HP developer community

Community Statistics
Membership chairman: Rocky Pisto
Site: http://www.vivit-worldwide.org/portal.cfm
Forums: http://devresource.hp.com
Blogs: http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/blogs

Background: Vivit is an independent, HP Software sanctioned users group & facilitates the free exchange of information among members, HP & software solution partners. The organization provides ongoing education, programs & services for HP software customers/partners worldwide

Top 3 good things:

• HP has local chapters in regions & countries across the world. A local chapter is a group of members that come together to leverage their experience & expertise by forming a local group. This local group is either a geographically-based regional chapter or a special interest group (SIG), a virtual community organized around a specific technology/application. There are many benefits of participating in local chapters:
  a) Presentations and information exchange about new products & services
  b) Access to HP software product engineers/developers
  c) Expanded contacts
  d) Increased visibility to HP
  e) Direct communication with other members of the local chapter
  
• HP‘s site has a link to its career center. This site offers various benefits to the employer & job seeker.
  a) Benefits to the employer: Through career central, industry employers can streamline their hiring process by posting openings & searching for candidates from a targetted pool of enterprise management professionals. To advertise career opportunities and gain access to resume searching features, employers can purchase 30, 60 & 90 day job postings and take advantage of package pricing & other incentives
  b) Benefits to the job seeker: Career central is free to all member job seekers looking to find a job using their HP software skills. The site allows job seekers to post their resumes, setup job search agents, search job postings & apply online for positions of interest
  
• HP‘s members can earn points through its member point system. Member status is established using a points-based feedback mechanism. Authors of original questions “grade” (on a scale from 1-10) other members who reply to their questions. The higher the grade the more effective the response was in solving the question. Each response to a question is eligible to receive feedback for its success in solving the user’s problems. The more questions a member answers, the more points he is eligible to earn & the higher status he holds amongst his peers in the community. This system is HP‘s way of turning the reward mechanism over to the community
  

Top 3 things to improve:

• HP-TV provides online videos and downloadable videocasts/podcasts covering research & development, company history, customer success stories and product & services. To encourage these, HP could offer prizes to developers coming up with interesting and relevant videos. A forum could also be provided to members who would like to provide feedback & criticism
  
• HP‘s developer experts can be useful in hiring new employees through its career central site. These new recruits can be taken through a training program where the experts can train them. This way, employees can find able mentors from within HP and the company can find great new employees
  
• Today, HP‘s blogs, forums and community areas are scattered around various locations on HP’s corporate websites. Developers can be more productive if these are located in one place