Community, Unifying the Geeks to Create Value - Demi Ben-Ari
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Demi Ben-Ari discusses how they created and grew tech communities to help unify and provide value for geeks. They started with a Facebook group that grew to over 2,000 members, and a Meetup group that grew to over 4,700 members through monthly meetups. Key aspects of their success included hosting talks that addressed both business and technical topics, recording and sharing content online, and meeting community members where they engage through platforms like Facebook and Meetup. Their goal was to create networking opportunities and a platform for knowledge sharing to help address common problems geeks face around isolation and a lack of approachability.
Community, Unifying the Geeks to Create Value - Demi Ben-Ari
- 1. Community, Unifying the Geeks to Create Value Demi Ben-Ari
- 2. About Me Demi Ben-Ari, Co-Founder & VP R&D @ Panorays ! Google Developer Expert ! Co-Founder of Communities: ○ “Big Things” - Big Data, Data Science, DevOps ○ Google Developer Group Cloud ○ Ofek Alumni Association In the Past: ! Sr. Data Engineer - Windward ! Team Leader & Sr. Java Software Engineer, Missile defence and Alert System - “Ofek” – IAF
- 3. About Me - Communities “Big Things” ! Big Data ! Data Science ! DevOps GDG Cloud ! Cloud Technologies ○ Private ○ Public ! Ofek Alumni ○ General Tech Group ○ EntrepreneurshipFocus
- 4. Agenda ! Story Telling ○ Course of action in the past 3+ years ! Insights: “What actually worked” ! Questions that came in mind ! Conclusions
- 5. Community - Definition ● A community is a small or large social unit … who have something in common…Communities often share a sense of place that is situated in a given geographical area… or in virtual space through communication platforms…”community” may also refer to large group affiliations (or macro- level), such as national communities, international communities, and virtual communities. ● https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community
- 6. What is A Tech Community?(IMHO)
- 7. Do you know Geeks? https://www.pinterest.com/pin/236650155391412211/https://www.royalvegascasino.com/blog/geek-gadget-gift-ideas/
- 8. What are their problems? ● Think that what they’re doing is the most important thing ● Busy all the time ● Afraid to approach and ask questions ● “What I’m doing is not interesting enough to talk about” ● Hard to make networking with other developers ● Want fast response, quality one with no noise - if not I’m out
- 9. How we started? ! Facebook Group - Knowledge Sharing ○ Closed Group - Invite Only ○ Most of the posts were share by a really small group of people ! Reason ○ Share technological posts ○ Create a platform for people to communicate instantly ○ Basically - Most of the people we already on Facebook ! After a month we had ~150 people only by Invites ○ Because of the high adoption, opened up to a public group
- 10. Face to Face is always better ● Created a Meetup group ○ First initiative - Gave the a talk myself ○ Found a place that will host the event through friends ● The Plan was: ○ Monthly meetup ○ Each one will have 2 talks ○ Talk’s outline the Works ■ Business Problem ■ A bit about the Tech ■ How we solved the problem with the Tech
- 11. Face to Face is always better
- 12. Creating FOMO? https://itkey.media/fear-of-missing-out-in-social-media/ "a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent"
- 13. Face to Face is always better ● After a year of Meetups (Stats) ○ Facebook Group - ~ 650 people (Around 10-20 really active) ○ Meetup Group - ■ ~ 1500 people ■ 12 Meetups ■ High Demand by companies to give talks and to host
- 14. Face to Face is always better ● After 3 Years ○ Facebook Group - ~ 2000 people (Around 50-60 really active) ○ Meetup Group - ■ ~4700 people ■ ~40-50 Meetups ■ High Demand by companies to give talks and to host
- 15. Face to Face is always better ● One year anniversary meetup
- 16. What is not Face to Face? ● All of the meetups are recorded and uploaded to YouTube.
- 17. Effective Meetup Outline ! 2 Talks per meeting ○ 30-45 minutes each. ! Talk’s schedule and structure ○ Business Problem. ○ A bit about the technology (Really high overview). ○ “How did we solve the problem with the technology”.
- 18. Questions that came in mind ! What language to conduct it in? ! Should it be in a single location? ! Should you take on sponsorship of some company? ! What other events to hold? ○ Hackathons, Workshops, Webinars ! Which Platform to spread the word at?
- 19. Value created ● Answering faster than StackOverFlow (Facebook) ● Monthly Meetups (sometimes even 4 a month) ● People think that something is wrong with me if the recordings are not uploaded a couple of days after ● Networking platform during meetings ● More people approaching than possible to digest ● Community of quality content
- 20. Conclusion ! Be on the Media the Community is at. ! Create a platform for people to feel comfortable to communicate. ! Try recording as much as you can to share the data. ◦ As you know, people are “Busy”. ! The “30% Rule”. ! Keep it as Detached as possible from any Commercial company. ! You basically become a router in the end. ◦ Try leveraging it to help people out! ! Meet your audience where they are and not where you are
- 21. Questions?
- 22. ! LinkedIn ! Twitter: @demibenari ! Blog: http:// progexc.blogspot.com/ ! demi.benari@gmail.com ! “Big Things” Community Meetup, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter ! GDG Cloud