Originally published in Open Source Business Resource January 2010

“…success comes entirely from people and the system within which they work. Results are not the point. Developing the people and the system so that together they are capable of achieving successful results is the point.”

Leading Lean Software Development

Recently, that quote stirred some controversy among my peers. The part about “results are not the point” was hard for some people to understand and come to grips with. Aren’t results always the point? Well, as with most things, “It depends”. The people and community that evolve around an open source software project will ultimately determine its success. Even if the core team launches the project with spectacular productivity and results, this phase of evolution will be fleeting if the necessary processes and community to make the project a long lasting success are not put into place.

This article presents some of the actions open source community leaders can take to ensure not only results, but a system that encourages productivity and longevity.

The Law of Attraction

One of the fundamental principles of nature is that objects tend to attract other like objects. The term homophily refers to the tendency of individuals to associate and bond with others of a similar bent. This same principle of attraction is what pulls communities together and keeps them together. People are attracted to others that have similar interests or problems to overcome. It is that commonality that creates the link, the attraction, that holds communities together.

Unfortunately, many projects and businesses forget this basic principle. They instead believe that communities form around products, brands or buzzwords. They forget that people want to belong to groups that they share some interest with. Providing a shared interest doesn’t necessarily translate into building a vibrant, action oriented community. In order for a community organizer to stimulate results in a community, the following ingredients are needed:

• a mission that will attract others that are passionate because …

• passionate users create excitement for a cause and …

• excitement elicits action and results from the community

The goal is not simply to build software but to attract users that share a passion for a particular subject. It is this belief in the cause that will ultimately determine whether or not a community is successful.

Leadership

Leaders are people who see the world from a different and new perspective. Leaders dream of a future that is different from today. A leader’s vision of tomorrow is inspiring and solves real problems for real people. But leadership goes beyond this by introducing others to a future that they can embrace as their own. The ability to make the vision their own is what draws people to an open source project and moves them to action.

How does a leader craft a message that resonates with the community? Listening is the key that unlocks not only the problems of the users but also their perspective. Leaders must understand where the pain points are and what motivates users. A leader’s goal is to provide just enough of a blueprint for tomorrow so that users are able to finish crafting the story for themselves. This gives them ownership and enthusiasm to solve the problem.

This quote from the French writer and aviator, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, is especially important for community managers as it relates to creating a vision of the future that people believe in and want to become a part of: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

The other aspect of leadership that is often overlooked is the art of coalition building. As the message begins to resonate within a community and adapts to each user’s needs, leaders need to manage the alternate messages that form within the community. Leaders have to continually revise the vision to include any new or divisive stories that develop. New leaders will emerge within the community that could have agendas that differ significantly from the original vision. These leaders may eventually harm the community if their ideas are not embraced early on and elements of their story are incorporated. Embracing and incorporating input builds a stronger community and additional leaders to help within the project. The community will be stronger with them than without them.

In Community We Trust

Trust influences nearly every interaction we have during any given day. Every communication, every action, every conversation is shaped in some way by the trust and reputation inferred on the interacting party. Trust is the currency that communities, both online and offline, trade in. Without trust, lasting relationships can not be built or maintained. Part of a community leader’s job is to build reputation and trust for the people associated with a community.

Trust is not something you can ask for as it is earned through actions and competence. It defines relationships between people, governments, communities, and businesses. The text book definition of trust is “…reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or entity”. You can rely on someone or something when you have a history of past experiences by which you can infer future experiences. Without these past experiences, people have no way to place you within their trust metric. They resort to lumping you in with “the rest” or basing their trust on any reputation you may have.

As a community leader, you must build trust in you and your project. People trust people who get things done. If you say you’re going to do something and never quite get around to it, your reputation will suffer and hence the community’s trust in you. Remember, actions always speak louder than words.

Any Fool Can Criticize

Benjamin Franklin once said that “Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain, and most fools do”. One of the things that keeps people from getting involved in open communities is a fear of criticism. Criticism that they’ll ask the wrong questions and criticism that they’ll do something wrong. There are probably dozens of reasons people are afraid to participate and they almost always relate to being afraid of something. It is a leader’s job to see that the community is a hospitable place for new people to participate.

Many project veterans may not have the patience to allow foolish questions to pepper the project’s mailing lists or forums. They think that everyone should put in the same due diligence they did to understand the project and its code. But, if you want the community to grow, you will need to set the example of always having a cool temperament, even with newcomers who may not have done their homework before asking a question. This is not to suggest that you coddle newcomers, but that you need to ensure that responses to questions are civil.

Recognition

Mary Kay noted that “There are two things that people want more than money and sex…recognition and praise”. Especially early on, you’ll need to work hard to ensure that every little contribution to the project is warmly welcomed. This may mean that you have to work with contributors to rewrite a patch or help them fill out a bug report. The name of the game is getting people to open up and get involved. This typically involves coaxing and lots of encouragement.

Don’t be afraid to recognize new participants and draw attention to their accomplishments. If you are constantly praising your community users and helping them feel good about the work they are doing, you will find that members have a greater sense of responsibility towards your community efforts. Greater responsibility equals more action which results in a productive community. Communities run on recognition. This doesn’t mean that you need a user rating system or a User of the Month classification. You simply need to express honest gratitude publicly for what community members are doing. Try it and you’ll notice a remarkable difference in how the community starts behaving.

Simplify, Simplify

Henry David Thoreau once said, “Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify”. He was expressing a concern with the complexity of life while encouraging people to strip away the unnecessary and to focus on the important. Communities sometimes forget that they have to present themselves in pure and simple terms in order to grow. The message must be simple. The ability to communicate should be simple. The tools must be simple. This is not because people can’t understand complexity, it is because they don’t have the time to. In order to grow a community, concentrate on the most important elements that have an impact. Simplify as many things as possible to get to what truly makes your community unique and beneficial.

An example of where projects sometimes fail in this area is by creating too many options for member communication. Don’t implement every communication technology you can find as that will only make it harder for your members to find and participate in conversations. Communication tools should help your members to communicate, not distract them with choices. You should ask a single question when analyzing your community’s tool choices: “Will this technology facilitate human interactions?”. Always remember that communities are about people, not technology, and that simpler communication strategies are usually better.

Blog, Baby, Blog

With the move to social networking sites like Facebook.com and Twitter.com, the buzz around maintaining a blog has diminished. However, blogging is still one of the easiest and best ways to reach an audience with a message. Twitter and Facebook are important tools to help connect your project with a larger audience, but blogging is still the best way to create thought leadership around a project’s mission and vision of the future. When blogging, show your passion for your subject.

Blogging about what you are doing is only the first step as you still have to attract people to the blog. Fortunately, blogs rank high in Google’s PageRank algorithm. The key with Google is not to go after the first page of results for a generic term like “collaboration” or even “collaboration software”, but to find a search term that still gets a decent amount of traction. In the case of collaboration software, it is far easier to reach the first page of Google results for “collaboration community of practice” or “collaboration success” than for just “collaboration”. When you title your blog, use the search terms you want to be found under, such as “Creating Communities of Practice Through Collaboration”.

Don’t just focus your outbound marketing on Google. Start investing in Twitter and Facebook to grow an audience for your message. These tools may not be the best for articulating your project’s value proposition and mission, but they are great for helping you find pockets of users who share your passion. Make sure that you are following and joining groups that have users who are attracted to the same problems and passions as your project and make sure you let these groups know when you’ve posted something on your blog. The key to using social networks is that you have to add value to your network by helping them solve their problems without becoming a marketing drone for your project.

Work With Other Projects

Being an active and productive citizen of other projects is a great way to introduce users to your project or solution. If you have a reputation for helping others and contributing to projects, people will be happy to lend a hand when you need it. You may even already have some followers if you are actively participating in other communities. I recently heard the founders of GitHub.com talk about their startup experiences at the Open Source Bridge conference. They specifically mentioned their involvement with the Ruby on Rails community as one of the reasons GitHub had a successful beginning. If that’s not a testament to playing well in the sandbox, nothing is.

Wrap Up

Building a community of passionate users is no small task. If you manage to do it, you will have worked harder than you ever have in your life because community building is a process that never stops. That is why it is so important to tap into a passion–not only the passion of a large set of users, but also your passion. The work is long and hard and often doesn’t seem fruitful, but if you stick with it and let your passion for the project and the problem you are solving shine through, you’ll do just fine.

The same holds true for communities, especially now with so many companies trying to engage with their customers.  Just a couple of years ago communities were never discussed… ever (unless you were talking about open source).  Now I’ll wager a bet that nearly ever marketing meeting has some component of community discussed, dissected, and regurgitated (is that what a Purple Cow would do?) on a daily basis.  Community has gone from the unknown servant to the Belle of the Ball, a true Cinderella story , in only a few short years.  But are companies really distinguishing themselves with their community efforts?  Are they creating Purple Communities or just another Facebook Fan page?

Purple Communities are communities that embrace their customers and make them part of the decision making process for their company and brand.  Imagine how much more valuable your company’s offerings would be if product management, sales, marketing, engineering, and support where all interacting with your company’s users on a daily basis in an ongoing dialog.  Customers would be more passionate, products would be better designed, and user’s needs would be more adequately addressed.

The benefits of embracing community and pushing it into all parts of your organization are many, but to do it effectively requires a good deal of work.  There is no Silver Community Bullet.  I recently posted some community building tips that describe at a high level what you should be focused on when designing your community strategy, but in this post I hope to give some actionable advice for creating a truly Purple Community.

What’s Your Community’s Niceness Factor?

I wish there was a way to measure and publish a Niceness Factor for communities.  You wouldn’t have to wonder if your community was helpful and friendly.  Unfortunately there is no such thing so you need to constantly look for ways to be more welcoming and friendly.  Some communities  (you know who you are) can be downright inhospitable places for newcomers.  Usually these communities are filled with members who have vast amounts of knowledge… and know it.  They want newcomers to learn the ropes and come up through the ranks “the old fashioned” way.  There is little time for newcomers because the work at hand is just too important.  They can’t possibility take time out of their busy day to help get people off to a running start. If you want your community to grow you’ll need to lighten up on the harshness and sprinkle some friendliness in your interactions.  You know the old saying “you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”.

Sure I’ll Check it Out

Another thing that many well intentioned communities do is establish a TODO list for easy to perform tasks that community newcomers can perform.  Some even have veterans that sign up as mentors for certain tasks in order to help newcomers come up to speed.  I applaud communities who go to the trouble of establishing a process that identifies tasks like this, but unfortunately TODO lists are just too daunting   in most cases.  The typical exchange goes something like this….

newcomer:	“Hey, I love your community (product, project, etc) and would like to help out in some way.  What kinds of things do you need work done on?”.
community veteran:	“Welcome, glad you like our community (product, project, etc.).  We’ve created a TODO list that has lots of easy tasks for beginners.  Go check it out.”
newcomer:	“Okay, thanks.  I will”

The newcomer then browses the list but because they’re not familiar with the project or community they’ll often become confused and lose interest.  This is the worst kind of loss, the one that got away, however unlike fishing stories you don’t want to tell many of these.

The fix for these kinds of misses is simple.  Instead of pointing a user to a long list of tasks, you engage with the user and discover what it is they like and dislike.  What are they good at?  And above all, what do they want to do?  Armed with this info you can help get the user started on the RIGHT task that gets them involved.

The simple act of opening a dialog with someone helps tremendously with whether or not you actually get them involved.  When you’ve taken the time to really discuss with someone how they can help and give them personal attention you’re helping create a sense of responsibility for accomplishing a task.

Never a Dull Thread (aka. how to get rid of the toe dippers?)

One of the easiest ways to NOT be “Purple” and to rid yourself of all those pesky Community Lurkers, is to let their questions go unanswered (BTW, I hope that came across as a joke:).  Most community members are lurkers.  They watch and listen without participating in any of your community conversations.  This is usually because of fear of criticism (see the Inhospitable Place above).  Fear of criticism drives much of your community’s behavior, especially for newcomers.

People tend to lurk and not get involved because they’re afraid of criticism. Criticism that they’ve asked the wrong question. Criticism that their question sounds stupid.  There are probably dozens of reasons people are afraid to participate and they almost all relate to being afraid of something.

When they finally do get up the nerve to ask a question in your forum and they are either A) abused in some way for not “getting it” or B) the question goes unanswered, you have just made sure that your lurker will always be just that, a lurker.  If its your job to support a community, make sure that there is never a thread that goes unanswered.  Get in there and open a dialog.  If you don’t know the answer, find someone who does and pull them into the discussion.  Whatever you do make sure someone is answering your lurker’s questions in a friendly manner.

Recognize and promote

I’ve talked about the need to recognize and promote users before but this one can really make a difference in creating a Purple Community.  This is the opposite to the fear of criticism your newcomers have.  If you are constantly praising your community users and helping them feel good about the work they are doing you’ll find your members will have a greater sense of responsibility towards your community efforts.  Great responsibility = Greater action = More productive community.  If gas is the stuff cars run on, recognition is the stuff that communities run on.

This doesn’t mean you need a user rating system or a User of the Month classification.  Don’t get me wrong, these are great and valuable systems, you just don’t NEED them in order to give recognition.  You simply need to express your honest gratitude publicly for what your community members are doing.  Try it and see.  You’ll notice a remarkable difference in how your community starts behaving.

The Purple Community

I don’t know if you noticed the trend while reading this article but it’s pretty simple… ENGAGE.  If you want to build a community that stands out and gets users excited, it all starts with conversation.  Having a conversation (aka. LISTEN FIRST then talk) with your users is the single most effective way to build a Purple Community.

Related Posts

1.  Leadership and Vision

I recently wrote a post about leadership and its significance to open source projects.  Leadership may be the single most important factor in your community’s success simply due to the fact that people want to belong and believe in something.  In essence people want to follow an inspiring message.  Some want to lead, but most want to be led towards a vision of the future that they believe in.  Well functioning communities lead their members towards an objective that solves real problems and is well defined.  Open source projects need well defined objectives like “enabling productive meetings” or “facilitating project communication”.  These are well defined goals that developers AND users can understand.  There is a poignant quote I recently read from Moving Mountains by Henry Boettinger that sums this up …

“confusion of objectives is the most frequent cause of failure to convince others of a good idea.” –Henry Boettinger

Remember this simple set of rules when defining your community …

• Solving important well defined problems leads to passionate users
• Passion users create excitement for your movement
• Excitement elicits action from your community

2.  Trusted Conversations

If leadership is the most important component of success, trusted conversations is a strong second.  If you think about what communities are and what forms their nucleus, it’s conversation.  The reasons are simple.  The interaction between any two individuals is a conversation, an exchange of information, values, and beliefs.  Get lots of individuals together and there must be conversations at their boundaries in order for them to communicate and share information.

The other necessary component in these conversations is trust.  Communication must be authentic or else trust cannot form between parties.  For instance, if your community’s leaders always talk but rarely listen and are not particularly interested in community concerns, you’ll quickly lose the trust of your users.  Users will notice that your communication is not a conversation but a one-way flow of messages and that their needs are not being considered.  Communication in your community must flow both ways with the leadership of the project careful to listen to criticism and advice from the community and allow the community to help shape project decisions.  Once you begin to communicate with your community in a truly open fashion you’ll begin to see the benefit of an open and honest dialogue and feel it’s impact on your product’s roadmap and community’s growth.

3.  Infrastructure

Just like physical communities need infrastructure to thrive so to does virtual communities.  Physical communities have the town hall, soccer fields, sidewalks, and porches that allow neighbors to meet and converse.  Virtual communities rely primarily on technology to help their members communicate.  Ensuring that the communication infrastructure for your community provides necessary and appropriate tools for communication is critical to its growth.

Make sure you’ve developed an infrastructure strategy that “makes sense”.  Don’t implement every communication technology you can find, that will only make it harder for your members to find and participate in conversations.  Communication tools should help your members to communicate not distract them with choices.  You should ask a single question when analyzing your community’s tool choices…  Will this technology facilitate human interactions?  Always remember communities are about people not technology.

While we’re on the subject of human interactions let’s not forget that your community needs more than just electronic interactions.   If you’re managing a community make sure you don’t overlook the necessity of meeting someone in the real world.  Meeting someone face-to-face creates a different type of relationship with that person, a more human one.  Be sure your humanizing your community.

4. Simplicity

“Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler” –Albert Einstein

If leadership is the most important factor in your project’s success, simplicity may be the hardest to achieve.  As odd as that sounds it’s true.  Henry David Thoreau once said, “Our life is frittered away by detail. simplify, simplify”.  He wasn’t talking about online communities but he was expressing a concern with the complexity of modern life (at the time) and encouraging people to strip away the unnecessary and to focus on the important.  His concern is one I share.  Communities sometimes forget that they have to present themselves in pure and simple terms in order to grow.  The message must be simple.  The ability to communicate should be simple.  The tools must be simple.  This is not because humans can’t grok (understand) complexity.  It’s that they don’t have time to.  In order to grow your community you must concentrate on the most important elements that have an impact.  This means simplifying as many things as possible to get to what truly makes your community unique and beneficial.

Related Posts

Making Corporate FOSS Successful
What They Don’t Teach Community Managers
What Did the Open Source Product Manager Say to the Traditional Product Manager
How to Attract and Keep Users

Some folks in the corporate world have a distorted view of how open source projects work. A lot of the corporate types hear about open source and think that sprinkling magic “open source” dust on their product will suddenly make it successful. They’ll have contributors pile on and massive marketshare will follow. Soon they’ll have a “best of breed” product and do very little actual work since the community will be writing the software, testing it, providing support, etc. Admittedly, I’m exaggerating to some degree, but only slightly.

Read the entire article @ Linux.com

To get people up from their chairs (metaphorically speaking) and participating in a community requires vision and passion. Leaders are people who see the world from a different and new perspective. They dream of a future that is different from today. Their vision of tomorrow is inspiring and solves real problems for real people. A leader shows the audience all the possibilities that they are missing, but goes beyond that by describing a future that users want to become a part of. Everyone wants to belong to something bigger than themselves and leaders create that vision of “something bigger”. In open source projects this is what draws people to your project and moves them to action.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea”

–Antoine de Saint-Exupery

So how do you craft a message that resonates with your community? You listen. Listening is the key that unlocks not only the problems of your users but also their perspective. You must understand where your user’s pain points are and what motivates them in order to lead them. This is essential. You are trying to craft a vision of the future that includes your users. Their experience and stories must resonate in your message. Your goal is to provide just enough of a blueprint for tomorrow so that your users are able to finish crafting a solution themselves. This gives them ownership in what you’re trying to do and enthusiasm to solve the problem.

If you’ve crafted a direction and message for your project, but still don’t see passionate users drawn into your community, you need to understand what is missing from your message. Ask questions that help you understand what it is your perspective is missing. You’re viewpoint is coming from a place the user doesn’t understand. You’ve either not uncovered a powerful need or your vision is not perceived as helping to transform the user’s reality. You need to discuss what is missing so that you can retell your story in a more meaningful way.

So how do you know you’ve created a compelling story and that your project is actually “leading”? You’ll know because people are excited. They’re participating in meaningful ways. You see your original ideas being changed by your community as they begin to adapt your message to their situation. Once you see these signals you know your story is beginning to resonate in your community. It’s this adoption of your story that will motivate your community and create enthusiastic users.

The other aspect of leadership that is often overlooked is the art of coalition building. As your story begins to resonate with your community and adapt to each user’s needs, you need to manage the alternate messages that form within your community. This means you have to continually revise your vision to include any new or divisive stories that develop. New leaders will emerge within your community that could have agendas that differ significantly from your own. These leaders may eventually harm your community if you haven’t embraced their ideas early on and incorporated elements of their story into your own. However, by embracing them and incorporating their input you will have a stronger community and additional leaders to help within your project. Your community will be stronger with them than without them.

Notice the common themes, conversation and user needs (i.e. pain). Your version of the future must be positioned from the perspective of the user so that they understand how your view of tomorrow solves their problems in a way they understand. Community building is not about managing users so much as it is about leadership and helping users identify a solution to their problems. Make sure your community has developed a strong vision for tomorrow that your members believe in and you’ll be well on your way to building a great community.