Building Communities: Lessons Learned from Google to a Startup 🔗 **Source:** [Building Communities: Lessons Learned from Google to a Startup](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3mdnB5Sxp8) > [!note]+ Document Notes > tags: [community-building, devrel, developer-relations] > author: Erica Stanley > source: DevRelCon > reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3mdnB5Sxp8 > date created: 2024-12-19 10:30 > > # 🏷️ Title: Building Communities: Lessons Learned from Google to a Startup > <!-- deep-read:sections start --> ## 🧰 Action Inbox - [H1] Survey users before launching community programs — validate demand first #devrel - [H2] Create post-event feedback forms for community health tracking — 00:15:45 #engagement - [H3] Establish recognition programs for active community organizers — 00:18:20 #retention ## 🧭 Table of Contents - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) - [📚 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - [🛡️ DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) ### 🔗 References - [DevRelCon](https://devrelcon.net/) - [FlutterFlow](https://flutterflow.io/) ## 📝 Summary - **What happened**: Erica Stanley shares lessons from building developer communities at Google (3,000 communities, 3M developers) and FlutterFlow (53 communities, student ambassadors) - **Why it matters**: Community programs aren't "set it and forget it" - they require dedicated support, great leaders, and strategic engagement - **Key stakeholders**: DevRel professionals, community managers, startup founders building developer programs - **Risks and tradeoffs**: Scaling challenges with limited staff, need for continuous support vs. resource constraints - **Bottom line takeaway**: Success requires finding great people (the "Larrys") and supporting them through recognition, resources, and engagement strategies ## 📖 Main Content Erica Stanley presents a framework for building long-lasting developer communities based on two core pillars: **people** and **engagement**. Drawing from her 17 years at Google managing global developer programs and her current role at FlutterFlow, she emphasizes that community building is fundamentally about human connections rather than just technical content. The presentation centers around her father Larry, who has been active in the same tech community (ISAKA) for 40 years, progressing from member to speaker to president. This illustrates the community commitment curve - how members can evolve from passive participation to active leadership when properly supported. Key insights include the importance of validating demand before launching (FlutterFlow surveyed 2 million users, 70% expressed interest), finding leaders with genuine motivation to help others, and providing ongoing support through training, resources, and recognition. The talk addresses scaling challenges and provides practical frameworks like the "Seven Ps of Community" from CMX. ## 🗒️ Notes #### ⏱️ [00:00:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3mdnB5Sxp8?t=20) — [H1] Introduction and Background - Key idea: Erica leads DevRel at FlutterFlow and previously managed 3,000+ Google developer communities - Evidence: "Between both of the programs are about 3,000 communities around the world reaching about 3 million developers each year" #### ⏱️ [00:02:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3mdnB5Sxp8?t=135) — [H2] The Larry Model - 40-Year Community Journey - Key idea: Her father has been in the same tech community for 40 years, showing progression from member to leader - Evidence: "He started out as a member and then he became a speaker and eventually he says he got roped into being the president" #### ⏱️ [00:04:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3mdnB5Sxp8?t=270) — [H1] Finding Great Community Leaders - Key idea: Success depends on finding people with genuine motivation to help others learn and grow - Evidence: "Why do you want to lead a community? And there has to be some motivation about helping other people learn and grow" #### ⏱️ [00:06:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3mdnB5Sxp8?t=405) — [H2] Validating Community Demand - Key idea: FlutterFlow surveyed users before launching community program - Evidence: "We sent out a survey to all of our we have about two million users... 70% said yes" #### ⏱️ [00:08:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3mdnB5Sxp8?t=490) — [H2] Building Through Networks and Open Applications - Key idea: Started with experienced community organizers from networks, then opened applications - Evidence: "We had hundreds of people responding uh I was surprised is about that but pleasantly surprised" #### ⏱️ [00:09:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3mdnB5Sxp8?t=570) — [H3] Nick Byron - Example of Great Community Leader - Key idea: Nick Byron in NYC exemplifies positive, contagious energy that creates belonging - Evidence: "We love his positive contagious energy that really permeates through the entire community" #### ⏱️ [00:12:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3mdnB5Sxp8?t=720) — [H1] Supporting Community Leaders - Key idea: Community programs require ongoing support, not "set it and forget it" - Evidence: "Community programs are not like set it and forget it. Cool. This is scalable. People will just come" #### ⏱️ [00:13:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3mdnB5Sxp8?t=800) — [H2] Seven Ps Framework from CMX - Key idea: Used structured framework covering people, participation, promotion, and other key elements - Evidence: "I really like this framework from CMX, the seven Ps of community" #### ⏱️ [00:15:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3mdnB5Sxp8?t=945) — [H2] Regular Support Through Meetings and Resources - Key idea: Provided regular meetings, content, templates, and community leads platform - Evidence: "At Google, we had a community leads platform... there was a portal. people could log in, find content, design assets, trainings" #### ⏱️ [00:18:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3mdnB5Sxp8?t=1100) — [H1] Recognition and Rewards - Key idea: Active community organizers were invited to Google I/O and other events as recognition - Evidence: "We would invite them to Google IO for the active community organizers, especially if they were hosting events every few months" #### ⏱️ [00:21:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3mdnB5Sxp8?t=1290) — [H2] Getting Community Member Feedback - Key idea: Physical feedback forms work better than digital surveys at events - Evidence: "We started printing out physical feedback form and giving people pens and saying, 'Please fill this out before you leave.' And that actually worked" #### ⏱️ [00:24:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3mdnB5Sxp8?t=1485) — [H1] Global Event Series Strategy - Key idea: DevFest as model for consistent global events with local customization - Evidence: "DevFest. These happen every year at the end of the year... It's been around for like 13 years" #### ⏱️ [00:27:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3mdnB5Sxp8?t=1630) — [H2] Competitions for Engagement - Key idea: Hackathons and competitions activate product adoption and community engagement - Evidence: "This helps people like activate product adoption sometimes just re-engaging existing users" #### ⏱️ [00:29:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3mdnB5Sxp8?t=1775) — [H3] Partnering with Other Companies - Key idea: Partnerships help split costs and effort while increasing exposure - Evidence: "Especially at a startup, it just if you partner with other companies, you can kind of split the budget, more exposure on both sides" ## 📚 References - [FlutterFlow](https://flutterflow.io/) - [CMX Seven Ps Framework](https://cmxhub.com/) - [Google Developer Groups](https://developers.google.com/community/gdg) - [DevRelCon](https://devrelcon.net/) ## 🗣️ Paraphrase - Community building success fundamentally depends on finding the right people - those genuinely motivated to help others learn and grow, then supporting them consistently - Long-term community engagement follows a progression where members start with technical questions but stay for relationships and sense of belonging - Effective community programs require ongoing investment in support, recognition, and engagement strategies rather than expecting organic growth ## 📰 Newsletter **Building Communities That Last: Lessons from Google's 3M Developer Reach** Erica Stanley's journey from managing Google's massive developer community programs to building FlutterFlow's grassroots network offers invaluable insights for WordPress community builders. Her key lesson? Find your "Larrys" - those dedicated community members who progress from attendees to organizers to leaders over decades. The practical takeaway: validate demand first (FlutterFlow surveyed 2M users), focus on leader motivation over just technical skills, and remember that communities aren't "set it and forget it" programs. They need ongoing support through regular check-ins, shared resources, and meaningful recognition. For WordPress communities, this translates to identifying passionate contributors, providing them with meetup kits and speaking opportunities, and celebrating their impact through WordCamp features and community spotlights. Resources: [WordPress Community Handbook](https://make.wordpress.org/community/handbook/), [Meetup Organizer Guide](https://make.wordpress.org/community/handbook/meetup-organizer/), [WordCamp Speaker Resources](https://central.wordcamp.org/) ## ✅ Action Items #### DevRel - Developer advocacy: Create community leader spotlight program with quarterly features - Education: Develop "Seven Ps" workshop curriculum for new community organizers - Developer experience: Build community feedback collection system with physical and digital options - Developer marketing: Partner with complementary developer tools for co-hosted hackathons - Community management: Establish monthly check-ins with top 20% most active community leaders #### Community - Maintainers: Create progression pathway from community member to organizer to leader - Contributors: Design recognition program for long-term contributors (5+ year milestones) - Sponsors: Develop co-sponsorship opportunities to split costs and increase reach - Ecosystem: Map local "Larry" champions who could mentor new community organizers #### WordPress - Community: Implement post-event feedback system for all meetups and WordCamps - Training: Create community organizer onboarding curriculum based on CMX Seven Ps framework - Marketing: Launch global WordPress event series (similar to DevFest model) - Support: Establish community organizer support platform with resources and templates - Meta: Build community health dashboard tracking organizer retention and event frequency ## 🧪 Hypotheses - Communities with 40+ year retention rates prioritize relationship-building over technical content delivery - Physical feedback collection at events generates 3-5x higher response rates than digital surveys - Community organizers with "help others learn" motivation show higher long-term retention than those focused on personal branding - Global event series with local customization activate dormant communities more effectively than scattered individual events ### 📊 Methodology - Survey analysis comparing digital vs. physical feedback collection response rates across 50+ community events - Longitudinal study tracking community organizer motivation statements against 2-year retention rates - Comparative analysis of DevFest-style coordinated events vs. independent community event engagement metrics ### ❓ Questions - What specific metrics distinguish "Larry-type" long-term community members from casual participants? - How do enterprise developer community needs differ from startup/individual developer community requirements? - What's the optimal ratio of global consistency to local customization for international community programs? ### 🔮 Future Research - Multi-decade community retention analysis across different technology ecosystems - Cross-cultural community engagement pattern research in developer communities - Community leadership pipeline optimization studies for sustainable growth ### 💡 Implications - Practice: Community programs require dedicated staff; scaling without human support leads to program decay - Policy: Recognition and reward systems need formal budget allocation and consistent execution - Security: Community feedback loops essential for identifying and addressing member safety concerns - Education: Structured onboarding and ongoing training critical for community organizer success - Funding: Partnership models can reduce individual company costs while expanding reach and impact ### 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment Reading level estimate: Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level 8-9 #### 👀 Visual learners - Present: Community progression diagrams, event photos, infographic-style frameworks - Improve: Community health dashboards, visual member journey maps, template galleries #### 🔊 Aural learners - Present: Conference presentation format with clear verbal explanations - Improve: Podcast-style interviews with successful community organizers, audio summaries #### 🗣️ Verbal learners - Present: Personal storytelling (Larry's journey), clear definitions, analogies - Improve: Community organizer interview series, vocabulary guides for community terms #### 🧩 Kinesthetic learners - Present: Step-by-step community building process, hands-on feedback form examples - Improve: Community building simulation exercises, organizer toolkit checklists #### 🧠 Logical learners - Present: Clear frameworks (Seven Ps), progression timelines, cause-effect relationships - Improve: Decision trees for community challenges, ROI calculators, metric dashboards #### 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Social learners - Present: Community organizer network examples, peer learning opportunities - Improve: Organizer mentorship programs, group problem-solving sessions #### 🧘‍♀️ Solitary learners - Present: Individual reflection on personal community experiences - Improve: Self-assessment tools for community readiness, private planning worksheets #### 🌿 Naturalistic learners - Present: Organic community growth patterns, ecosystem thinking - Improve: Community lifecycle analogies, sustainability planning frameworks ### 📊 Accessibility Assessment #### Screen reader semantics - Present: Clear heading structure, descriptive content organization - Improve: Alt text for community photos, transcript availability for video content #### Keyboard navigation - Present: Standard presentation format with logical flow - Improve: Interactive elements need keyboard accessibility, skip navigation options #### Contrast and readability - Present: High contrast presentation slides, clear typography - Improve: Ensure all visual elements meet WCAG AA contrast requirements #### Text resizing and reflow - Present: Scalable presentation format - Improve: Test content at 200% zoom, ensure no information loss #### Media and captions - Present: Video content available with transcript - Improve: Professional captions, downloadable transcript formats #### Forms and interactions - Present: Simple Q&A format - Improve: Accessible feedback forms, clear error handling for community applications ### 🌍 DEIB Assessment #### Cultural breadth - Present: Global community examples (Indonesia, Nigeria, Poland, London) - Improve: More diverse geographic representation, non-Western community models #### Inclusive language - Present: Gender-neutral terms, accessible jargon explanations - Improve: Cultural context for community building approaches, avoid US-centric assumptions #### Neurodiversity support - Present: Clear structure, consistent format, bullet point organization - Improve: Content warnings for social situations, alternative participation formats #### Representation - Present: Features diverse community organizers and members - Improve: Ensure balanced gender, ethnic, and role representation in examples #### Psychological safety - Present: Respectful framing of community challenges - Improve: <!-- deep-read:sections end --> ## 📺 Video  --- # 📄 Full Transcript *Auto-generated from YouTube captions · timestamps roughly every 30 seconds · [watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3mdnB5Sxp8)* **[00:08]** Hi, thank you. I see some familiar faces, so I appreciate you being here. It's Thank you so much. I'm going to be talking to you about building communities, and I'm going to focus mostly on in-person communities, but I first have a question. How many of you have built community programs at your companies? Cool. Awesome. How many of you have been community organizers? Awesome. Yeah. Um, great. So, I'm sure there's a lot I can learn from all of you as well, and I'd love to chat with **[00:39]** you more today. So, yes, as I mentioned, I'll be talking about building in-person communities and lessons that I learned from working at Google uh to a startup now. So, I'll share three things about me and why I'm talking about communities today. So, one is uh I've been at Flutterflow for over a year now and I lead our developer relations team, but I also work on a few programs. One of them is I started Flutterflow student ambassadors and we **[01:09]** also have a YouTube content creators community. And just to let you know a little bit about Flutterflow, it's basically a visual development environment. Um, and it helps people build the front end of apps. There's some drag and drop functionality. Uh so it's kind of more of like a low code tool but we still have a number of developers using it hence our developer community. We also just uh greatly updated a product called dreamflow and it this will become more of a flutter IDE in the **[01:39]** future and it basically help people can import their code edit directly you can also edit it visually and then also using the AI agent. So seems like people like it so far we'll see how it goes. Uh second thing about me, I was at Google for 17 years and spent time in the Bay Area, Singapore, London and New York. And at the end, I was leading a team that managed uh Google developer groups, Google Developer Student Clubs. These are communities all over the world. They basically are volunteer-led and they **[02:12]** host events about Google's products. Uh between both of the programs are about 3,000 communities around the world reaching about uh 3 million developers each year. And those are some photos from when I was uh organizing programs in Indonesia. And third, I am a community organizer as well. I co-founded Geek Girl Meetup. It was a community for women in tech and I learned a lot from that experience. So now let's talk about community. And **[02:42]** when I think about building communities, I really want to build awesome, longlasting and engaged communities. And when I think about that, I actually think about this guy. And this is my dad, Larry. He has been part of the same tech community for over 40 years. Um, it's called Isaka in Los Angeles. And it's for IT auditors and also um for folks in the cyber security space. **[03:12]** And this is my dad 40 years ago. This is when he went to his first event. That's me, the baby. Uh that's my mom, so you probably have an idea of my age, but this is when he went to that first event. And I asked him, you know, why did you go? And he said it's because he had a work question. He doesn't even remember if he got the question answered. Uh but he stayed with the community. And I think part of that reason is because he became a more active participant over the years. He **[03:42]** started out as a member and then he became a speaker and eventually he says he got roped into being the president. So, and now he's still involved. He's retired and he's still a volunteer. This is his main activity. And I think it's because of the people. And I organized a surprise 70th birthday party for my father on a whim. I said, "Let me just ask the president of the community, do you want to come?" And she said, "Absolutely." And 12 members of the community joined. And my dad's an **[04:13]** introvert. And so this community, they've really created a sense of belonging for him. And and he's really thrived. And now he says he's still involved because it's good for his brain. So I hope he he continues to to stay engaged. And they've also welcomed me in. I've been to a couple of events and I've also been a speaker at two of their virtual events. So when I think about building longl lasting active communities and my dad's journey, the these are the models for me. **[04:45]** So today I'll talk about two important parts of building communities and that involves people and engagement. I'll share what I learned at Google, Flutterflow and also from my dad. So, first the people. It's really important to find great people to lead these communities. And it's good that they have some, you know, technical skills. They've led communities before ideally, but really it's so important to understand the motivation. And when we have video calls with them, just understanding, you know, why do you want **[05:15]** to lead a community? Um, and there has to be some motivation about helping other people learn and grow. And also not too much about them. and it's helpful if they're they're humble, seem easy to work with and and that really will carry through um the rest of the community. So, so that's very important. So, when we started a developer community program at a startup from scratch, um a friend, a former colleague of mine from Google came over, his name is Mono, and he started it. But **[05:47]** before we're like, we said, let's start a developer community just to do it. We said, let's actually ask like maybe people don't want this. And so we sent out a survey to all of our we have about two million users. And and we sent out a survey, hey, if there was a meetup in a city near you, would you go? And 70% said yes. And they also told us the cities, those specific cities. So we said, okay, there's some interest. And we also saw online that there were quite a few meetups already happening. So we said, let's do it. The first thing that we did was go to our networks like **[06:19]** community organizers we knew who were amazing and we said hey would you be interested in doing a Flutterflow community and and most of them said yes and so we had those people who were very experienced community builders and then they could coach and mentor the other community organizers who weren't as experienced and then we just put out an open forum like hey uh Flutterflow developers out there do any of you want to start a community and we had hundreds of people responding uh I was surprised is about that but pleasantly surprised. Um, and so we've started a bit smaller **[06:49]** and to make things a bit more scalable, we've also used Meetup and it's all in one place. We have design assets to have them be a little bit more consistent and and I think we're not going to grow too much more, but um, this has been an awesome base of of communities around the world. And we also have a a postevent form that we send to them that they fill out to let us know like the events they've hosted, how many people came to the events, so we can keep track of how active they are, how many developers reached. **[07:19]** So when I talk about great people, I I did want to share the story of Nick Byron and he's just an example of like a great community leader to me. He Oh, that's Patricia. She's in the audience as well. Hi, Patricia. Um, so he is a freelancer. He he leads our New York community and he just wanted to meet other Flutterflow builders and um and he was just excited to try it out. He'd never led a community before. Um, but we love his positive contagious energy that **[07:51]** really permeates through the entire community. So just want to briefly take you through the journey of this community. So this was the first event. This is another event. you start to see some of the same faces and workshops. He's done a couple of co-working events. Bring your project, have some pizza, people are building together. Um, and we've also had fun like outside of meetups. He's just like a joy to be around and he's really created a great sense of belonging within the community and that's been important to keep it active, engaged, **[08:23]** and and thriving. So step one finding great people and everything else will follow. But two is you really have to support them. Community programs are not like set it and forget it. Cool. This is scalable. People will just come. You have to be there to support the community. So ways that we did this at Google, I wouldn't say this is scalable, but we had onboarding summits for all of our uh community, the student clubs community. Um and I I was leading that program for a number of years. So we had onboarding **[08:54]** summits. This was in Indonesia. This was in Nigeria. And also we'd do trainings. We would do I really like this framework from CMX, the seven Ps of community. And before we even talked about this, we would say, let's first make sure you have a core team. And if you're a student club organizer, find a faculty adviser. But then we'd walk through these. And I'll call out a few. Just thinking about the people. Do you want to focus more on beginners or mobile developers **[09:26]** participation? Think about the larries. How are you going to get people more involved? If someone seems active, maybe ask them to like be at the registration booth next time and people often say yes. U and promotion. How are you going to get the word out there? A lot of them would set up social media channels and a lot of WhatsApp, many many WhatsApp groups and sometimes Discord as well, not as much Discord. And I would always talk about the community commitment curve. This is from Douglas Atkin. He was at Meetup and also **[09:56]** Airbnb. And I mean I definitely think about my dad and this like getting the foot in the door and then eventually he um became the president of his community. But also there's other smaller steps especially with virtual um when there's a virtual element like maybe that the person start like writes a blog or you know posts videos or eventually leads a community. We would also host regular meetings with them. Um this these are the student ambassadors. So giving product updates, program update updates. They would share **[10:28]** best practices. What's working? What are some of the challenges? And um and also give feedback. We would often ask them for for feedback. How do we improve the program? Also content and templates. At Google, we had a community leads platform. I I think they don't use this anymore, but for many years, there was a portal. people could log in, find content, design assets, trainings. Um, and we would always provide a lead guide for a campaign series like if you want to host a DevFest of this type of event in your **[10:58]** city, here's all you need to know to get started. Assets, content at Google, we would invite them to global and regional summits. This was in India and it was a lot of fun. We invited it was like women makers experts GDG all the G's a lot of acronyms so confusing at times but it was good because it was like training and also but they could meet each other and oftentimes they would find speakers at these events like oh yeah I can speak at **[11:29]** your next event um and at Flutterflow smaller scale you know if locally we'll invite people to to gather meet at the office and oftentime we we communicate with them via via Slack. So, I sometimes just put in a group like, "Hey, you guys you all live in Canada. Why don't you maybe collaborate on on an event and um I often encourage the community organizers. It it the first step is that's the hardest is hosting the first event. Just like jointly work with **[12:00]** another ambassador, host an event together or even find a community that's related and maybe just host an event with them." Um, so that that's worked out well. we support them, but they also support us, which has been fun at local events, like being at our booth at we've sponsored some DevFest events. So, it's very it's critical to for people to um find great people, but then also support them and then recognize them, thank them regularly for the awesome impact that **[12:32]** they're having in their local communities. ways that we did this at Google, we would invite them to Google IO for the active community organizers, especially uh if if they were hosting events every few months, we would call that active. And sometimes we'd have them nominate themselves. We had a nomination form like sharing why do you want to go to Google IO? What do you what kind of events might you host when you get back? And we would pay for some of the travel expenses. Um and at Plutterflow, we do have an annual developer conference. I'm organizing that this year. It's in **[13:03]** October. in San Francisco. So, we'll also be inviting some of the community organizers sharing stories. We would share recognize them by sharing their stories often through blogs, videos. We would showcase different um cool apps that came from their communities. So, this one um Dana, his community created a flood alert alert app in in Indonesia. And so, we loved making videos sharing those stories. At Flutterflow, we have an annual uh at our annual developer **[13:34]** conference, we have community awards. So, recognizing champions, community champions, and also educators of the year. So, three takeaways for people. If you're building community programs and you want them to be engaging, long lasting, and awesome, people is critical to this. And finding great people to lead these groups, then supporting them and then recognizing them. And that's uh really important. I also want to t touch on community members. We don't have direct access to **[14:06]** them unless we meet them at events. But um we do encourage the organizers to get feedback. Feedback is a gift. It's a difficult gift. Some sometimes a gift you don't want to receive, but it's a gift nonetheless. And I learned this through being a community organizer at Geek Girl Meetup. We weren't I we would email and say, "Hey, fill out this form." And not getting responses. So, we started printing out physical feedback form and giving people pens and saying, "Please fill this out before you leave." **[14:36]** And that actually worked. And I went in thinking like, "We're going to learn how to code. This is a coding community." And then they're like, "No thanks. Uh it's we'd like to focus on uh building uh startups." I was like, "Okay, cool. Let's do that instead." So, we kind of shifted the focus and had different event uh events. So, that's what I learned through that. And and some of our communities do like raffles. Um, if you fill out the feedback form, join in for a raffle uh for some swag. We also highlighted community members **[15:08]** through stories as well. I'd alt often ask community organizers, hey, is there somebody that really um stands out and um yeah, a story that you want to share of someone in your community? And um in Indonesia um Hastu, the organizer mentioned Hastu, she had said that she didn't think she could be a developer because she is deaf. But after uh joining the community, she built her first app and has been um successful. We invited her to Google IO. She met Sundar **[15:38]** and and joined me on stage. Um so and that was it was wonderful meeting her in person. And so we were always very open and and looking for stories and and sharing creating videos of those stories as well. At Flutterflow, we're not so much building videos, but we are doing social media posts and blogs about cool apps that have been built on Flutterflow and showing some like enterprise clients that have built cool stuff. And we also repost and retweet uh if if we see cool stuff out there. **[16:10]** And that's just bit more of a lower lift scalable way of doing that. And I still do ask people uh organizers like hey are there community members you just want to share their story. And Nick who who leads the New York community he mentioned Charles and and he drives two and a half hours each way to come to events and he's been to I think all events. Yeah, he's been to all the events and he's just amazing building really cool stuff. And so that really inspired and motivated Nick, the organizer. And he shared this quote with **[16:42]** me, which I love. He said, you know, it's not just a meetup. It's a source of in belonging, connection, and inspiration. Sometimes people come for the tech, but stay for the people. And that's the best feeling as an organizer knowing you helped create that space. So I I couldn't agree with him more. And same for my dad. You know, he came for the tech and and stayed for the people and also for his brain. he said. Um, so that's community members. So talked about people, the importance of people. Now I want to talk about **[17:13]** engagement strategies. As you're building community programs, how do you make them active, longasting, engaged? One way is through global event series. But first, it's always good to think about like why are we doing this? I saw a number of funnels yesterday. I know Jeff's talk had a funnel as well, which was helpful. Like a lot of funnels. And this I I use this one from Puff. He worked at Google Firebase. He's at Flutterflow now. This is a a Devril adoption funnel. The usual stuff and you **[17:44]** know awareness to activation. I focus my time on the love support and connecting with champions and and um and working with them. But now that you know what you're doing, why then you know and you decided I want to do a global event series. Here's one that I see as a great model. Um, so this is DevFest. These happen every year at the end of the year, usually like October to December. It's been around for like 13 years. Oh, Shenny also is here. She worked on this **[18:15]** program with me. Hey, Shenny from Google. Um, many years. And it's community-led, one-day tech conference, lots of talks and workshops. And they had a consistent look and feel like this was the design that we used um but local, very different vibes and and a lot of fun. Um, this was in Poland. I was there and then London. Um, and so these are good because it's like some communities weren't active for months at a time, but then everyone would do the DevFest. It's like, okay, we do this. This is our end of year **[18:45]** celebration. And so it would activate a lot of communities and these are the things that we provided them for these events. So we we had an organizer guide with design assets. Um we'd provide budget, swag, content and also would connect them with speakers if they asked for that and marketing. We would have a global push sharing on socials like check out this event near you. So we would do a lot of marketing around it and so it was a global movement but very much had a local feel and we had **[19:17]** hundreds of these around the world happening every year and people um would would get excited and look forward to it. And I think we we're going to do more of these uh at Flutterflow in the future as well. Another engagement strategy is competitions. This helps people like activate product adoption sometimes just re-engaging existing users. Um at Flutterflow I've done a couple. One is um the AI for good hackathon. I like to have a theme and it's just a good way of **[19:47]** like getting people encouraging folks to build on the platform. These were a couple of the winners. And it's also good for marketing afterwards. You can showcase some of the cool stuff that people built. And yeah, so that's it's also good for communities because you can say like, hey, you can host a meetup for everyone to work on that project for that competition at the same time. Um, so that increases engagement as well. At Google, I led um yeah, I led the student clubs programs for many of many years **[20:18]** and and also the solution challenge. So this was an annual competition. It's like okay, you've learned through workshops. Now let's build let's let's build something. We would often encourage them to build use more than one Google product. So oftentimes it was like Firebase and Flutter for example. And then we'd have a demo day at the end. We had a theme you uh UN's um sustainable development goals. And it was a good time to just activate communities. They had a lot of like lunchtime meetups to like work on their projects together and and it was a lot **[20:50]** of fun. Definitely increased engagement and some great stories from that. And lastly, partnering with other companies. I'd say especially at a startup, it just if you partner with other companies, you can kind of split the budget, more exposure on both sides and also the split the effort. So we have we did partner with Google cloud in India uh on a hackathon recently and then revenue catat were one of the the partners uh for the vibing vibe coding award I think it's called but what I **[21:22]** like about uh revenue cat this is in August is they have a build in public award and they said they got like so many submissions for that one like just encouraging people to build in public and then I think they picked the one that built in public the most and that just helps with additional exposure so I really like that idea. So three takeaway for engagement strategies to get your communities active engaged would be global event series um competitions and also partnering with other companies. **[21:56]** And so in summary it's all about people and engagement and that leads to awesome active longlasting communities. And if you take nothing else away from this talk, I would encourage you to find a Larry near you. Someone who's a community member and just continues to engage, participate in the community and break becomes leadership and and continues to support. Maybe you're not setting out to build a 40-year community program. I know the tech is changing **[22:28]** fast, but uh just you want it to be long lasting. So definitely look out for Larry's near you. Um, so thank you so much and definitely connect with me on LinkedIn. Take care. >> Awesome. Thank you. And I'd love to chat with you afterwards and learn from all of you. >> Thank you. Thank you. Um, I think we may have a couple minutes if anybody has any **[22:59]** questions for Erica. Thank you so much. That was so inspiring and exciting and I've always loved your work. So, everybody should follow Erica all the time in all the things. And um I have a new role now and um I'm honestly not quite staffed for community and I wonder if you have any tips on this situation where we don't have a community manag manager. It's just me and a couple of um engineers actually **[23:29]** trying to relaunch community. >> Thank you. Yeah, that that's a great question. Um I mean at Google, one thing I didn't mention is we had teammates all over the world and a lot of like Google employees managing those communities around the world. Um and at Flutterflow for 53 communities, it's Mano who's leading it. Um, and for the 30 student ambassadors, it's me. But at some point, you can only you can't **[24:00]** really add so many more. So, um, yeah, that that's a great question. I I would say it's like starting small and then also finding champions within those groups that can be a bit more involved and engaged and maybe some of them could host some of the meetings and sharing best practices. We naturally over time find some that are just like wanting to share their knowledge a bit more and help out a bit more. So some of them do end up volunteering. So I'd like lean on some of the the champions a bit more. Um **[24:30]** but there is going to be a limit to like the scaling and then you at a certain point you might not be able to engage with them so much. Then you have to hire it's like it is very helpful to have like at least one person who's the point of contact. Um so yeah, I'd love to also learn from other people like what they've done in those situations if anyone has any advice. Um yeah. Thank you, Erica. Um, I'm also a product of the of your work at Google. Um, so my **[25:00]** question, I work for an enterprise company and most of our users are probably developers of the enterprise company themselves. How do you have any tips on how to build communities with this uh titles users? We we're doing more of that now because we we do have an a whole enterprise team and there's been discuss some discussions of how do we support that team more engage with them because there are a number of developers at the enterprises that want to learn more and **[25:32]** they are interested in meetups. So what we've been doing so far isn't inviting them to the existing meetups near them. Um we've been getting some of those developers to be speakers at events. So, we're just trying to integrate them into the existing communities. Um, there could be some like a separate program for developers from enterprise, but we've tried to integrate it and I think we're going to be doing more and more of that because it's definitely helpful for them to continue to learn and meet other people and speak at those events. So, yeah, I think it's so useful for sure. **[26:06]** >> All right. Thank you so much, Erica. Again, uh, please give it up for Erica.