BIRT Exchange Forum: BIRT Exchange Forum -> Community BIRT

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.

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.

Every year BIRT customers, BIRT developers and Actuate gather for Actuate Customer Days. This year's title, ActuateOne Live! 2012 is coming to San Francisco on November 8th and New York on November 14th. It's not too late to register for one of these free and informative all day events.

Whether you are an Actuate customer or an open source BIRT user, ActuateOne Live! is a great opportunity for managers, developers and analysts to learn more about the future of BIRT and what Actuate's commercial enhancements bring to the table. This year we will focus on big data and how BIRT is the solution for your big data visualization needs.

Developers will find interest in the Tips and Tricks sessions:

• Jason Weathersby - BIRT Essentials: Tips and Tricks Every Developer Should Know
  Learn some great new techniques about how to get the most out of your BIRT designs.
  
• Pierre Tessier - BIRT + Mobile: The Future Is Now
  See some of the wizardry you can perform with mobile and ActuateOne technologies.
  
• BIRT 3.7 Cheat Sheet Refcardz and a drawing for BIRT Books will also be available at the BIRT Exchange booth.

What to Expect at ActuateOne Live! 2012

• ActuateOne Live! keynote from CEO Pete Cittadini: The BIRT Big Data Hub
  
• Data Visualization and Big Data Keynotes from special guest experts Stephen Few and Shaku Atre
  
• Be one of the first to hear about the latest new features of Actuate 11!
  
• Big Data, BIRT 360 Dashboards and Scorecards: how it all comes together
  
• Networking with colleagues, Actuate management, BIRT experts and the community
  
• And of course, Actuate Customer Days always has some great prize drawings!

For More Information
Click on the city of your choice below, then register to attend.

• San Francisco - November 8, 2012
  
• New York - November 14, 2012

Every year the BIRT world -- customers, BIRT developers and Actuate -- gathers for Actuate Customer Days. This year's theme, ActuateOne Live!, is coming to several cities throughout the world starting this November.

Whether you are an Actuate customer or an open source BIRT user, ActuateOne Live! is a great opportunity for managers, developers and analysts to learn more about the future of BIRT and what Actuate's commercial enhancements bring to the table. See for yourself why The Forrester Wave™: Open Source Business Intelligence (BI), Q3 2010 report said, "Actuate BIRT led the pack because of richness of reporting functionality.”

BONUS: As part of these events (and depending upon location), attendees can receive up to 4 hours of free hands-on training!

What to Expect

• ActuateOne Live! keynote from CEO Pete Cittadini
  
• Live Challenge- Watch "straw" flat tables turned into "gold" interactive dashboards using BIRT
  
• Hands-on training for BIRT Design and BIRT 360 Dashboards (varies depending on location)
  
• What's new in ActuateOne - latest features and analytics in release 11
  
• Live customer successes delivering value with BIRT and ActuateOne
  
• Networking with colleagues, Actuate management, BIRT experts and the community

For More Information
Click on the city of your choice below, then register to attend.

• San Francisco - November 3, 2011
  
• New York - November 9, 2011
  
• Paris - November 15, 2011
  
• London - November 16, 2011
  
• Frankfurt - November 17, 2011
  
• Singapore - December 1, 2011