Community Outreach - Where Should I Go
- by Roger Brinkley
A few days ago I was talking to person new to community development and they asked me what guidelines I used to determine the worthiness of a particular event. After our conversation was over I thought about it a little bit more and figured out there are three ways to determine if any event (be it
conference, blog, podcast or other social medias) is worth doing: Transferability, Multiplication, and Impact. Transferability - Is what I have to say useful to the people
that are going to hear it. For instance, consider a company that has product offering that can connect up using a number of languages like Scala, Grovey or Java. Sending a Scala
expert to talk about Scala and the product is not transferable to a
Java User Group, but a Java expert doing the same talk with a Java
slant is. Similarly, talking about JavaFX to any Java User Group
meeting in Brazil was pretty much a wasted effort until it was open
sourced. Once it was open sourced it was well received.
You can also look at transferability in relation to the subject
matter that you're dealing with. How transferable is a presentation
that I create. Can I, or a technical writer on the staff, turn it
into some technical document. Could it be converted into some type
of screen cast. If we have a regular podcast can we make a reference
to the document, catch the high points or turn it into a interview.
Is there a way of using this in the sales group. In other words is
the document purely one dimensional or can it be re-purposed in
other forms. Multiplication - On every trip I'm looking for 2 to 5 solid connections that I can
make with developers. These are long term connections, because I
know that once that relationship is established it will lead to
another 2 - 5 from that connection and within a couple of years were
talking about some 100 connections from just one developer. For
instance, when I was working on JavaHelp in 2000 I hired a science
teacher with a programming background. We've developed a very tight
relationship over the year though we rarely see each other more than
once a year. But at this JavaOne, one of his employees came up to me
and said, "Richard (Rick Hard in Czech) told me to tell you that he
couldn't make it to JavaOne this year but if I saw you to tell you
hi".
Another example is from my Mobile & Embedded days in Brasil. On
our very first FISL trip about 5 years ago there were two university
students that had created a project called "Marge". Marge was a
Bluetooth framework that made connecting bluetooth devices easier. I
invited them to a "Sun" dinner that evening. Originally they were
planning on leaving that afternoon, but they changed their plans
recognizing the opportunity. Their eyes were as big a saucers when
they realized the level of engineers at the meeting. They went home
started a JUG in Florianoplis that we've visited more than a couple
of times. One of them went to work for Brazilian government lab like
Berkley Labs, MIT Lab, John Hopkins Applied Physicas Labs or Lincoln
Labs in the US. That presented us with an opportunity to show
Embedded Java as a possibility for some of the work they were doing
there. Impact - The final criteria is how life changing is what I'm
going to say be to the individuals I'm reaching. A t-shirt is just a
token, but when I reach down and tug at their developer hearts then
I know I've succeeded. I'll never forget one time we flew all night
to reach Joan Pasoa in Northern Brazil. We arrived at 2am went
immediately to our hotel only to be woken up at 6 am to travel 2
hours by car to the presentation hall. When we arrived we were totally
exhausted. Outside the facility there were 500 people lined up to
hear 6 speakers for the day. That itself was uplifting. I delivered
one of my favorite talks on "I have passion". It was a talk on golf
and embedded java development, "Find your passion". When we finished
a couple of first year students came up to me and said how much my
talk had inspired them.
FISL is another great example. I had been about 4 years in a row.
FISL is a very young group of developers so capturing their
attention is important. Several of the students will come back 2 or
3 years later and ask me questions about research or jobs. And then
there's Louis. Louis is one my favorite Brazilians. I can only
describe him as a big Brazilian teddy bear. I see him every year at
FISL. He works primarily in Java EE but he's attended every single
one of my talks over the last 4 years. I can't tell you why, but he
always greets me and gives me a hug. For some reason I've had a real
impact.
And of course when it comes to impact you don't just measure a
presentation but every single interaction you have at an event. It's
the hall way conversations, the booth conversations, but more
importantly it's the conversations at dinner tables or in the cars
when you're getting transported to an event. There's a good story
that illustrates this.
Last year in the spring I was traveling to Goiânia in Brazil. I've
been there many times and leaders there no me well. One young man
has picked me up at the airport on more than one occasion. We were
going out to dinner one evening and he brought his girl friend
along. One thing let to another and I eventually asked him, in front
of her, "Why haven't you asked her to marry you?" There were all
kinds of excuses and she just looked at him and smiled. When I came
back in December for JavaOne he came and sought me. "I just want to
tell you that I thought a lot about what you said, and I asked her
to marry me. We're getting married next Spring."
Sometimes just one presentation is all it takes to make an impact.
Other times it takes years. Some impacts are directly related
to the company and some are more personal in nature. It doesn't
matter which it is because it's having the impact that matters.
