June 23 Show Notes “Measuring Community” Sander Potjer, Peter Martin, and Radek Suski

Listen to this weeks JoomStew Radio podcast Measuring Community on BlogTalkRadio

or download the MP3 here: JoomStew Radio podcast Measuring Community MP3

Measuring Community

June 23 - show starts at 20:00 UTC

Music
Severed Fifth - Jono Bacon - War

Guests

Peter Martin – Joomla! Community Leadership Team and Joomla! Forum Global Moderator

Sander Potjer – Community manager for http://JoomlaCommunity.eu and an organizer of the Joomla! Days in the Netherlands, our community event which has enjoyed the most frequency, 2010 was their 5^th event?, and organizer of Joomla! User Groups in the Netherlands and Belgium - Picture from last night's meeting

Radek Suski – Lead developer for http://www.sigsiu.net and creator of SOBI2 extensions.

And, the Beat Goes On

OSM Board Members Take New Leadership Roles

• Community Liaison - Steve Burge
• Trademark Team Liaison - Marko Milenovic
• Events Team Leader - Robert Deutz

OSM People Page - informal space for the community to interact with the members of the board.

Upgrades coming soon to demo.joomla.org - New servers should be up around July 16-23, 2010. Old style demo site until then.

New Support Joomla Page - Change in the type of Non Profit Corporation for Open Source Matters Inc. now allows for donations.

The Art of Meekness Sandra Warren - Our people.j.org Host

JomSocial v 1.8 "Wazi" - fully GPLed http://bit.ly/8YgvoK Congrats to Azrul

Congrats to Robin Muilwijk for being one of four nominees for ez's Community member of the year!

Ask the Team this morning with Brad and Elin - lots of questions about WP 3.0, and whether Joomla! would ever have the ease of WP admin and WP extension installation interface, concerns that developers going to WP, and so on. Reading it made me remember CMS Watch's Blog Post about 1.6 Beta and their warning that J! is becoming more complex but not quite durable enough for large organizations, adding very correctly that we are "stuck in the middle." We need to agree to a direction, head there and think about message.

Future Shows

June 30th – Governance with Ryan  Ozimek, President of OSM

July 7th – Handling Conflict – with Steve Burge and Pattie Porter, the Texas Conflict Coach

July 14th – Creating and Running Events with Robert Deutz

July 21th – Hiring a Community Manager with Jono Bacon

Thoughts About Community

Introduction

Joomla Resource Directory – Matt Lipscomb

Interesting and positive developments this past week triggered on disappointment people had from rejection to the Joomla Resource Directory on the basis that they do not contribute in the Joomla! forums.

As a result of community concerns, JRD expanded criteria to include other ways of contributing but still basically required participating at J org, or in some type of "official" capacity, or by developing extensions.

In essense, what this meant for those contributing by helping offsite or in "unofficial ways" is that their work cannot be claimed as contributing to Joomla!, be it supporting community sites focused on local languages or even speciaizied memberships, like All Together, or supporting users of free extensions, or providing regular blogging news. While attendance at “official” events, like Joomla Days counts as contributing, organizing and speaking at non-official Joomla! events, like the recent JandBeyond event, does not.

Needless to say, a very interesting discussion broke out on “What is community?” and “What is a contribution”.

The JRD updated their rules to include support of International community sites, and that was a great step forward. More importantly, though, good discussions about community are taking place now and we will continue those discussions on this show.

It's somewhat easy to identify "Who is contributing" at Joomla.org but does it provide a complete picture of our contributing community?

If not, who is the Joomla! Community? Wouldn't it be nice to have a listing of people, community groups, and businesses?

How can we identify contributions? measure our progress towards goals? recognize our contributors and measure the contributour community?

Can we really be operating under a Meritocracy if we can’t answer those questions?

Links:

http://community.joomla.org/blogs/community/1215-resources-directory-evolves-with-new-guidelines.html

http://people.joomla.org/groups/viewdiscussion/441-Discussion:+New+Joomla+Resources+Directory+Guidelines.html?groupid=24

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

And, as luck would have it, all of this fits very nicely into today’s topic which is “How do you measure Community?”

Volatility of Community

Great Community Leadership requires accepting the volatility of community.

Peter – So --- are we volatile? And how does that make Leadership challenging?

Who is the Joomla Community? Official versus Unofficial

Sander: How would we begin to identify “Who is the Joomla Community?”

Mathias: I bet you didn't know these countries had a #Joomla community: http://bit.ly/aWcANX
http://twitter.com/mathiasverraes/status/16478136826

http://community.joomla.org/user-groups.html

What does the Joomla! Community Contribute? Core vs Extensions

Radek: How important is the Joomla! Developer Community? What do developers contribute to the project? Why offer support in your own forums? Why not do it at J org?

Measuring Community Contributions

There are lots of easy ways to measure communities—the number of members on a forum, the number of contributors to a shared project, and so forth…

Peter - What types of numbers are typically used at Joomla.org to measure what this community produces and how popular it is world-wide?

Sander - Tell us about JoomlaCommunity.eu (Why does it exist? Who does it serve? How is it contributing to Joomla?) Do we know who are our international groups? how do you guys contribute to Joomla?

Radek - How do Joomla Developers help with Project activities? Are developers collaborating more with each other?

Defining Purpose

In The Art of Community, Jono Bacon talks about defining a strategy, including a mission statement, objectives and goals. From that, comes measurements that help the project understand if they are on track, or not.

Joomla! has a high level Mission, Vision, Key Values but no specific measurable goals and objectives

http://www.joomla.org/about-joomla/the-project/mission-vision-and-values.html

These are less concrete, more philosophical, and impossible to measure.

Peter: What kinds of goals and objectives do you think are important for our project to adopt? How are we working to increase the project's contributor base?

Radek: Would it help if we had a development road map, again? What type of input do developers want in that process?

Sander: What can the project do to help satelitte communities? What can satelitte communities do to help the project?

And time for Recognition!

Contributor of the Week

Matt Lipscomb of the Joomla Resource Directory for his listening skills and quick response to the International community; and, then for kicking off fun things like Challenge of the Week in people.j.org. Keep that positive attitude!

Bad Boy of the Week

Sam Moffatt - for his Where the bloody hell are you? post -- Sam is a fun guy and he's contributed for many, many years in Joomla!, and he's calling us out to JUST DO IT! "Get out there and do it. The community is anyone doing something positive for Joomla!. Fixing bugs, writing patches, porting to MSSQL even. Organising events, organising JUGS. " From Sam Moffat Good for Sam!

Work for Community

alledia http://bit.ly/b1X3o9 Looking for 4 more volunteers for #Joomla 1.6 blogs: language improvements (including the new language changer), accessible admin template, nested-categories and improvements for site builders

Peter, Radek and Sander –What opportunities are available for people to contribute to the project within your area?