Hydra Community Growth Plan

There are a number of things we need to consider to build a growing, stable, and sustainable Hydra community.  Initial thoughts and action items from the Steering group should be documented below.

There are three broad areas we could focus on:

• Engaging New Community Members
• Sustaining the Existing Community Members and production adopters
• International Growth

As we explore ways to improve in each of these areas, here are some general guidelines to keep in mind:

• Make participation in the community easy, and minimize barriers to contributing back to the community
• Find ways to incorporate participation and contributions from non-developer skill sets
  
  • What useful things could new community members bring to the table
  • What minimum things should we ask of community members to bring to the table in order to participate
• Find ways to foster individualized and tailored solutions without depleting energy from the core community
• How do folks engage if they do not have dedicated developer teams

Community Growth Plan

• Near-Term Strategic Priorities
  
  • Start measuring & counting (metrics) (Bess, Eddie, Tom)
  • Engage key partners...
  • Ask partners what being a partner means to them (Chris, Mike)
    
    • more/updated "why chose hydra" testimonials
    • produce a list of reasons to be a partners (e.g. legal) - see " /wiki/spaces/steering/pages/405211505"
    • ask partners to contribute more to community?
      
      • solution packs
      • code
      • funds
      • technical writing (wiki, website, other documentation)
  • Invest in knowledge of community management strategies (Mark, Bess, Richard, Johnathon)
  • Training (Mark, Eddie, Bess, Tom) - inlcude partner list in discussion
    
    • formulate a training strategy
    • host a "train the trainer" event 
    • create body of community-owned training materials (use MediaShelf's?)
    • Intentionality around Hydra-Camp, code4lib pre-sessions, other events intended to enabling folks to contribute to the community
  • We need a customer relationship management system (CRM-like) (Chris, Tom, Johnathon)
  • Review of documentation (Richard & Bess will review - talk to Naomi and Matt Z.)
    
    • Need a sustain plan that engages partner input 
  • Rewrite getting started for Managers, for Developers, (Richard, Chris, Mark) and create FAQ page (Bess, Melinda)