Following from the Kubuntu New Councillors meeting. This meeting is to discuss, and develop and action plan from community growth.
How do we reach out to the community ?
How do we attract new community members ?
How do we on board them ?
How do we become sticky, so that they can stay with us ?
Define from the above questions a set of actions and plan for how to move forward.
We encourage everyone in the Kubuntu community to add their thoughts in the comments of this Phabricator Task.
We encourage everyone in the Kubuntu community to add their thoughts in the comments of this Phabricator Task.
Whoops! That slid past me and presumably others as well!
One thing we've discussed a few times in the past is putting some text somewhere in the applications or other menu places. Putting info into installer slides is useful perhaps, for those who see them, but once the install is done, the information is gone. I don't know where such text could live, however.
I think we attract members by putting good information about how people can contribute on the website and then mentioning those jobs/slots occasionally in various social media.
Onboarding has to happen in IRC, on the mail list, on Kubuntuforum, on Facebook? G+? but funnel everyone to the ML & IRC/telegram.
Sticky -- get them to do their first task, give them some good feedback, and schedule the next one! until they can self-start.
I thought of two ideas to add into the mix
1 - Kubuntu Templars - These are Knights of Kubuntu who undertake Quests
2 - Bug Hug - action days could be done via BBB etc...
Oh I like Kubuntu Assassin's very much Aaron, that's definetly better than Knights or Templars.
Attendees: Clivejo, Valoriez, acheronuk, sick_rimmit
The council discussed the following
1 - How do we reach out to the community currently ?
ML, IRC, Ubuntu Forum, ( The Forums don't work well for Kubuntu, the community there can be rude. Not worth investing
Social Media - need to recruit people who like it. Facebook page is pretty awful, folks ask support but no one responds. Google+, Twitter ?????
This needs a dedicated socialmedia team - Quest - Social Mdeia research team, to invite group owners to a subsequent Cafe..
Telegram / Chat things - Valorie is testing Matrix along with the KDE - Purism Phone will be using Matrix.
As Matrix is directly bridged to Freenode IRC, this makes it a very pursuavive tool -Council are encourage to experiment with this, and provide feedback.
We concluded that rationalising our channels, and making the most effort to bring disparate groups into the primary channels is the way forward. Those channels are in order of preference.
1 - Mailing List 2 - IRC ( Internet Relay Chat ) 3 - Kubuntuforums.net
Organise Website dedicated meeting, Gathering input from OnAir - Promote this as an community event far and wide, and then arrange a secondary meeting to discuss this input - Going to need a secreatary. -> RT
Items to discuss - Matrix - webchat.freenode.net
2 - How do we attract new community members ?
We realised that addressing the points in 1, would reduce the number of channels and make it clearer and easier for newcomers to find the main heart of the Kubuntu community. Fostering the correct attitudes and approaches from the existing community by targetting the most positive channels we can find, also encourages and welcomes new members.
3 - How do we become sticky, so that new people want to stay with us ?
IRC users very often join the channel and then leave... the more people are around to answer questions, the easier and better it gets. New users struggle with IRC, and they very often don't know what it is used for.
Onboarding - The contribute page should be central to this, so that when they arrive it appeals to them in the sense of "What sounds interesting to you ? " - Identifying Organisational Roles ( Web Author, Video Editor, Social Media Guru, Marketer, Administrator, Developer, Documentor, Reviewer, Tester, ) - These roles need to be quite narrow, and clearly defined. Work groups -: Developers, Administration, Marketing, Support, Community.
AOB - Nothing more to add
Sorry for missing the meeting. It was at 23:00 Rome time but I was pooped after LibreOffice Conference yesterday.
The premise of this item is to reach communities -- and I suppose the target is to reach those who are "under the water". Social media channels must be built but to "fishing" them out of water maybe we need a more clear guide to them -- like a first-time welcome dialog indicating these channels.
Facebook Fanspage is good to publish news in a single direction -- kubuntu team to users. But it requires (almost dedicated) someone to run it to get better effects.
IRC is very rarely used in Taiwan except those old communities members. But to connect IRC with Telegram is a good idea. Many FOSS communities do this way.
2 - How do we attract new community members ?
We realised that addressing the points in 1, would reduce the number of channels and make it clearer and easier for newcomers to find the main heart of the Kubuntu community. Fostering the correct attitudes and approaches from the existing community by targetting the most positive channels we can find, also encourages and welcomes new members.
This time in LibreOffice Conference Gabriele Ponzo gave a talk about "Why to contribute and why/how to join TDF as members", just like the one he presented in Akademy BoF. Besides, Giannis Konstantinidis from Mozilla community gave a "Open Source Community Building 101" talk and I think it is very worth for us. After their slides being on line I suggest you to get them to read.
The userbase of Kubuntu is large IMO (at least in Taiwan ezgo is based on Kubuntu), what we need is to encourage users becoming contributors.
One other thing I observe in KDE community is that, no matter the sessions in Akademy, the composition of core team, and some other things we are too "technical". During these years in LibreOffice community I learned that to have a good marketing team is important. What they lack is some group like community working group (to handle arguments or disputes) in KDE, but they focus on marketing, membership relationship more than (or at least equal to) developments.
3 - How do we become sticky, so that new people want to stay with us ?
IRC users very often join the channel and then leave... the more people are around to answer questions, the easier and better it gets. New users struggle with IRC, and they very often don't know what it is used for.
Onboarding - The contribute page should be central to this, so that when they arrive it appeals to them in the sense of "What sounds interesting to you ? " - Identifying Organisational Roles ( Web Author, Video Editor, Social Media Guru, Marketer, Administrator, Developer, Documentor, Reviewer, Tester, ) - These roles need to be quite narrow, and clearly defined. Work groups -: Developers, Administration, Marketing, Support, Community.
AOB - Nothing more to add
IMO To stick a community together it's very important to have physical meet-ups. But considering the geographical issues we may need to plan it well, either for events or for finance parts.
Hey Franklin, this is wonderful input and I embrace your ideas. It is a shame you were not at the meeting, as I think your comments would have brought about very useful discussion.
We are going to be talking openly at the first 'Cafe Live' event on Friday Nov 4th about community development, I think it would be so very useful if you are there, perhaps you could share those slides from the Libre office conference.
Thanks again for your input.
Sorry for not being at the previous meeting. I'd like to attend if not in the midnight (My timezone is UTC+8 (Asia/Taipei) ). BTW Friday is Nov. 3rd.
I have Gabrielle's slides but no Gianni's. I'll try to get it.