Now, the governance and the tools are in place. Let’s get some members !
To do so, we first did 4 things :
- we created our front page on the corporate website : objectives & registration
- we sent emails invitations to our network - friends, colleagues - within the company
- we sent invitations to departments that would be interested in joining
- we sent invitations to all community leaders who forwarded to their members
I was also leading a small group of Open Source geeks locally. We had a brainstorm from where came out few ideas of projects we shared with the new community. Thus, we started to feed the Community with ideas and potential projects such as OpenCoE - a Linux Desktop -, Amistad - a Linux Server, and few others.
This created immediatly a lot of activity on the mailing list which was the main media we used. The discussions around these projects created new discusions and also generated requests for advice or assistance. This last point is key because the community was able to create value from the beginning.
The coreteam spent a lot of time – and some nights – trying to organize the discussions and the information. We wanted to understand where the community would be able to engage – what project – and to make our best to turn ideas into something concrete. So, we started to communicate to our Management and to the EDS fellows on some of the good ideas that emerged from the discussions.
The discussion also generated some negative posts, mainly complaining on EDS position towards Open Source. Indeed, EDS was qualified as a “Microsoft Company”.
You must be prepared to it. I will write later on this subject but the main advices are :
- listen to the negative posts, do not ignore them
- be constructive taking the positive side of the message
- don’t feed the troll
What did I learn ?
- Get your members where they are, use the tools they use
- Suggest subjects of interest to create initial dynamic
- Be prepare to negative feedback and manage them
- Find a way for the community to create value – even very small - as soon as possible
- Communicate with your Management
And I encourage you to train like a sailor to sleep little for a while.

