BIRT Exchange Forum: BIRT Exchange Forum -> Community BIRT

I'm pleased to announce the members of the BIRT Exchange Community Leaderboard for April 2013. The purpose of this Leaderboard is to honor the top contributors to BIRT Exchange each month and to have a little fun. Scores are also posted on the BIRT Exchange Connect page. You can recognize past and current Leaderboard members by special badges on their forum and DevShare posts:


To determine the leaders, each contribution made by a BIRT Exchange member is assigned a weighted point score that roughly corresponds to its effort/value. For example, starting a forum topic by asking a question will score you 1 point and answering someone's question scores 3 points. Members with the top summed scores each month are declared the leaders for that month and posted to the Leaderboard. Over time we evolve the scoring system as needed for fairness and value to the community. We even give a point for voting on the BIRT Exchange Community home page polls (but make sure you're logged in so it will be assigned to you).

So please contribute to BIRT Exchange. It's not difficult to get a decent score and we'd love to see you on the Leaderboard next month!

You can find details on the Community Leaderboard Wiki. If you have any suggestions or comments, please add them to this blog post (they're worth 2 points).

If you'll be in the central Germany area on the evening of May 16, don't miss the BIRT User Group Mannheim meeting at 6:00pm. BIRT User Groups are excellent opportunities to improve your BIRT skills, learn new things and network with other BIRT users in your area. New, intermediate and expert BIRT users and developers are all welcome.

Agenda:

• 6-7pm: High performance BIRT reports. This presentation describes some common pitfalls on your way to creating high performance reports. It covers ineffective interactions with the report engine API and points out some bad decisions that can lead to poor report design.
  
• 7-8pm: Networking. Get to know other BIRT enthusiasts. Discuss features of the latest BIRT release and talk about topics and presentations for the next meeting.

The meeting is totally free of charge. Snacks and drinks will be provided -- as well as a DZone BIRT cheat-sheet handout and some nice doorprizes!

You can get additional information and register for this meeting by clicking here.

If you don't live close to any of the existing BIRT User Groups and would be interested in seeing one formed in you area, please contact me.

We are still looking for more developers to build new BIRT plug-ins as part of the Plug In 2 BIRT contest. There are less than two weeks left before the deadline -- but that's plenty of time to get your code built and submitted.

You say you've never built a plug-in before?
No problem, they are easier to build than you might think! The contest web site has lots of tutorials and examples to help you get started. Plus you'll find a wealth of ideas and suggestions there for plug-ins that many BIRT users have asked for.

Take a look and give it a shot for a chance to win an iPad (we're giving 3 away). We'd love to see what you can come up with.

Last month I had the honor along with Nobby Akiha (our Marketing SVP at Actuate) of doing a presentation on Developer Advocacy at the Evans Data Developer Relations Conference (DRC). Advocacy is a growing marketing trend that organizes and provides incentives to people who talk positively about a company and its technologies, products or services. In particular, advocates are a company's greatest fans.

My talk centered on the group of select BIRT developers we're identifying at Actuate and our objectives to give them credit when they talk about BIRT and provide them with interesting and effective ways of doing so. We're using a cool gamified infrastructure hosted by Influitive to provide the recruitment, recognition and organization of these developers. Advocates are given opt-in challenges that are simple or complex tasks to promote BIRT within their social and/or professional spheres of influence. Plus I try to make it fun and rewarding! Completed challenges give a weighted number of "points" for the advocate based on the level of effort required, badges are awarded for special achievements, and people are placed on a Leaderboard for some fun competition.

Some of the challenges I've designed ask advocates to comment on blogs or articles, start on-line conversations about data reporting and visualization, answer questions about BIRT, provide us with feedback on training materials and even just fill out their BIRT Exchange profiles so others get to know them better. In thanks for their advocacy we will reward them in ways meaningful to them like increasing their professional or personal on-line capital or giving them access to events or other areas of interest.


In fact, the good people at Influitive were kind enough to build a custom site for the DRC that I used to create gamified challenges for the attendees so they could experience what an advocacy program was like for themselves. The challenges ranged from simple tweeting during the conference to joining the DRC LinkedIn group, liking Evans Data on Facebook, taking quizzes, reading and commenting on blogs and providing feedback about the conference.

The DRC itself was very rewarding and as usual I was very impressed by the speakers, insights and the wealth of information I received. I highly encourage anyone who is a developer relations professional to attend this unique annual event. Evans Data always provides the latest look into what developers like and dislike, what motivates them and the best ways to get their attention. Did you know hat 42% of the developers Evans surveyed are developing mobile apps (half of the developers moonlight). Another interesting tidbit is that most developers rely on vendors as the most credible sources for emerging technologies (i.e., not their peers) -- this is a big change in past years.

Take a look at the conference site for a list of the speakers and topics discussed. Also please feel free to post a comment if you want to find out more about what we're doing for BIRT advocacy at Actuate.

This introductory training series is designed for those unfamiliar or just getting started with BIRT. During the day you will hear about technical strategies and opportunities that will help you anticipate and address future business needs –plus– learn how to develop rich information applications for your users through hands-on training that covers Eclipse and Actuate BIRT features.

These Roadshows are great ways to learn more about BIRT whether you're an Eclipse open source developer or an Actuate customer. Lunch is provided as well as giveaways and door prizes so you can expect an informative day with a chance to meet other BIRT users in your area and have a little fun.

Don't miss this opportunity to take part in one of these exciting events.

I'm pleased to announce the members of the BIRT Exchange Community Leaderboard for March 2013. The purpose of this Leaderboard is to honor the top contributors to BIRT Exchange each month and to have a little fun. Scores are also posted on the BIRT Exchange Connect page. You can recognize past and current Leaderboard members by special badges on their forum and DevShare posts:


To determine the leaders, each contribution made by a BIRT Exchange member is assigned a weighted point score that roughly corresponds to its effort/value. For example, starting a forum topic by asking a question will score you 1 point and answering someone's question scores 3 points. Members with the top summed scores each month are declared the leaders for that month and posted to the Leaderboard. Over time we evolve the scoring system as needed for fairness and value to the community. We even give a point for voting on the BIRT Exchange Community home page polls (but make sure you're logged in so it will be assigned to you).

So please contribute to BIRT Exchange. It's not difficult to get a decent score and we'd love to see you on the Leaderboard next month!

You can find details on the Community Leaderboard Wiki. If you have any suggestions or comments, please add them to this blog post (they're worth 2 points).

At EclipseCon Boston, Actuate announced the Plug In to BIRT Contest for Spring 2013 .

This new contest will award a new 4th generation iPad for each of the 3 best plug-in implementations (extensions to BIRT) submitted to BIRT Exchange between now and April 30, 2013.

Our Contest Details and Examples Wiki page has everything you need to get started -- tutorials, sample code, and lots of suggestions for new plug-ins we'd like to see.

But you've never created a BIRT plug-in before?
Not a problem. Plug-ins are usually straightforward to implement for most good developers -- in fact our previous winners were almost all first-time BIRT plug-in developers.

And if you're up for a challenge, BIRT developers are always looking for new Chart Types. We have several ideas listed or please come up with your own.

IMPORTANT
We are asking for source code in this contest to help in the judging. You can license the source however you wish as long as the judges are authorized to evaluate it.

So check out the Contest Details and Examples Wiki page and get started!

Do you use any of the products in ActuateOne^® (Actuate’s BIRT-based suite of commercial products for development and deployment of custom business analytics applications)? If so, make your voice heard and join the independent 2013 Wisdom of Crowds Business Intelligence study being run by Dresner Advisory Services, a well-respected market research firm.

From the study questionnaire:

"The objective of this study is to collect data on trends, vendors and products in the Business Intelligence marketplace. As a result we will be able to examine the realities, plans and perceptions surrounding this important market. We will also rank vendors and products - creating an important tool for those seeking to invest in Business Intelligence Solutions."

We want this effort to be a success and you can help by spending 15 minutes to fill out the questionnaire. Please don't forget to choose Actuate as your primary vendor (only one vendor can be selected).

TAKE A LOOK AND COMPLETE THE QUESTIONNAIRE

We appreciate your time and interest. Qualified users who complete the study will receive a complimentary copy of the results for their personal use.

I'm pleased to announce the members of the BIRT Exchange Community Leaderboard for February 2013. The purpose of this Leaderboard is to honor the top contributors to BIRT Exchange each month and to have a little fun. Scores are also posted on the BIRT Exchange Connect page. You can recognize past and current Leaderboard members by special badges on their forum and DevShare posts:


To determine the leaders, each contribution made by a BIRT Exchange member is assigned a weighted point score that roughly corresponds to its effort/value. For example, starting a forum topic by asking a question will score you 1 point and answering someone's question scores 3 points. Members with the top summed scores each month are declared the leaders for that month and posted to the Leaderboard. Over time we evolve the scoring system as needed for fairness and value to the community. We even give a point for voting on the BIRT Exchange Community home page polls (but make sure you're logged in so it will be assigned to you).

So please contribute to BIRT Exchange. It's not difficult to get a decent score and we'd love to see you on the Leaderboard next month!

You can find details on the Community Leaderboard Wiki. If you have any suggestions or comments, please add them to this blog post (they're worth 2 points).

I attended Community Leaders Summit West (CLS West) in San Jose a couple weeks ago which is an annual unconference for community leaders. As usual it was a very stimulating event where lots of cutting edge ideas and tools were discussed. About 100 people from mostly the SF Bay Area showed up. They represented wide community concerns from developer programs, education, support groups, women's shelters and non-profits to name a few. Three topics I found really exciting:

Ideation
Ideation is a process of generating ideas that's been around for a while. What was new (for me at least) was learning how companies are using portals to solicit new ideas from their customers and get votes on the best ones. I've seen this before, but didn't realize that making use of third party sites to implement it is rather easy and not too expensive. I went to a session given by Linda Sharp of Religence who said this has been very effective for some companies. She warned that weeding out great ideas from the most popular ones, however, can be challenging because popularity is not always indicative of real innovation.

UserVoice, is an example of one of these portals. It costs $70 a month and seems very straightforward to set up. CLS West used this service before the conference to get feedback from the registrants to solicit and gauge the popularity of various topic ideas. Here are the services that were mentioned.

• Spigit is a good tool to collect ideas and votes
  
• UserVoice provides ideation using help desk/support forums
  
• ConfirmIt does ideation by gathering customer feedback and insights

Community Advocacy
I ran a session on Community Advocacy (i.e., finding ways for people who love your product/service to talk about it in the places they hang out and in ways that are really effective) and had a good meeting, although it didn't get a big turnout. I talked to lots of people at the conference about advocacy and there seemed to be a lot of interest, but no one I spoke to seemed to be doing it in a controlled manner. Gamified portals like Influitive seem very promising and I'm looking into that quite seriously for BIRT. Still, this kind of advocacy hasn't really caught on yet. I expect it to be big someday, really big.

Using Google+
I haven't used Google+ much but was pleased to learn there are lots of capabilities with Google+ that are free and useful for managing communities. Events and hangouts can be set up quickly and made public (on-air) or kept private. Photos and video recordings are simple to capture and save for posterity. Comments and discussions can also be easily added to any topics. I think this might be a great way to set up virtual user groups meetings or live discussions with our community. It works with mobile too.

Summary
Overall CLS West was an well-spent day to be sure. I'd recommend it or its sister meeting at OSCON to anyone who deals with a community. Oh... and if you've used any of these tools or concepts I mentioned, please comment below and let us all know what's worked and what hasn't.