How to run a tech community?

Why do people need the tech community?

The composition of your tech knowledge intake

Perception of Value-frequency

In addition to disclosing the unknown unknown, the community discussions creating values in accessibility, building connections, and novelty.

	Group Discussion	Published Contents
accessibility	low	high
building connections	more	less
novelty	high	low

Case study: Value Proposition of Tech Communities

1. For Utility
2. For Fun
3. For Career Growth

1. For Utility

Wechaty: a Bot SDK for Wechat Individual Account

Two-layer Biz Structure:

To Business	Social CRM, AI-powered Chatbot
To Developer	Bot SDK and Service Token

Other examples:

1. Google play console discussion group
2. Some AI platform discussion group
3. Cross-platform dev tech group
4. …

2. For Fun

Discussion groups for specific topics posted in a popular online forum could attract hundreds of people once.

e.g., Blockchain Random Discussion Group

3. For Career Growth

Ex1. Seattle Data Science in Practice Group (WeChat 500)

1. Focus on data science and tech in practice
2. No random discussion
3. Periodical sharing and meetup, e.g.
4. Intro to Tableau data visualization
5. Hands-on Spark Python
6. Building an ML Model from Scratch
7. Business Writing
8. Computer Vision Industry Frontline
9. …

What kinds of discussions happen in the group?

1. Article sharing and discussion
2. Job opportunities (posting resume + hiring session)
3. QA: Tech problems / solutions / best practices in daily work
4. Theories and concepts
5. Corporate ladder

Ex2. CS Career Hackers (Discord 1000+)

CSCH is a community ranging from learners to experienced software engineers who come together to discuss programming, interviewing, career advancement, and, ultimately, how to be better engineers.

1. 501c3 nonprofit
2. QA
3. no politics, religion, or other controversial topics

What kinds of discussions happen in the group?

1. QA (career, programming, machine learning, system design, coding challenges)
2. moderation
3. resume review
4. ask a manager
5. meetups

Blockchain and dev community

Challenges

1. Utility value.
2. Unverified market segment.
3. Align topics with the company's growth.
4. Techies are not interested in generic marketing campaigns.

Solutions

• Engineering Blog - that can be subscribed and separated from generic marketing contents for investors.
• Discussion Groups - on Topics like:
  1. distributed systems
  2. blockchain
  3. IoT
  4. DApp
  5. FinTech
  6. SCM
• Weekly Tech Review - sharing experiences and resources

Why does it align with the company?

• brand-awareness - Like all the other engineering blogs, it helps the company build the engineering brand.
• conversion - user base for engaging and even conversion. e.g. Hubspot's inbound marketing.
• partnership - deepen the relationships with our dev partners by co-host online / offline events.
• private domain traffic / community economy - put our community dev tools (XRC20, XRC721) into wider audiences and grow with the private domain traffic
• use cases collect problems or use cases that developers meet in their daily work

How to initiate the effort for Blockchain companies?

Twitter + Engineering Blog + Discussion Groups

1. prepare ten engineering blogs first and write / post one per week.
2. moderate Discord and WeChat groups on distributed systems, blockchain, IoT, DApp, FinTech, SCM, and so on.
   1. launch campaigns among study groups and forums
   2. kindly share with our techie friends and groups
   3. online + offline events with our tech partners
3. trial and error by providing high-value contents and launching campaigns