Seasons of Community with Katy Farmer

Matty talks with Katy Farmer, a technical community manager at CircleCI with a background in engineering, a little development and a lot of people, about what it means to be part of a community and what tech asks of the people in one. Matty frames it from the member side: most listeners are probably members of communities, not builders of them. The cold open is Katy on ambassador programs: "I think I work here now, but for free."

Tech Asks a Lot

Katy observes that tech companies make things that make developers' lives easier and then ask the community to build things and show what they can do. It's voluntary, but Katy wonders about it: Katy doesn't follow companies on personal Twitter, so why would someone follow the company's account, and what are they getting? Being part of a community is often "more gives than gets." Katy adds that community is an important part of the business model for many tech companies, recalling one with a big open source arm whose core functionality wouldn't work without community contributions, so the company benefits economically.

Matty mentions Mary Thengvall's rings of community: people who are aware, users who aren't customers, customers, and at the center advocates, which isn't a job title but people who do it on their own and where scale happens. Matty says the community isn't only people who contribute code: people write tutorials, do Twitch streams, help others and tell others, which is hard to measure. Katy calls community a branch of the business, where if it isn't a success it stalls marketing and then sales, and wonders what makes the unpaid work worthwhile.

Is It Volunteer Work?

Matty asks whether other industries have this, using Peloton and CrossFit as examples where networks enthusiasts build add value, but notes you can't go work on Ford's assembly line for 20 minutes. Katy says developers have the same skills the tools require, so they can build the thing the company builds, just for something else. Matty notes that what companies ask of communities is often the same thing people did all day at work, and says when someone isn't paid for it, "that's volunteer work," so call it what it is. Katy says the reward then isn't necessarily for the volunteer, like planting trees along the highway as a kid, and asks whether the reward is knowing you did something nobody else did.

Matty says there isn't one reason, since people participate for different reasons: identity, recognition (Matty is recognition-driven), the satisfaction of solving a problem, or feeling smarter than everyone else. Katy says that makes personas hard to build, and ends up with buckets like swag-driven and recognition-driven. Katy also says a community member still expects to be treated as a customer by a vendor they pay, but wouldn't expect a candy company to care about their opinion on banana flavor. Matty adds that people's personas change by community and time of year, and that the value is in being inclusive of different reasons for participating.

Unpredictable Contributions and Ambassadors

Matty says depending on community contributions is hard because you can't capacity plan or burn down. Matty's open source podcast theme gets spiky attention, with months of nothing followed by seven features in two weeks, and contributors who are active for a couple of months and then leave. Katy says people have seasons of community, and used to write essays on Digimon forums. On ambassador programs, Katy was once a random Hotmail ambassador at college and received money and a sweatshirt, but says programs often come with criteria and pressure, like a second job. There's a tipping point where "I think I work here now, but for free."

Matty says the first few advocates at a company get a lot of pressure, since they're asked for everything, and organizations should encourage people to continue doing what they already did and not make it a KPI, since DevRel teams tracking advocates in a CRM may panic when someone stops being a super fan for a moment. Matty's maxim: "you can't manufacture a moment," so nurture where it's happening. Katy says Docker Captains worked because the skill became valuable on a resume organically, which wasn't repeatable elsewhere. Matty adds that you can make the soil fertile, but what grows might be an artichoke and not the organic avocado you wanted, and tells of a community manager held to Ubuntu's forum activity for a far smaller paid SaaS product.

Measuring the Value of a Community

Matty says the value of a community isn't inherently the number of people in it, so month-over-month growth may eventually stop, and that's probably fine. Matty asks how to observe the value, avoiding a KPI. Katy says after a year you instinctively know how it's doing, by seeing every interaction across Twitter, the forum and Slack. For a community Katy manages, success is people asking lots of questions and getting interaction: "I measure community in curiosity." Katy is on Twitter as TheCaterTot and wants to hear from listeners.