Craft community practices

Over the last few months, I’ve had some fascinating conversations with a few colleagues and clients on the topic of craft communities — how to get them going, scale them up, get them ahead and improve engagement. Having co-found the IBM iX software engineering community, and helped clients establish vibrant craft communities over the years, I’ve seen the benefits firsthand.

These conversations have inspired me to share experiences as a mini series on the topic. To spice things up, you won’t just be hearing from me — I’ll be inviting a guest co-author to share their perspective too ;-).

To keep the content succinct and actionable, we’ll capture craft community practices that we’ve spotted over the years. We’ll cover what they are, the benefits, how they work, when they are useful, with example implementations that draw on our experience.

If you’re in the process of establishing a craft community, or interested in reinvigorating your community, we’re writing this for you!

Here’s a little teaser to give you a flavour on what we’ll cover.

Part 1 will cover practices that help you form a diverse and inclusive community: Open Meet-up, Brownbag, Community API, Hopes & Fears, Community Contract, and Craft Radar.

Part 2 will cover practices that help your community invest in its people: Career & Learning Path, Coaching Network, Community Lab and Community Wellbeing.

Part 3 will cover practices that help your community get its craft ahead: Skunk Works, Invention Mining, Emerging Craft Experimentation and Crafting 4 Good.

Part 4 will cover practices that help your community get products ahead: Best Practice Framework, Open Practice Library, Starter Kit, Community Contribution Model and Mob Review.

Part 5 will cover practices that help build your community brand: Community Blogging, Community VLogging, Community Podcasting, Conference Speaking, Hackathon, Conference Host and Open Source Contribution.

We look forward to sharing!