Here comes the much-anticipated article!
Firstly, the inspiration for writing this article came after my GDSC On-Boarding Summit. Credits also to: Alfredo Morresi, Community Team Europe at GDG European Summit 2019 Presentation. If you do not know what GDSC stands for then you most likely missed my previous article. Kindly check it out Tech Communities.
Now let's discuss this!!
In my last article, I made an ending quote - "A Tech Community is the Backbone of every Techie". This shows how important Tech Communities are to a Techie and understanding the 7 P's of every Community is very important.
The 7 P's of Community are the following:
- People
- Purpose
- Place
- Participation
- Policy
- Promotion
- Performance
People - Who are your members?
For you to be able to know who your community is for, then you need to deliberately answer the below questions:
Who are the people you are gathering?
Who aren't the people you are gathering?
What are your members' demographics (age, occupation, etc.)?
What level or types of technology are the comfortable with?
What are their personal or professional goals and motivations?
Remember your members represent the community. So understanding keenly who your community is for, is very vital as a Community leader and as a member of a tech community, knowing the members of the community interest in the community you belong to, is essential for your growth in that community.
The importance of the members of a community influences the Purpose of the community and influences the Community's goals.
Purpose - Why does your community exist?
It is important for you to know this: Your Goals are not your Community Goals. You need to know what your community wants.
Now you need to deliberately also, answer the below questions, to help identify your community Purpose:
What is your community mission and how does it align with your members?
What is the specific objective for your community?
What specific problems does your community solve for the members?
What opportunities does your community create for the members?
Identifying the reason for the existence of the community will help in actualizing the community goals, vision, and mission statements.
Place - Where do members gather?
Where does your community gather online and/or offline?
How does your place of gathering make your members feel safe?
How many members do you want to gather?
How often do you want members to gather?
What legal or compliance issues do you have to consider? (HIPAA, GDPR, etc).
The place of your community gathering in some way influences the effectiveness of your members and the fulfillment of your community purpose. Also, it is important to always consider legal or compliance issues. Unfortunately, this article does not cover that but Read more about this Meeting Data Compliance with a Wave of New Privacy Regulations: GDPR, CCPA, PIPEDA, POPI, LGPD, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and More.
Participation - What do members do?
The impact in a community is somewhat measured by its members' Participation.
What are all the different ways a member can participate in your community?
What kind of participation will be the most meaningful for your members?
What do you want members to experience and understand when they first join the community?
What recurring experiences can your members participate in?
What barriers are preventing members from participating and how can you remove them?
What rewards do you want your members to experience after participating?
Members' participation is very essential in Tech Communities because that is how they improve in their skills or learn new ones.
Engaging your members through, speaking engagement events, Hackathons, Team Projects, etc., is very important in Tech Communities.
And as a member of a tech community, you are required to actively be involved in the community you belong to.
Answering the above questions will help you understand members' participation better.
Policy - What are the values, guidelines & rules?
The policies surrounding your communities are also very important. Answering the below questions will help you understand this better.
What are your community's values?
How will your policy make members feel safe and alleviate the fear of judgment?
What behaviors and actions do you want to encourage in your community?
How shouldn't members act in the community?
What process exists for enforcing the rules of the community?
Promotion - How is the community discovered?
The promotion of your community is so important for both the community leader and members of the community.
How do people discover your community?
How fast do you want your community to grow?
Where do your potential members spend time now?
How can you motivate your existing members to invite others?
What marketing tools and resources can you use to help more people discover your community?
The above questions will help you in handling the promotion of your community in the right way.
Performance - How is success measured?
What are the success metrics for content and experiences?
How will you track participation in your community over time?
How often will you survey your community and interview your members?
What are the valuable actions that achieve your community's objectives?
How often will you report on community metrics and who will you be reporting to?
In conclusion, the 7 P's of Community have helped me to understand community organization, participation, and leadership.
I really believe this article will be helpful to Tech Community Leaders and in some way to members.
Watch out for my next article: (Hint: It's gonna be something on Web)
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