One sure shot way to ensure that your community is involved is to work on ideas that encourage community participation. For instance a really simple one is Share a Tip Day. The idea is to encourage the community to share their best ideas in less than 150 words and ensure that there is a way for people to rate those ideas. Ok why 150 words, it’s simple it’s a tip not an article. Secondly, it reduces the barrier in peoples minds to contribute. You could also turn this into mini-session lets say you have four or more people who come up during a meeting and spend 15 minutes explaining their ideas/tips.
For e.g. You could have an ASP.Net tips repository, or a Developer tips repository, or best practices for setting up a new developer machine or tools in your developer kit or tools you use everyday, or your best learning resources.
Here are some guidelines to ensure success:
- Start with one specific area e.g. Best learning resources, ASP.Net, IIS etc.
- Appoint one volunteer – who will
- seed the list with at least 5-6 items
- spread the word
- Find more contributors
- Approach at least ten people in your group to contribute two tips each before you publicly launch the idea. You might not have all ten respond, even if you have 3-4 you’re ready to go. If not evaluate with them what topic/specific area might be more suitable.
- Ensure that you allow people to rate the items.
- Reward the tip contributors in each category – promote them on your website/newsletter and mail members the top tips in the category each month, clearly highlighting the top contributors.
If you have a number of volunteers helping out in your group, you could possibly start multiple tip repositories. However, I’d advise to start with one, take the learning’s from it and create more.
