. We can't really do the things that you want us to do Will actually be a somewhat easier process, but it's sticky, right? It's difficult because Sometimes your regulars will feel like they're you know, their status in the community is going to bring more To whatever it is that they're proposing or whatever their desire is that they're putting on the table And it can be a real blow for them to realize that being the awesome rock star of the project is not enough to get you to Make these major con you know major changes to whatever you're we are tearing this out and replacing it with an entirely different issue Q because I say so Yes, I have been involved in that discussion. No, I do not recommend it. It is not fun Well, but at the same time you also want to be able to thank people in your community for being able to come and do things as well And I think in Drupal we do a really good job of that because there's always an opportunity to be able to contribute more We give people opportunities to be able to grow up the Drupal ladder And Again, this is another key thing to realize particularly when you're dealing with someone who may be experiencing burnout it's really important to take the temperature and realize when Maybe an investment has in a particular individual or in a particular customer has gone bad, right? If your regulars are awesome and demand a super extra special chocolate souffle every time they come in even in the middle of a rush Maybe not so bad when you tell them that you're sorry that you can't make that happen this evening because you have Special private party, but you'll be happy to you know Throw in a couple of chocolate chip cookies for free And their response is to stand up on the table and start throwing silverware in open source We call this a flame or That's you know, that's a great time to you know suggest that maybe it would be Effective for us to take a deep breath Relax and chill out and if this becomes a behavior pattern that you didn't see before You've probably got someone who's dealing with burnout It's totally fine to take them aside and say you need a break and you know Come back when you're feeling better well rested and when you are no longer wishing to throw cutlery So last but not least completing the transaction you know and bottom line is at the end of the day we all want to get paid and that depends on Your motivations for being involved in the open source community It may be that you get a great deal of pleasure from volunteering your time You may feel that this software is most useful For whatever reason you want to contribute at the end of the day everybody wants to actually feel like They're getting something out of what they're putting in and they want to feel good about it So again talking about you know making people feel welcome when they get in pulling people in is easy and making them stay as hard and Giving them the tools that they need to be able to expand how they're going to contribute recognizing the great things people do and Just even if it's just a thank you in person. It means a lot and I know it sounds incredibly counter-intuitive But actually one of the best ways to acknowledge contributions is to ask people to do more I know we talked about burnout just a second ago, and I think you and I need to do a talk about balancing burnout Okay, so actually making a specific ask of people is incredible. It shows that you're paying attention to what they're doing You've recognized what their skill set is what they're interested in It shows that you've really taken a fundamental interest in them as a person, right? This is the equivalent of walking up to your regular patron who you know Absolutely adores fine chocolate and saying we have this new chocolate souffle that I think you're really gonna love Why don't you taste it for us and give some feedback to the chef that would be really very much appreciated similarly, hey if you could help out on this event because we saw that you did a great job with this Drupal camp and we could really use your expertise and say public relations or we need to find some food sponsors Making that specific ask of somebody a you're much more likely to get a volunteer than if you just do a wide call saying I need help with Yada yada, it's really easy to ignore I need help with yada yada and you're showing that person that their contribution is valued because you're asking them to do it again and then the Part about volunteer management is sometimes being able to split in the check just taking that large Gigantic undefined task and throwing it at someone is just going to end in pain You want to be able to break it up into little bits and be able to break that up into a place That's something to be able to run with it And if they can't being prepared to even break it down into smaller other bits if that's the volunteer management side of Open source community management. So basically what you don't want to do is have folks turn up saying I'm ready to volunteer and then you hand them something that has you know 100 items on it and say great you figure out who ate what Items really it's just a I have this vague idea about a thing. Oh, yeah, go do it. I don't believe in big ideas about a thing All right, I think this is our favorite slide. Yeah So we've we've talked a little bit about like being able to do Documentation and keeping up with your project and all of it and how do you do this without being overrun? So speaking, you know as a professional community manager, you will never have enough hours in the day I think we all understand completely what that's like and that's okay The key to success here is asking for help before you need it. How many of you have managed restaurants? Okay, awesome So one of the things that you do when you're managing a restaurant is you look around and you kind of look at your traffic Flow and you maintain an awareness of how many folks are in your restaurant How many tables you have open how much staff you have on hand? It's a really great idea when you're at 75% capacity You only have one server and your dinner rush is starting in you know 30 minutes That's when you call somebody up and see if they can take another shift, right? If you wait until you have a two-hour line out the door all of your tables are full and you're running around giving folks You know, I don't know a sip of free beer because you want them to stay and not feel like your restaurant is crappy Yeah, then it's too late the key to avoiding overwhelm when doing community management is to ask for help Before you need it. I think this is called planning. It is called planning It is also called avoiding the small dinosaurs of doom, but they're really cute. I like the dinosaurs so thank you and We welcome any and all questions Yeah, good So quite a while ago. I read an article apparently a hundred years ago they were really into motion studies and and they went and like observe people doing different kinds of jobs and whatnot and the example they gave was like bricklayer and they discovered that Well, they got a hold of a you know a brand new bricklayer just coming out of the job for the first time and learning it The they noticed that what they taught the new bricklayer to do Was not how an expert bricklayer laid bricks. It was like Very wasteful inefficient You know kind of brain damaged and so I guess my question, you know specifically for Drupal is you know Are Is the way that people are brought into the Drupal community? Is it going to be the wasteful brain dead inefficient thing? You know this is a field and drag this over here. I mean I know there are some people out there who You know, that's how they approach computers But you know, I personally found like when the Macintosh first came out. I said wow This is a huge step backwards You've taken this really wonderful machine and made it really hard to compute with because instead of Automating things more it automated them less and so does the Drupal community have like how to generate like real live websites quickly You know for someone who's just getting into it as opposed to Like for instance, there was a seminar just yesterday, which I thought was really cool. It was like using drush to Rapidly like boom deploy Websites, so I think what I'm hearing is that you're you're how many ways like I'm hearing two things one How many ways are there to be able to get into the Drupal community and two which one is the right one? Well, are there I? Don't know I know which one's the right one for me would be that like like here is how to rapidly Deploy a website as opposed to here's how to generate a Pretend toy website that no one really wants to use and then maybe three months later You'll finally learn all of the pieces that you need to do a real website So I think that just in my experience with the Drupal community. I am not a Drupal developer nor do I play one on TV But you know having worked with many many different projects. I was consistently impressed with Drupal because of the many different Vectors of entry that they gave to people so everything from the Drupal dojo to various videos and screencasts and tours to Barn raising events where you literally sit folks down and say to them. This is a field We're gonna build a toy website this weekend So you get your feet wet and I think that the great thing about that is clearly We're all at different places on the learning curve We all have different interests and we all have different learning styles and Accommodating all of those differences just makes the community stronger and allows more people to be useful and contribute And in the past four years, that's to expanded tremendously. There've been many many training programs that have come up In many ways to be able to let people in However, they need to be let in so at this point it's sort of like if you don't find something that's gonna work for you Just you know turn around and do a 180 if you don't like a textbook or something It's come out turn around and go find a video or go to a meetup and sit down with someone and say Hey, I've got this crazy idea for a website and generally they'll be pretty helpful in terms of being able to sit down and say Okay, here's here's where you're going wrong and here's where like this is going to come back to bite you that sort of thing Thank you. Thank you Yeah, interact away microphone, please because we're trying to record. Yes. Thank you And then we're totally all about you Jason. Sorry. Thanks for being patient. Um, you know, I am new to the Drupal community Welcome. Thank you. Um, I have been Being pulled into it for the last couple of years by a friend of mine who's very active but I found that when I came to Drupal.org and Came into the community. It took me a very long time to figure out how to get plugged in so I thought it very interesting in your opening thing about Welcoming people effectively Strangely enough the example that you showed Really wasn't apropos because I didn't know I exactly Felt what he felt I didn't know where to go and I'm still finding out all the time And it's so funny because I think the tools are there But they're not being marketed well enough so that people like me can become brand evangelists And again, this is one of our challenges is being able because we've seen it for so long And I'm like, oh, yeah, I know exactly where the getting started button is I'm actually Yes, just one second and then totally I'm actually very curious as to if your friends been trying to get you into doing Drupal Development for two years like why there wasn't more of a buddy system for you because I find that folks who get pulled into Brand new projects that they don't necessarily have an immediate interest in on their own typically it's done because of friends I mean, that's why we all do all kinds of fun things online like Facebook because of our friends So what in you know where I'm just curious as to why there wasn't more Encouragement slash this is IRC slash feel the love for you Um, it really comes more from who I am personally. I work. Okay. I'm an advertising agency So he said you have got to solve web this way. You're an idiot if you don't got it basically and so the Advertising agencies there are a whole host of us that have no clue, right the functionality of Drupal and once we figure it out It's like, oh my gosh Totally and I think that that's one place where Working with open source communities can be incredibly difficult because if this is a commercial entity They're going to have a wonderful data sheet all about how to use Drupal for someone in an advertising agency, right? Whereas for open source communities, we're like code. It's awesome. It will totally do everything you want It flies as it dices and it will make your life better now Go figure it out on your own and come back to us when you're ready and oh by the way We're over here in IRC. It's nice here. You'll like it. Yeah, and just to follow. Oh, this is really tall Just to follow up on that. I'm so I'm a UX engineer So I know sort of how the back end of most systems work But like Python or Drupal or PHP, you know Like that doesn't matter to me as much as like the drag and drop experience and all those things and it What excites me about Drupal is you guys are going in that direction in a really heavy way But when I look to plug into the community for that thing that it sounds like you guys really need and need help with I can't find where I should plug into that in a non code based way Like I can do the code, but it won't be as good as someone who does that all the time But I can tell you that it shouldn't do that So in some ways, I think groups and like those kind of spaces are going to be good for you Also some of like the the work that the initiatives is doing and it's just going and looking and paying attention The way that I find that stuff is honestly through core and looking at like, you know What's going on where yeah, and I think from dealing with a lot of different CMS and just even like pylons And those kind of communities it really really sucks for everybody else like us you X people We don't know where to plug into any of them So if Drupal can do a better job at that just overall It would be great because then we'll know where to go because we don't necessarily Like we show up at these things when it's too late, you know, sometimes so yes So two things one just in general for folks who are not sure where to get plugged in who want to help Drupal If you use IRC is everyone familiar with IRC or am I using an acronym without expanding it and being rude? I'm going to take that as you know what IRC is pound Drupal dash contribute That's where you can go and hang out and I agree. That's actually not particularly well exposed on the site so that's probably something worth pointing out to folks and Also in terms of you know, where do you plug in and how do you get started? A lot of folks are really new to the Drupal community if you've looked at the statistics that the how much Drupal con is grown Over the years trying to figure out how to radiate that message to all the new folks who come into the community is hard Particularly when you have a core group of very experienced people for whom it is completely obvious that you're going to drop into Drupal dash Contribute on free note. I mean why don't you that's where I am every day? I auto join when I sign on right? So, you know being willing to give those consistent reminders about Where it's difficult to find that point of entry is so useful because it allows those of us who've got that kind of experience and make a bunch of assumptions and Have forgotten all of the stuff that is really important to you because we just kind of do it intuitively That's incredibly valuable and thank you for the feedback Go ahead All right, and just to add to that too I think you know for people that have been in the community for a while taking a step back every now and then is very Beneficial because you're drinking the Kool-Aid you've been doing it for so long You forget what it's like to be a new person coming in and so that might be another thing to add So I've got two questions first. Can you talk about the maybe the hierarchy of community management? So with such a large community like this The particular example I'm thinking of is on the groups that ditto You have got people that own different topics and different different Drupal user groups And so you've got people that do the community management part, but then you've got everyone doing this kind of individual you know Does that make sense like the can you talk about the hierarchy? I mean so The the specific example is that sometimes at least in Drupal the groups that Drupal.org area You have people that are leaders of certain areas. They have signed up to be people that will keep this particular area clean It's not always true. You can sometimes wander into you know groups that have been abandoned to spam some time ago And that's like it is a rough hierarchy But the way that that's generally worked is people that have been willing to take that particular topic on So it's not so much a hierarchy as much as a stepping up to the plate Archey Not hierarchy, but leadership, right? Future presentation so not stepping up. So my second question is kind of more of a general community management Peace, but what are the tools that people can use to effectively manage communities? And so in my mind I'm thinking at the stage what I do for Robo source comm is I need like a CRM system to keep track of all the Different people that I'm connected with and to figure out hey I emailed so-and-so last week and he just had a kid so I gotta remind you know I got it. I'm almost like a sales guy right But for the community and I'm doing it for the community. So what are the tools that you guys have seen that are great or that? Maybe need to be built. I'm gonna be completely useless to you because I have this unbelievable Capacity to memorize random pieces of data about human beings like the first year I did summer of code I memorized everyone's email address and their name because of that and then I met random people three years later and Resided their email address to them by rote and they immediately were like wow you are awesome, and I thought I've got you snowed So I don't think I can give you a really good recommendation for a tool there But maybe one of the things that I've seen work really well, and this is coming from meta filter a while ago Yeah, exactly like old-school community and One of the things that they use to be able to keep things clean And this may or may not help is just being able to look at like something that was like a year old That was suddenly getting a bunch of comments that they had like a particular flag for that So they go and watch for like that spam kind of thing and similarly they built other dashboards Inside to be able to look at like, you know a new user that's just posted like eight things He might be a spammer those sort of like you know the The nitty-gritty tools to be able to track what it is that you need to be able to manage in your community Helps you get out of the way to be able to remember those important things like see the That guy that guy that I needed and I really need him if you have the simple tools you can work on the harder stuff and one of the other things that I would just suggest is Contacts database put tags in it and another important thing about being a community manager is you're gonna be a person Who's going out making a lot of requests for people to do things? And part of being that good community manager is remembering that you know Somebody in your community really loves, you know vegan cupcakes And when you happen to accidentally run across a vegan cupcake recipe on the internet send it to him just say I was thinking of you And that creates value in your community It's a creates a tremendous value and you can either do that with tags in your brain or tags in your contacts do base Go ahead I'm the community manager at node one, which is a company. I think some people in the room may have heard of before I don't know But I'm new to the job and I just heard I also have been in the Scandinavian community for a while Danish and Swedish Communities a tool we use we find really interesting. Sorry. It's a plug But one tool that has been really useful to us is podium and I say that because it's it's a long time ago in its first life It was built partially on Drupal So we try to focus on open-source tools for things like that and the podium guys are really easy to to call up and say look We need this functionality specific to Drupal. Can you develop something and they usually do awesome? And it's a free tool One other comment I wanted to make was when we're talking about getting communities involved Two things that we've done in the Danish community to try to pull people in And have worked really well are we have Companies who work consulting companies or Drupal shops who sell services in the community hold Drupal intro nights Where they they put their their coders up at a panel or at a table and they serve pizza And then they send out notes to the local technical schools or whatever people to come and it breaks down the barrier So that people aren't concerned about oh these guys are way too technical I can't ask any questions. They're gonna think I'm dumb because I'm a noob So we take that completely away put the guys down at the table at the tables and then we have more I Can't think of the word people who are more easy to approach Facilitating the noobs asking questions and the nerds answering the questions. So it works out really well. Yeah, no That's perfect. There's something we just started in Portland about a gosh a year or two ago We got tired of doing like the straightforward just like you know talking heads meet up and that sort of thing So we now have something that we call Brupal and Brupal is the last Tuesday of every month where we all just pick up our laptops and go work from The lucky lab group hub and it's beer and pizza and us generally like you know granting around a table at each other Yeah, we have that in Danish. We call it droop. It because it is the word for beer. So it's yeah, yeah, exactly Thank you. That's awesome. Thanks Go ahead This could be incredibly off-topic, but do you have anything to say about the code sprints going on tomorrow? Have you had personally? They're awesome. You should go Will you be tasks and activities for all skill levels? Okay, go go go have fun very approachable people Yes, there will be rock stars in the room. They're nice. Don't be intimidated and while you're being intimidated. That's okay Remember people will always give you hugs in the Drupal community. That's why I come to these conferences I came in a little late So I hope this wasn't already addressed in your presentation, but how do you deal with someone? that Let's say they claim to be a Drupal developer and then in the end they come to these help sessions that you offer and all They're doing is they're saying hey, can you do this for me? Can you do this for me? Can you do this for me? And they constantly come back and they become and They represent a different group and they come to rely on that as a resource So they're the person that's doing the work, but they're not how do you deal with that? So in some ways, they're asking for free consulting. Aren't they? Yeah, essentially say my hourly rate is and then you say Some that you would be happy to do whatever it is that they want you to do for that rate Sometimes that's a very large number and sometimes it's very small depending on what the ask is but being able to set that boundary around Yes, I want to be able to help you do things But if you're going to come and ask me to do it There needs to be some exchange involved and I'm going to make that exchange money or something I tend to go through sort of the three tiered step process, right? So anyone who comes in and asks a question I am more than happy to provide them the answer a link to the documentation and encouragement The second time you come along and it's it's something that you could have found yourself Then I say here's the link. Here's the answer the link to the documentation These are the search terms I use to answer your question As you'll you know, they're actually you could have found this just by using the words that you Use to propose this question to me the third time I respond with that's documented in this part of the wiki Have a blast and let me know after reading that if you still have problems If they come back to you with questions that show they've read the documentation If you're a patient soul, maybe worth investing more time If they come back and show they clearly have not read the documentation That's a perfectly appropriate time to say I completely understand that, you know You didn't have the time to invest in reading this resource. I don't have the time to invest in helping you with this problem at this time See two answers here Hello You're arian something and I follow you on twitter. Hi Yes, I know her I don't know her Okay, um, I can hear you anyways. Okay. I just uh, I wanted to maybe try and help answer Some of the people's questions about uh contributing. All right. I was one of the documentation leads until a few months ago um, and As far as approaching sort of leadership types on like groups or rsc or in person One of the things that is the most helpful is if you have already figured out something you want to learn about or an area of expertise So if you're interested in ux or you're interested in Image galleries or anything It's really great if you can bring that topic To somebody who works in an area like that Because it really helps them direct you even if you go as far as to like dig in their issue queue and say Hey Maybe I can help with this issue like it doesn't have to be that you're a developer But if you want to review ux for a certain piece of functionality Or you want to write documentation for a certain module that really will like narrow down who to approach and help you get um You know set on a real purpose Once you talk to someone like that really helps people who are in leadership positions Who don't have a lot of time and you know can't spend half an hour hunting through to find something for you to work on If you bring something like to that that to them and also for I guess ux and people who want to like help other people on board into working in the community Lisa rex has been doing a lot of work Reviewing drupal.org and some of the high level pages on it like things like the getting getting involved guide and things like that And she's doing a lot of work trying to make it easier for people to figure out where to go and what information they need So if you want to help with her ux studies or improving that stuff find lisa rex Thanks, thank you Go ahead last question. Sorry guys last question last question. Yes. Okay. Hey, my name is mike stewart I help organize stuff in la for years um Just a couple questions comments. Um, I found of That the whole concept of community management Has been somewhat divisive in la And the the concept of term and hierarchy somebody else asked about hierarchy One of the things that we've done Kind of organically is is really pushed for the the organizers in la la is geographically huge Every we have one to two meetups a week Um, so there's there's tons of activity there But I found a lot of what was in your session. I came in a little bit late So maybe I missed some key stuff, but I want one of my main questions is I found a lot of what you guys were talking about a little bit confusing just I the way I organize stuff is I tend to Try to set a stage and let the community run Um as as much as possible very much like a camp. We try to be very organic and just You know as few organizers because when you anybody who's done it realizes There's only a few key people that ever step up and do tons of people will raise their hand to volunteer You know one or two will do and so blah blah blah question, um Where's this conversation going to continue so I don't um, how did it If we've got more input more things to talk about um, so We will be wandering around the halls for the rest of this conference. Um Our slides will be up, but I'm more than happy to talk to folks about community management all the live long day And I'm at L. Hawthorne on twitter. There is no e on the end of Hawthorne I am like the tree not like the author at L. Hawthorne Do you have a speech about your twitter handle that makes it easy to remember? No, really? I'm fine. I'm a little mizami. Yeah There's also a community group on gdo Which used to be more targeted towards people building community sites But I've also seen a lot of posts going up lately about like community management type stuff So I'm sure it would be an acceptable topic to follow up on there I'm sorry to answer the question about like, you know, what we were thinking about We were focusing more around like online community management less of the individual meetup organizing things So that may have been where that that You know fella and one other thing that I would suggest in terms of you know Where this conversation continues every year in portland, or again, not that we're obsessed with portland or anything The community leadership summit takes place the weekend before the o'reilly open source convention It's two days. It's free of charge to attend. It's structured as an conference So there are a wide variety of community leaders coming and presenting a wide variety of perspectives and Problems that they need input on so if this is something that you're really passionate about highly recommend check out Community leadership summit and I believe you can already buy tickets and by buy tickets. I mean register. Yeah, we're just reaching up now Thank you all very much. Thank you. We appreciate you coming