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Launching communities, letting others do the work, and taking all the credit Mario Herger October 14th, 2011

Launching communities, letting others do the work, and taking all the credit

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Mario describes how to run a community and what to expect and what to do

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Page 1: Launching communities, letting others do the work, and taking all the credit

Launching communities, letting others do the work, and taking all the credit Mario Herger October 14th, 2011

Page 2: Launching communities, letting others do the work, and taking all the credit

©  2011 Mario Herger. All rights reserved. 2 www.enterprise-gamification.com

Me 1.0

Founded and have been operating for more than 14 years •  Dancilla (largest folk dancing community worldwide)

Had been •  Expert in the MS Access forums in the 1990s for 6 years •  Moderator in a literary community for 3 years

Developer, DevManager, Architect and worked for years with SAP Community Network both as contributor as well as team member. Launched communities around topics like

•  Composite Application Framework •  Visual Composer •  Business Process Experts •  and others…

Page 3: Launching communities, letting others do the work, and taking all the credit

©  2011 Mario Herger. All rights reserved. 3 www.enterprise-gamification.com

Me 2.0

Starting 2010: Doing Technology Strategy, Developer Evangelism, Innovation Events & Communities Started in 2010 multiple groups on the Employee Network

•  iPhone / iPad group (May 2010, today 900 members, 400+ discussions) •  Gamification @ SAP (Aug. 2010, today 400+ members, 200+ discussions) •  Innovation Steampunk (January 2011, today 360+ members) •  HANA Content developers (since December 2010, today 900+ members)

co-moderate groups like •  Android (since May 2010, today 400+ members)

Total Reach (the movie): ˜2,500 individuals

Page 4: Launching communities, letting others do the work, and taking all the credit

©  2011 Mario Herger. All rights reserved. 4 www.enterprise-gamification.com

Disclaimer!

I published multiple books, including a really funny joke book (honestly!)

I won a standup comedy contest and founded a satirical magazine

With other words: I believe I am somewhat funny – and I am pretty talkative too Whatever works for me and my communities / groups, might not work for you.

Page 5: Launching communities, letting others do the work, and taking all the credit

©  2011 Mario Herger. All rights reserved. 5 www.enterprise-gamification.com

Page 6: Launching communities, letting others do the work, and taking all the credit

©  2011 Mario Herger. All rights reserved. 6 www.enterprise-gamification.com

Page 7: Launching communities, letting others do the work, and taking all the credit

©  2011 Mario Herger. All rights reserved. 7 www.enterprise-gamification.com

Universal truths

It’s not about me, it’s about us. But you are the me, that is driving the us.

As community leader you are the •  Cheerleader in chief •  Sherriff •  Organizer •  Sales rep •  Idiot who does most of the work •  Psychiatrist and emotional garbage can •  Target for attacks from trolls and any form of paranoia

Creating of a “community” is easy, bringing it to live is hard. Most are stillborn.

Know your community.

YOU set the mood and spirit of the community.

Page 8: Launching communities, letting others do the work, and taking all the credit

©  2011 Mario Herger. All rights reserved. 8 www.enterprise-gamification.com

How do you start?

You have this great idea for a community (and hopefully not somebody telling you to create one and you are half-heartedly behind it and in reality you have better things to do and WTF)

•  Search, if such a community / group already exists

•  Find a crispy one-sentence purpose / goal for your group

•  Pitch it to colleagues and listen to their feedback

•  Find a compelling short name

•  Create a charter and keep it “work in progress”

•  Don’t invent your own terminology (yet) – people won’t find you, won’t understand you and create their own communities

•  Don’t waste your time with defining categories and subcommunities – add them over time, if necessary at all (more often than not you don’t need them)

Page 9: Launching communities, letting others do the work, and taking all the credit

©  2011 Mario Herger. All rights reserved. 9 www.enterprise-gamification.com

Who do you want?

Members should be (and/or)

•  Experts / gurus

•  Beginners who like to participate (they will become your most loyal advocates and helpers)

•  Lurkers (they talk about it and will bring you unexpected opportunities)

•  polite, helpful and respectful

•  bring in the right mood and attitude

•  able to structure stuff, correct it, answer it etc.

•  passionate about the topic

•  honestly leading discussions

Page 10: Launching communities, letting others do the work, and taking all the credit

©  2011 Mario Herger. All rights reserved. 10 www.enterprise-gamification.com

Who do you want? The other angle…

Here is a different angle of the crowd you want*) •  The community needs to contain at least a few people capable of innovation.

But not everyone in the community need be. There are plenty of other necessary roles:

•  The trend-spotter, who finds a promising innovation early. •  The evangelist, who passionately makes the case for idea X or person Y. •  The superspreader, who broadcasts innovations to a larger group. •  The skeptic, who keeps the conversation honest. •  General participants, who show up, comment honestly, and learn.

Different people may occupy these various roles at different times, including that of innovator. *) Chris Anderson: Crowd Accelerated Innovation, Wired Magazin, January 2011

Page 11: Launching communities, letting others do the work, and taking all the credit

©  2011 Mario Herger. All rights reserved. 11 www.enterprise-gamification.com

How do you get them?

•  Do good things and talk about it

•  Identify experts and ask them about their opinion or nudge them to contribute (keep your expectations low: only few will contribute)

•  Pay attention to members who show initiative and nurture them

•  Trust people, give them chances, let them grow into the roles and provide constructive feedback

•  Don’t apply unrealistically high standards to all members

•  Join other interesting communities and keep your eyes open

•  Be a good example yourself

Page 12: Launching communities, letting others do the work, and taking all the credit

©  2011 Mario Herger. All rights reserved. 12 www.enterprise-gamification.com

Who do you not want?

Assholes for more on that consult “The No Asshole Rule” from Stanford professor Robert Sutton

Page 13: Launching communities, letting others do the work, and taking all the credit

©  2011 Mario Herger. All rights reserved. 13 www.enterprise-gamification.com

How do I get rid of them?

•  Stay alert and make yourself familiar with dialectics and negative patterns

•  Act fast, warn them privately, don’t argue to much with them, it’s not worth the time

•  Remove them from the community / group, if behavior continues

Why should you do it?

•  Assholes create more assholes

•  The spirit of the community goes down fast, and it looses a significant amount of (constructive) activity

•  For your own sanity: dealing with assholes amounts to 80% of your workload that you should better spend on constructive community work

Page 14: Launching communities, letting others do the work, and taking all the credit

©  2011 Mario Herger. All rights reserved. 14 www.enterprise-gamification.com

What do I do?

•  I organize events like •  presentations, •  brainstorming sessions •  pitches •  virtual and real-life meetings

•  I try to identify the •  pain points •  interests •  newest trends •  stuff that needs my help

•  I send newsletters every 1-2 weeks and highlight •  great shit that members are doing and discussing •  awesome articles and blogs •  mind-blowing ideas that I encounter •  fun poking at me

Page 15: Launching communities, letting others do the work, and taking all the credit

©  2011 Mario Herger. All rights reserved. 15 www.enterprise-gamification.com

Newsletters

Page 16: Launching communities, letting others do the work, and taking all the credit

©  2011 Mario Herger. All rights reserved. 16 www.enterprise-gamification.com

Newsletters

My newsletters •  have their own style and

language •  are not “one-voiced” •  are not politically correct •  have attitude •  are not bloodless •  work with humor •  are not for the faint-of-

heart

Page 17: Launching communities, letting others do the work, and taking all the credit

©  2011 Mario Herger. All rights reserved. 17 www.enterprise-gamification.com

What else do I do? (still more that you do?)

•  I talk to many people individually and •  recognize their work •  ask them for their opinion •  politely kick their ass to engage

•  I cross-promote topics in different groups

•  I connect individuals, e.g. •  Kinect (5 different locations) •  Marketplace for developers and projects

•  I take pain points to higher places, pain points like •  using private mobile devices in the corporate network •  obstacles of developing iOS apps •  the broken Android app development process •  mobile strategy

Page 18: Launching communities, letting others do the work, and taking all the credit

©  2011 Mario Herger. All rights reserved. 18 www.enterprise-gamification.com

What else do I do? (jeez, are you starting to brag?)

•  I engage the members •  with open ended questions •  by soliciting their opinions •  challenging them with “missions”

•  I try not to be an annoyance (at least not all the time)

•  I have fun

Page 19: Launching communities, letting others do the work, and taking all the credit

©  2011 Mario Herger. All rights reserved. 19 www.enterprise-gamification.com

How many years of your life will this cost?

•  When you start, expect 1-2 hours per day to spend on the community for a minimum of 3 months

•  Don’t expect that it will become less work; when it takes off, you’ll be the most popular kid on the block

•  At the beginning you will do most of the work alone

•  Expect to own the community / group for 1-2 years

•  You should make yourself familiar with the topic

•  Be extremely polite and patient with members

•  Members are doing you a favor (yes, in the end they are doing themselves a favor, but that’s not what they perceive)

•  Allow imperfection, that will allow more discussion

Page 20: Launching communities, letting others do the work, and taking all the credit

©  2011 Mario Herger. All rights reserved. 20 www.enterprise-gamification.com

What’s in it for you?

You will

•  have an opportunity to assemble and meet a crowd of interesting people

•  be exposed to a lot of good things and ideas

•  receive invitations to other exciting opportunities (conferences, expert panels, presentations…)

•  be moving from whining and complaining to having an impact and doing great things

•  receive recognition from colleagues

Page 21: Launching communities, letting others do the work, and taking all the credit

©  2011 Mario Herger. All rights reserved. 21 www.enterprise-gamification.com

My advice for you? (beside showing you pictures of pretty steampunk girls)

•  Your personality, character, interests, style etc. make an imprint on the community – use it to your advantage

•  People will feel your passion and whether you have fun – show it

•  You have no formal authority over people; whatever you do has either to catch their interest or make them want to be part of it

•  Inspire them

Page 22: Launching communities, letting others do the work, and taking all the credit

©  2011 Mario Herger. All rights reserved. 22 www.enterprise-gamification.com

How do you know you are on the path to success?

•  When you return after two weeks of vacation, you find in your community / group dozens of new postings, and not questions only or trolls spamming it

•  Your community / group starts looking more like a valuable archive of knowledge and resources instead of a forum of mindless gossip

•  You find other colleagues linking to your community / group when questions about the topic area pop up (and the links are not placed between irony-tags)

•  Unknown colleagues greet you in the cafeteria by name, want your autograph or a baby from you

Page 23: Launching communities, letting others do the work, and taking all the credit

Keep Punking!

Mario Herger Email: [email protected] Twitter: @mherger Web: www.enterprise-gamification.com