Daniel Franc explains how he began Google's meetup group and gradually grew it into the global phenomenon it is today. Plenty of excellent tips for applying advanced social sciences to build powerful online communities.

1. Growing global communities
Daniel Franc
Developer Relations Program Manager, Google

2. Meet the massive global universe of Google
meetup communities... GDG, GBG, GEG
Google Developer Groups: Google has provided support to GDG since 2009, having
emerged from several brands since 2007 (incl. GUG.cz)
In-person meetup community events, organized by volunteer organizers: mostly
technical topics for developers, networking events, hackathons, conferences.
602 chapters in 106 countries, doing over 3000
events in the past 6 months globally

3. Our place in the community space:
We are a primary partner:
- not an owner nor manager
- we support them and help maintain the
platform
- we don’t manage them, but we bring
various inspirations for their activities
Mission alignment is critical to success:
They align with our mission to help the
developer ecosystem be active, create
great apps and technology companies

4. Driving and sustaining a global growth...
... naturally

6. “Community Adaptive System”
1
Actors
2
Rules
3
Resources
4
Interaction
5
Network
6
Learning
Distributed management Emergent Action Culture

7. Actors Rules Resource Interact Network Learning
Self-identification. People come to you - not you to them.
Self-similarity. They feel fitting “in” and want to become “insiders”.
Self-motivation. Nobody has to give them anything that the community life doesn’t
already provide.
Wrong people? Ideally, they shouldn’t even want to join. If they still want to, they
shouldn’t be able to enter the community. If they enter it, they should find out that it’s
not for them and leave themselves. If they don’t leave, the community shouldn’t let
them play. If they still play, an authority has to intervene.
How to get the right people?
Distribution
Emergence
Culture

8. Values: your community DNA. Build only on a
few of them, express them by the other layers,
use them as a check for community activities.
Norms: charters are ok and they can help correct
unwanted behaviors.
Behaviors: celebrate the desired ones.
The “outer shell”: promote stories, legends,
heros, rituals, lingo, fashion, in-jokes, ...
How to build the culture?
Actors Rules Resource Interact Network Learning Emergence
Culture
Distribution
Values
Norms
Behaviors
Visuals, stories, heroes

9. Actors Rules Resource Interact Network Learning
RULES: Rules as in “Game rules”. Make them awfully simple. They define the core
behaviors from which the complex swarm action emerges.
GOALS: Don’t impose your company objectives to the communities. Look for
intersection between your goals and the direction of the community swarm
(“patterns” emerging from collective primitive behavior). Support this intersection by:
1) promoting rules that lead in this direction
2) providing resources for the behaviors that support the primitive behaviors
Distribution
Emergence
Culture
How can “rules” help your goals?

10. How to support the community best?
Actors Rules Resource Interact Network Learning Emergence
Culture
Distribution
No salaries / wages for community organizers. Remember: motivation comes from the
within. (Exceptions may/will happen with platform organizers / administrators).
Ideal resources are 1) the most difficult ones to get, 2) covering something otherwise
“boring” for the organizers 3) the most impactful ones.
Inmaterial resources are easier and “cheaper” to provide.
Give just enough: Rather less than more: it’s important for the culture & for geneating
energy.
Provide resources that support both activities and the platform infrastructure (the
infrastructure resources may be crucial)

11. How to increase interactions?
Actors Rules Resource Interact Network Learning Emergence
Culture
Distribution
The more interaction, the merrier. The Interactions are the 2nd most important piece
of your community story (after Actors). They support all remaining components, but
can’t exist without them. Reduce noise by creating various channels and giving people
choice which ones are relevant.
Sadly, interactions can’t be enforced. But they happen when
1) they’re a natural way for people to “live” in the community
2) they bring value to the people who interact, not to you
3) all of the other elements are well present in your community

12. How to create a massive action without
planning it & managing it?
Actors Rules Resource Interact Network Learning Emergence
Culture
Distribution
1. Enable free generation of random behaviors
2. Enable these random actions to form semi-stable regularities
3. When regularities survive in time and attract other interactions, stable patterns
may emerge
Allow for free competition among these regularities and patterns to identify the most
viable ones. Make dying out of the patterns easy, simple and fun. Works (almost
always) only bottom-up!

13. How to build the right community
network?
Actors Rules Resource Interact Network Learning Emergence
Culture
Distribution
The network are the veins and nerves of your community. Make the “nodes”
transparent and easy to connect with, and their connections rich, yet not creating too
much noise.
Create organizer directories, online channels - synchronous / asynchronous, f2f
channels - meetups, summits, cross-event participation
Break down the community if network doesn’t allow for interactions! Create sub-
forums, sub-groups (topical / spatial / any criteria), clusters, but still maintain the
network in open for all-to-all access

14. How to influence the network
when you’re not the boss?
Actors Rules Resource Interact Network Learning Emergence
Culture
Distribution
You can’t manage it directly: Use distributed architecture principles - the network
manages itself. You can manage only the platform hosting the system “components”.
But… You can insert stimuli to the network with potential for pattern emergence
Informal leaders can function as coaches / mentors / advisors and influence the
system. You can influence the system by assisting in choosing these informal
leaders.

15. How to drive community change?
Actors Rules Resource Interact Network Learning Emergence
Culture
Distribution
Sharing of experiences and interactions with them.
Culture of the #fail. Define what “failure” is - and de-negativize non-catastrophic
failures.
“Constant reorg” - upgrade the platform to reflect changing actors, behaviors,
patterns, resources needed, etc.
Listen 10x more than you think it’s adequate. Create channels for feedback for
yourself - but everyone else as well.

16. Now to the stars...And now to the
stars.
Thanks for your
attention!
dfranc@google.com
http://plus.ly/dfranc