Hydra Community Growth Plan

Owned by Bill Branan
Jun 16, 2017
2 min read

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:

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)