Building Community: Lessons from door64.com
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1. Door64.com is a community of over 6,000 technology professionals in Austin and Central Texas that grew through word-of-mouth without any marketing budget. 2. The founder initially failed to build an engaging community on his first attempt in 2006 because he assumed what users wanted without proper research and added too many features too quickly. 3. In subsequent iterations, what worked was establishing a process to build momentum through incremental engagement, communicating the vision face-to-face, generating user-generated content by incentivizing members to post, and using Drupal as a content management system to power the online community features.
Building Community: Lessons from door64.com
- 1. Building Community: Lessons from door64.com Matt Genovese door64.com brainshowerconsulting.com August 15 th , 2009
- 2. What is door64.com? Community of 6000+ technology professionals in Austin & Central Texas Grew virally through word-of-mouth. No marketing budget. Me: Electrical/Computer engineer, hardware/software consultant, lover of Drupal and all things chocolate.
- 3. Start with a problem… Masters program @ University of Texas There must be a better way… Started door64 version 1 in 2006, which not many people know about. … because it sucked.
- 4. What went wrong… Too much assuming, too little research or reflection. Too many website features too soon. Assumed everyone could grasp my vision. “ If you build it, they will come.” Vision was not focused. I built a website, not a community.
- 5. 2007-Present: What worked… Topics 1. Process: Flywheel 2. Communication: Evangelize 3. Content: Me UGC 4. Technology: CMS (Drupal)
- 6. Process: Flywheel Mental model Beginning: slow, much effort to make progress. Expect it. Incremental effort to increase momentum. Momentum eventually self-sustains and attracts new people. Value is the attractor. door64 model: Producers = recruiters Consumers = job hunters Momentum Producers Consumers Members Weeee! Value Value Value Social Momentum: p = mv m = mass of member base v = amount of interaction
- 7. Process: Sustaining momentum Keeping it moving… Event calendar (me) Personal welcomes Weekly newsletter Face to face events Provide value Focused member base For the content poster, information is one-to-many Job givers Job seekers Members Weeee! F2F Events Newsletters Weeee! Happy hours Value Value Value Momentum
- 8. Communication: Evangelize Communicating vision through email was difficult. Face to face when possible Honing the message through conversation “Converts” evangelized for me Welcome emails to all new members Give the vision, features, and what to do next. Personal in every way Newsletters Reminder to return, and item to forward.
- 9. Content: Me UGC Never my intention to supply all content on the site. Beginning: I seeded much of the content. Now: No seeding required. Incentivize members to post ( value ) door64: (events, jobs) + newsletter + twitter feed = value. Happy hours boost online community activity.
- 10. Technology: CMS (Drupal) Many free options available for community infrastructure. door64: Drupal Solid code base and active development Plethora of add-on modules Well thought-out and extensible data model increases usefulness of modules. Drupal-specific developers available. Disadvantage: Learning curve, being left behind in versions.
- 11. Contact Matt Genovese Blog: brainshowerconsulting.com Email: matt@brainshowerconsulting.com