With my talk I’d like to explain what I learned building a community from scratch to around 1,5k users: how to handle open discussions, make the right choices, nurture ambassadors, be welcoming, inclusive and supportive. Ready-to-use, concrete advice on what works and what doesn’t.

1. Come rendere il proprio prodotto
una bomba! creandogli una community
attorno
Alessio Fattorini
MILAN 25-26 NOVEMBER 2016

2. John Vincent
Atanasoff

3. The Atanasoff-Berry Computer

7. Shockley - Bardeen - Brattain

8. Thompson e Ritchie

9. “
To go fast, go alone
To go far, go together
- African Proverb

10. Hello!
Alessio Fattorini
community.nethserver.org

11. Linux Sysadmin
Support Specialist and Project Manager at
Nethesis
Prosecco evangelist
NethServer Community Manager
ale_fattorini
Who

12. Go Far
Community is the key to go far

13. Why?

15. The best way to have a good
idea is to have a lot of ideas
Dr. Linus Pauling - American chemist

16. Innovation

17. Innovation
★ Diversity

18. Innovation
★ Diversity
★ No matter who you are, most of the
smartest people work for someone else
(Joy’s Law)

19. Innovation
★ Diversity
★ No matter who you are, most of the
smartest people work for someone else
(Joy’s Law)
★ 90 % of all community feedback is crap
○ this means 10% is gold! (J. Atwood)

20. Ivory Tower Development

21. Ivory Tower Development
★ It’s dangerous to create an evironment
where developers have no idea who
the users are

22. Ivory Tower Development
★ It’s dangerous to create an evironment
where developers have no idea who
the users are
★ Developers assume everyone else is a
developer

23. Ivory Tower Development
★ It’s dangerous to create an evironment
where developers have no idea who
the users are
★ Developers assume everyone else is a
developer
★ You’re not your users!

24. From the outside

25. NethServer is an operating
system for Linux
enthusiasts, designed for
small offices and medium
enterprise

26. NethServer is an operating
system for Linux
enthusiasts, designed for
small offices and medium
enterprise

27. NethServer is an operating
system for Linux
enthusiasts, designed for
small offices and medium
enterprise

28. What’s your
audience?

30. Comparisons

31. “
“Given enough eyeballs, all
bugs are swallow ”
- Eric S. Raymond ”

32. Testing and Bugs

33. Content

34. Spread the word

35. Support

36. Development

37. Translations

38. Loyalty

39. Loyalty
★ It’s much harder to leave a group
of people you’re connected to
than a faceless product

40. Loyalty
★ It’s much harder to leave a group
of people you’re connected to
than a faceless product
★ In community you’re building
connections with people which is
way more powerful than features

41. How to make your
product a habit?

42. Habit
★ There are at least two ways to build a
habit around an infrequently used
product: content and community (Nir
Eyal)

43. How to build a
community?
In a nutshell

44. If you build it
they won’t come

45. But my project is a great
idea and my code is solid!

47. Why?

48. Code is not the challenge
of a product-based
community, people are.
Let’s put them first

49. Keep your
values always in
check

51. Linus Torvalds
You need to have the people-people, the
communicators, the warm and friendly
people who really want to hug you and get
you into the community, but that’s not
everybody and that’s not me. I care just
about the technology.

52. You need a CMGR

53. You don’t launch a
community
Start small and grow organically

54. Create a founders group

55. You’ll need to manufacture the
first interactions
Create actvity

56. Be Welcoming

57. Be Welcoming
★ First experience is critical
★ Feel acknowledged
★ Know what to do first
★ First post prompt response

59. Be inclusive

60. Be inclusive
It doesn’t matter how fun and
amazing your project is. If people
don’t feel safe they won’t
contribute

61. Be inclusive
★ Create a space of emotional safety
★ Be humble - don’t patronize
★ Your opinions counts
★ Don’t take yourself too serious

63. Thank you Toolset

68. Be supportive

69. Be supportive
★ They join community to get help not to
give it
★ Social Debt Culture between members
★ Offer opportunities to members to give
help in return

70. An answer for everyone
★ Don’t let everyone is talking but no one
is listening and responding
★ Train your community to answer
Outcomes
Inclined
to participate
Leading
by example

71. Be ready to discuss

72. My opinion counts
The best way to make people feel you’re
listening to them is to actually listen to them

74. Listen to your
community

75. Listen to your
community
But don’t let them tell you
what to do
- J. Atwood

76. Half baked ideas

77. Half baked ideas
★ Open discussion
★ Don’t approach with a blank state
★ Be aware of bikeshedding
★ Make your questions specific and
provide half the answer yourself
★ Always a trade off

78. Be Transparent

79. Be transparent
★ Work out loud!
★ Open roadmap and open discussions
★ No changelog! Release
Announcement
★ Show what kind of contributions your
looking for and how much they matter

80. Be transparent
Some of these might seem obvious but
plese keep in mind:
THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU!

81. Autonomy

83. Get the word out
★ Go where your future contributors are
★ Your project is much more than your
code
★ You know everything about what you
have made. Nobody else does
★ Blogs, reviews, podcasts, press relations

84. Rituals

85. Events

86. Community is much more
than belonging to something

87. Community is much more
than belonging to something
It’s about doing something
together that makes
belonging matter
- B.Solis

89. Thanks!
Any questions?
You can find me at @ale_fattorini