Whitepapers & case studies are located on Intel‘s OpenSource software page www.intel.com/opensource These articles cover topics from high level overviews to technical explanations to code samples and make it possible to learn more about the merits and techniques of developing OpenSource software on Intel platforms
Cash and prizes are given to Game developers. Prize money of over $95000 is up for grabs in Intel‘s Game demo contest. This encourages developers to build games that showcase Intel‘s platforms
Intel’s community site has a pointer to its online store at http://www.intel.com/buy where you can find a comprehensive list of Intel products. This makes it easy for developers to purchase and use Intel products
Top 3 things to improve:
Intel lists whitepapers and case studies for its OpenSource products. It would be great if similar publications for more of its products were posted on its community area. This would make it possible for developers to look at other products & find ways to achieve similar success with their products
Blogs and discussion forums are provided only in the US site. I could not find discussion forums or blogs at other locations (example Australia, Europe)
A suggestion box or some other mode of feedback could have been provided in the community pages. Moreover, if this feedback is rated by the community’s users, it would provide everyone with an idea of the suggestion’s usefulness and the member’s standing in the community
Top 3 good things: - The Adobe Community Experts program is a community based program made up of Adobe customers who share their product expertise with the world-wide Adobe community. Adobe community experts agree to be active contributors to the Adobe world-wide community by: a) Engaging in peer-to-peer support in the Adobe forums b) Posting information and technical support in their favorite online community c) Writing articles for professional publications d) Presenting Adobe product presentations at conferences and user groups This is a great program to have and provides high caliber peer-to-peer communication educating and improving the product skills of Adobe customers world-wide
- Adobe's Developer Center has samples and tutorials that contain code and downloadable projects. This is a great resource for a developer and can be used to learn how to build complex projects and applications. For example, in the Adobe Tour Tracker application, the Adobe Experience Design (XD) team gives race fans a way to sit back & experience every sprint and turn throughout the event without having to leave their chairs. Sports enthusiasts can watch their favorite events from the comfort of their living rooms
- Adobe's community site has a link to an online store which makes it easy to shop online for a variety of products. Moreover, the stores are classified based on location. So if you're in Italy, you can shop through an online store tailormade for the Italian market
Top 3 things to improve: - Adobe's bloggers can be rated based on the quality of their discussions. This would be a great way to know the reputation of a blogger before delving into his/her blogs
- Adobe labs provides the developer community with access to pre-release versions of products and technology in development. It would be great if developers are invited to test these products. For example, developers can act as beta testers and provide valuable feedback that Adobe can use to fix bugs and improve the quality of these products
- Adobe's community for educators lists case studies. It would be great if such case studies are provided for all of Adobe's communities thus providing valuable reference points for new developers, customers and partners
Cisco‘s site has a section called “Ask the experts” where Cisco experts engage in discussions with members on specific networking issues. The experts also answer questions related to small & medium sized businesses. These discussions are broadcast/podcast to users and are helpful in resolving any questions they may have
Cisco‘s site has a section called “member product reviews” where member’s perspectives on Cisco products are found. These reviews are rated on a 5 point scale. This is a great way to encourage members to use and review Cisco‘s products. The rating system helps members find quality information faster & acknowledges those members who contribute significantly to the community
Cisco Systems Capital Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of Cisco Systems where Cisco‘s expert financial consultants help meet a customer/partner’s financial needs. The company provides innovative, flexible financial programs to Cisco‘s customers & channel partners worldwide. Providing such capital financial guidance is a great way to encourage more customers to buy Cisco‘s products
Top 3 things to improve:
No blogs on Cisco‘s community site. Blogging is a powerful medium for companies to talk to developers and/or customers and is a great way of sharing info. It would be good for Cisco to showcase this
Cisco‘s site provides a list of members with the highest point totals across all discussion forums. It would be great if there was a way to obtain the point score of any Cisco member. This could be useful when one member engages in conversation with another member
No job postings on Cisco‘s community. Employers can benefit by posting job openings for suitable well-qualified people and member job seekers can benefit by posting resumes, searching job postings and applying online for positions they’re interested in
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
Apple Developer Connection (ADC) members can help the company discover & isolate bugs within its products. Members can submit bug reports/enhancement requests on Apple products & track these submissions. This is a great way for developers to contribute to the robustness of Apple’s products
ADC provides developer Technical Support: a team made up of highly qualified engineers with development expertise in key Apple technologies provide either direct one-on-one support troubleshooting issues, hands-on assistance to accelerate a project, or helpful guidance to the right documentation and sample code. This is a good way to support developers working on Apple’s products
ADC has a link to its worldwide online store at http://www.apple.com/buy/ where developers and users can buy Apple products. It also offers support and training services
Top 3 things to improve:
No blogs or links to blogs on ADC’s site. Blogging is a powerful medium for companies to talk to developers and/or customers and is a great way to share information. For example: Microsoft used the concept of corporate blogging to bridge the divide between its customers and itself
I couldn’t find discussion forums or suggestion boxes on ADC’s site. It is difficult for developers to share their ideas and provide feedback
No tracking statistics are provided. Information like users, postings, page hits, downloads, community & site ranking makes it possible to measure the success of the community & also encourages new users to join
Registrations: 5.2 million Discussion forum threads: approx 400,000 New discussion forum messages: 1.2 million Published technical articles/notes: 600 Countries containing members: 252 Most members: US with 1.6 million Fewest members: Midway Islands with 2
Top 3 good things:
To foster the Oracle community, Oracle formally recognizes Oracle advocates with strong credentials as evangelists & educators in that community. These Oracle ACEs are technically proficient & eager to share their experiences whether through writing books, articles, or blogs, speaking at events, participating in OTN discussion forums or simply serving as Oracle advocates in their respective organizations. This is a great way to build visibility for Oracle, its products & its ACEs
To illustrate how to use Oracle products and technologies, OTN provides source code & installation instructions for complete working sample applications. The site also features an area called Code Tips where developers can share their knowledge with other Oracle users by submitting tips & techniques. This is a great way to increase the use of Oracle’s products
Community areas are provided for other countries as well. China, Japan & Korea have their own communities & these are linked to the main OTN page
Top 3 things to improve:
Communities from more countries can be featured. Today, only China, Japan & Korea are covered. It would be good to encourage Oracle affiliates in other countries to build and develop communities
An online store can be implemented where users and developers can purchase products online. For example, Intel’s community site has a pointer to http://www.intel.com/buy/index.htm where you can buy any Intel product online
The expertise of Oracle ACEs can be used to hire new employees. This way, newcomers can find able mentors and Oracle can benefit by finding great new employees
Yahoo Developer Network offers web services and APIs that make it easy for developers to build applications and mashups that integrate data sources in new ways, making the web a more useful & fun place for everyone. Mashups take content from one application and merge them with another, often to a startlingly cool effect
Yahoo HotJobs RSS feed enables you to get HotJobs search results as an RSS feed: you can then save those results in My Yahoo! or your favorite feed aggregator, or incorporate that data into your own website or client application
A suggestion box is provided: this is a great way for developers to post questions, enhancement requests, bug reports or any other feedback items pertaining to the Developer network
Top 3 things to improve:
Jobs are listed as RSS feeds. It would be good to also list them in a way that everyone can read and understand instead of having to figure out how to send the RSS request and how to decipher the RSS Response
Success stories & testimonials could be listed in the community area. This would make it possible for developers to look at other products & find ways to achieve similar success with their products
Like I’ve commented before in my blogs, more tracking statistics like page hits, downloads, community & site ranking would make it possible to measure the success of the community
I spent some time reviewing Microsoft’s Developer Community and here’s what I found:
Statistics: Forum users: 615,684 Forum posts: 1,110,622 Posts per 24 hours: 800-1000 Chats per month: 30 Newsgroups: 2000
Top 3 good things:
Lists Codeplex on the main page. This is Microsoft‘s open source project hosting website. Codeplex can be used to create new projects to share with the world, join others who have already started their own projects, or use the applications on this site to provide feedback. At last count, there were about 1407 projects
Microsoft‘s main page has a link to a site called Channel 9 which showcases various technologies and projects via audio/video. This is useful and provides an interactive way for viewers to learn and provide feedback
The community area consists of forums, blogs, technical chats, newsgroups, events and webcasts thus providing a variety of ways for developers to keep up with recent developments
Top 3 things to improve:
The community area could list job postings. This would be helpful for developers looking for jobs and employers looking for suitable people. For example, the java.net community has such a feature on its website
We were able to find community managers for individual products and technologies but could not find an owner or manager for the entire community
A former program manager lists a map: http://alexbarnett.net/blog/Default.aspx of online communities. This can be a useful start for similar efforts to map Microsoft‘s online communities and make it easier to search and navigate
Help wanted ads are listed both for developers looking for an interesting project to work on and for those involved in a java.net project who are looking for someone to fill a particular need. Listings are restricted to volunteer openings for non-commercial projects. Paid job listings are on a separate JobsWiki page
Links to success stories are provided (for example, OpenSymphony is a collection of projects that share common goals: good design, real-world applicability and loose coupling). This makes it possible for developers to look at other products & find ways to achieve similar success with their products
Blog listing by topic, date, technology makes it easy to navigate. The community area also has RSS feeds, weblogs, mailing lists, Wikis, articles, books & archives thus providing a variety of ways for developers to keep up with recent developments
Top 3 things to improve:
The help wanted ad listings have a few bugs (for example, the search listing for the JDK community does not list any ads. Also, trying to list all the ads results in a blank page)
The link to success stories has only 3 entries. More stories will go a long way in motivating developers and provide a place to showcase successful products
More project tracking statistics that are visible to everyone (for example, page hits, downloads, community & site ranking). This type of information enables emergent development to occur and measures the success of the community
• Tight communications, via asynchronous formats like mailing lists, to make sure that everybody can be kept informed about everyone else’s progress, questions & concerns • Full tracking of all collaboratively built artifacts, from specifications and designs to source code and QA test results, so all participants have rapid access to the precise deliverables that everyone is working on or are using as references • Some form of workflow, whether via a proscribed process or implemented through tracking software, to make sure that everybody knows not only what they are responsible for, but what everybody else is working on as well • Security: You need to establish technical means of ensuring that not only the relevant development teams have the ability to view & modify the work in progress, other random individuals at either location, or internet crackers, cannot have any way to get at the project • Manageability: When setting up your collaborative environment, aim for a structure that will support more than just the one team you may be collaborating with today. For example, setup your mailing lists, issue tracking, etc., on a per-application or per-project basis, so that each distinct collaboration initiative has its own workspace. This ties back into security: you need to choose and configure tools that support multiple collaborative efforts, where distinct remote teams only have access to what they need • Internationalization and localization: With a developer community that includes offshore development teams internationalization and localization issues arise, both with the collaborative development tools and the work products the teams are creating. It will not help your cause to mandate the use of tools that many members of one team cannot understand because of language barriers. Putting multilingual people in key positions can help relay information to teammates who may only speak one language
