Building a champions program from scratch

Ully Sampaio: Thank you. Wow, this is a good welcome. This picture is for me to send to my mom, so she's proud of me. I have to start by saying that this is going to be a little complicated. I'm battling anxiety. I'm trying to stick to my time presenting for the first time ever in a language that is not my mother language. You're probably hungry and you want me to finish so you can go have lunch and now this microphone is probably going to stick to my hair. So is anyone familiar with Elastic at all? Oh, this is great.

Elastic is the company behind Elastic Search, Kibana, and Logstash. We do much more than that. We do, but I like to say that the non-technical version, the explanation that I give normally to my mom or friends is like we do the magic behind when you're on Netflix or when you're ordering an Uber and you type something and then you want the search to be quick and fast. So that's the magic that Elastic does behind that.

Hi, I'm Ully. I'm from Brazil. I'm based in the US and I've started working at Elastic a little over four years ago, and I remember Elastic is my very first experience working with Tech. I have a background working with marketing my entire life, but it was healthcare programs. I worked with doctors, physicians, so dealing with developers was a different experience and I fell in love with it. And I remember that when I first started, I was talking to my former manager. I was like, okay, so you're telling me that these people they present talks about Elastic, they produce content, they do all of these kind of things during their free time for free, and we don't even say thank you.

How's that possible? So that's kind of how we started brainstorming that we need to have a Champions program. And if you all remember Caring said yesterday that gratitude and recognition, they're extremely important, and I was glad to know that my personal idea of gratitude and recognition was in alignment with what Elastic wanted. So that's how we started the idea of having the importance of having a Champions program. I think if you're, is anyone here trying to build a Champions program? Are you looking to hire, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I love Elastic Boss. I love Elastic.

But the first question that you have to answer is why do you want to build a Champions program? Those answers, they have to be very clear because the rest of the program is going to follow that. So what are you looking for? Do you want to grow just the numbers of community members? Do you want to maybe outsource talent? Do you want to have maybe a source for recruiting? What exactly do you want? Once you have those answers, very clear. That's when you're going to start like, okay, I'm ready to take the next step. The first step is defining the scope. I know this is quite boring, but I would say this most important part of the planning process, that's when you're going to define what the rules are. What do you want for the champions to do? What do you expect from them? What do they need to do to become a champion?

In what ways do you want them to contribute? What kind of thing do you expect? Do you want them to present talks? Do you want them to contribute with code? I don't know. Do you want them to become community organizers? What exactly do you want? This is the part that you're going to define everything. You're going to write down the rules. You're going to make sure how they're going to be rewarded. This is probably the phase of the process that you're going to have meetings with legal compliance and marketing and design. Name it. That's why I say it's boring, but it's extremely important because this is going to be the fundamental base of the program. And like John said yesterday, make sure that the prices are meaningful because that's what triggers oxytocin. And I even read that. I haven't read that.

So yeah, once you define the scope, then the second step that I strongly recommend is start small. I cannot stress this enough. I know ideally we would love to have this kickass program that has everything that you can like, oh my God, this is such a good program that you have a beautiful platform and people can go and find everything. Yeah, it would be great. But normally when we launch something from scratch, that's not how it goes. So if you start small, you have the opportunity to control better the environment. You are going to face problems, period. You are going to have a lot of problems. So if you start small, you have a better opportunity to okay, to turn around those things. And for example, at Elastic, we decided for a physical location. We started in Brazil, specifically in Brazil. There were reasons why we chose for that, and it was great because it gave us the opportunity to be closer to them and get the feedback from them and turn around the problems that we had.

Third step promotion. If you do start small, then you have the opportunity to make a personalized invitation. You can find those key people that you would love, you value their feedback, and then you can invite them like, Hey, I'm starting this program and then I would love for you to share your feedback with me. I would love for you to tell me, share how your experience go and be honest with how can we improve. This is being transparent and honest with community. Really highly value that when you're transparent, when you're on, it's like, Hey, this is, and we said that since the beginning, it was a pilot program. This is something that we're learning as we go, so we might encounter some problems, just work with us because that's what we are trying to do. And I think that's one of the reasons why the program was successful afterwards because we started small. We were honest and we were transparent with the community. They worked with us. They were extremely supportive, and after that, that's why we felt encouraged to launch globally in 2020.

Fourth step is feedback and do a retrospective. This is also kind of a boring part of the program, but it's extremely important. Sometimes, like I said, you are going to encounter problems and mistakes and errors. So it's really easily to just like you have a problem and then you fix it and then you just go on your life. I'm a problem solver. If I have a problem, like, okay, let's do it. Let's fix it. But if you don't document it, well, if you don't have everything in document it in retrospective, there is a chance that you're going to have the same problem again in the future. Or let's say someone is new dealing the program and then they never knew that problem happened. If you have the whole retrospective, retrospective documented, then it's going to be easier for future people who are managing the program to be aware of the problems they might encounter.

So make sure that you document everything. Make sure that you get feedback from the community. After every cycle, we send a feedback survey to the participants of the program because I mean, as a company, we get all of these benefits, right? Yeah, the community's growing, they're producing content, they're doing all these great things, but the community, they're not going to be part of this if it's not fun for them if they're not enjoying. So make sure that you listen to what they're saying. If they keep complaining about something and you do not change that, then they're eventually, they're going to not engage with that anymore. They're going to stop contributing, and you don't want that. The purpose of having a Champions program is to have these people as an extension of the company. You don't want them to be like, oh yeah, this is not exciting. And then I keep telling them about that problem that I have and they never fix. So make sure that you listen to their feedback.

Fifth Step, improve and repeat and scale. How are you going to improve if you don't listen to their feedback? So first you listen to their feedback, you make the appropriate improvements, and then you scale. Again. I'm mentioning Don again. I was listening. I was paying attention. If you do something once, it's not going to work. You have to be consistent. You have to repeat over and over and over again. So after the first cycle when we did the pilot program, we launched the global, we send the feedback survey, we read what they were complaining about. We got the compliments, we replicated again the following year, and that's what we were doing and scale. I'm sorry, I forgot your name. I even put a note on my phone. Brandon. Brandon, yeah, like you just said, how you scale. You make sure that you have more to tell your story. So when you build the Champions program, this is a way that you build almost like extensions of the company. So if you follow everything, if you follow all the steps, hopefully you're going to have these brand ambassadors. They're willing to share their knowledge with other people and then help building all of this love and community that we've been talking about.

I know some people are very curious about, I didn't want to focus entirely about the Elastic program, my program, but I am just sharing some numbers because people are just curious. So the pilot program that we did in 2019, we had over 300 contributions. They were code video tutorials, written content presentations. People were organizing meetups because those were the things that we wanted. Those were the things that we were looking for. So that's why the way we structured the program, we wanted the champions to produce content and share knowledge. The impact was like we had over 2,500 new community members joined the elastic community in Brazil since we launched the program, which meant 70% growth in the Brazilian community. We have five new user groups ran by local people and a comparison talking about apples and apples. So the first global cycle versus the current global cycle, we had an increase of 13% of participants, 38% of the amount of contributions, 11% of participant countries and 25% more in different languages and an indirect impact.

This is something that Brandon also mentioned that we hired four people from this program. It was not intentional, were not, the goal of the program was not to recruit talent. It was just a natural consequence that we found out. Okay, so these people were so engaged, so active that they became experts at Elastic, and then recruiting team reached out to them and hired. It was a natural flowy thing. It was not intentional, but it's good to see that we are building people to the point that they're comfortable and they're expert experts enough to work for us.

And at Elastic, we have an award, let's called Elastic Search Awards, and five contributors, five champions from our program also awarded with this Elastic Search Awards because of the work that they were doing for the community, all the content they were producing, like presentations and video tutorials, all of these things had such a huge impact that they were also awarded with this other reward. Like I said, this is important. Feedback is extremely important, so make sure that you listen to what they're saying. And this is just me bragging because come on, would you recommend Elastic Contributor program to others? Yes.

But one thing that I think to me that speaks the most is why did you decide to participate in the program? As you can see, this was anonymous, so they could put rewards, they could put whatever, but 63% responded professional gain and personal development, and 36% responded interest in giving back to the community. Again, Karen, Brendan, I think it was Daniel yesterday, Don, we all mentioned that the importance of feeling valuable, feeling that you're doing something that is helpful, that you're making an impact. So I was honestly expecting that they were going to put rewards, but it was a nice surprise to see that it was other things were more important for them. So my key recommendations are don't be afraid to test it out. Sorry. Like I said, we would love to start something that's really cool. The pilot program, and when we started, we were using GitHub as a platform to, sorry, to collect all of the contributions. We noticed that it was not scalable. So like, okay, let's regroup and rethink, but we test it out. It was not ideal, but we test it out. So don't be afraid to just go ahead and test it out. Just be transparent with them.

Remember to always get feedback. Did I say this already?

Make sure that you listen to what they're saying. Make sure to stick to commitments that you make. If we're willing to listen to what they have to say, make sure that you're making the appropriate changes or at least addressing their concerns there. Sometimes when they say like, oh, I got feedback. Like, oh, I wish. Just for example, at this program, we have three different tiers, bronze, silver, and gold. Obviously, we only for gold members, they get the highest prices. We cannot give all these prices to everyone. So I got people saying like, oh, it would be great to have the same prices for silver contributors. Yeah, ideally, yeah, but we can't, at least I address that with the person. Don't ignore them. Because if I want to listen to what they say and they're sharing, please address that.

Provide the tools they might need. What I mean with this, if I want them to present talks, if I want them to record video tutorials and they don't know, make sure that you are giving them the appropriate training or the tools. So at some point we wanted them to produce content related to security. So we created tutorials like, Hey, this is how you can write something about security. If you want them to record videos, provide a tutorial step by step on how to record a video or how to present a talk, make sure that you provide them the tools. Don't expect something that, I mean, they're willing to work with you. They're willing to produce all of that, but if they don't know how to do it and you just expect them to do all the work, come on, you have to do something like meet them halfway.

So provide them the tools they need. Be transparent since the beginning. If you're doing some tests, be transparent. When I was doing my research about all the Champions program, and I have nothing against the other programs that I read, but one thing that I found out was a lot of them, they have an application process. So you submit an application and then there's a group of people that select like, oh, we're choosing this person X, Y, and Z because of actually they're choosing this and you're the winner. Okay? What I dislike about that is that normally you don't get a clear explanation why that person is being selected. So we decided to make a competition. So when you log into the portal, you can go ahead and you have access to what everyone is doing. You go to the portal and say like, oh, let me see what the top one from Europe from EMEA is doing.

Let me see what the top one from a PJ, what they're doing. Let me see what the top one from America, what they're doing. Everything is available. Everyone can validate each other's content because that's how we saw how we could provide transparency to the community, bring them closer to your company. All the prices that we offer, they are related to Elastic, and they're also helping them with their journey. What I mean with this, we give them training certification. We give them certificate attempt for them to get the test. We give them cloud credits, we give them swag. Everyone gets swag. What Karen's had yesterday, it's okay. You go to a conference like, okay, you get a sticker, you get a pan, but I want something special. So that's why not everyone gets a training certificate. Not everyone gets the training subscription. Not everyone gets cloud credit, and it's not only to make them feel special, it's also to help them with the journey, because that's what we want. Ultimately, we want them to become ambassadors. We want them to become experts on elastic and how you're going to expect that if you don't give them like, okay, here's the way I see that you're super engaged, you're willing to learn. I'm giving you all the tools. Go ahead. I want to follow your journey.

Keep it fresh. So keep it fresh is if it's something that you have to do year after year, make sure that it's fun. Make sure that it's different. So every cycle I try to come up with something new, a new way to contribute or a new scoring system or a new prize, something. Because if I want the bronze contributors to become silver and the silver to become gold, I need to retain them in the program and I need to make it fun. I need to provide news for them. So keep it fresh. Make sure that you're always bringing new ideas to the program, because otherwise it gets boring. It becomes old news and nobody wants to keep doing the same thing over and over again. That's why we already work, right From Monday to Friday, we do something that's already the same old thing. So you don't want to do that on your free time. So make sure that it's fresh and it's new and it's fun, and I can't believe that I still have one minute, 30 seconds.

Audience member 1: Okay. So you and Brendan both talked about hiring some of the champions inside of your company. I never really understood why you would want to do that because you have these really strong external voices. Why would you want to hire them and make them people internally?

Ully Sampaio: Like I said, it was not intentional. It was here. Who am I if I don't give a swag? Ray? Like I said, it was not intentional. It was just a natural thing that it happened naturally. But I see everything as a flowy thing. So when they go from that journey to become just a community member, and then eventually they become a contributor and then they become an employee. It's not that they're going to stop being that voice. It's going to give room for someone else to do the same thing. That's how I view, I view as a very natural flowy process.

MC: Oh my goodness. Who has not asked a question at all? Yeah, I was like, oh goodness, ULI, I will let you throw the socks to whose hand is raised that you would like to answer? We're going to do a sock throw. All the hands went up at one time.

Ully Sampaio: No, it's only three. Two more questions, right?

MC: Yeah. Two more questions. Is there anyone who hasn't asked any questions at all these last two days? Alright, there we go. We got one hand up. Thank you so much.

Audience member 2: Yeah. So you mentioned the program was global, but are there differences like per region, how you approach them and can you share something with

Ully Sampaio: That? So it was a learning curve. I can say that because we tested in Brazil, that was, the community was not as mature, that it was in America and emea, and then we were like, okay, let's do it. It's a global program, but we award in three different regions. So we have Americas emea, which is Europe and Middle East in Africa, A PJ, Asia, Asia, Pacific, Japan. As we were doing that, we found out interesting that with the highest engagement countries are Brazil, India, United States, those are the top three countries, and I feel because of, I don't know if just the community is more willing to learn and interact, my expectation was United States and Europe to be super producing a lot of content. But what I'm seeing is Latin America in countries in Asia, they're the most producing more content. Just so you have an idea. The top one person of Americas, he's from Latin America. He has three times more points than the first person in EMEA and two times more points than the first person in a PJ. So he's producing a lot more content than the other ones. But there was no difference from our approach. We just separate per regions and then we were learning as we were going.

MC: Okay. Also, the good news is that we have lunch after this. So with all the other questions after this final one, I think Ollie needs to eat as well, so you'll be able to find her out. There we go. The gentleman right there with the green. Oh, don't worry. You got a mic coming.

Audience member 3: I'll do that. So my question, and that's something there's in general, in dealing with events and everything is about diversity. So how do you deal with diversity? How do you make sure that it's not just a bunch of people that look like me, because that's not the kind of committee I would want to be part of,

Ully Sampaio: To be part of the program?

Audience member 3: No. So I would like to be in a place that is diverse. So how do you do it so that your community and your champions are diverse?

Ully Sampaio: Diversity is a topic that I personally am very passionate about. I was actually responsible for diversity and inclusion program that we had global at Elastic. Then when we became regional, it changed a little bit, but this is something that I'm personally very passionate about. The way we try when we invest a lot in promotion, and we still encourage this personalized invitations, personalized approach.

So sometimes we make promotions with women in tech communities and we encourage them like, Hey, I would love to see more women in this leaderboard. I would love to see more people from different backgrounds on the leaderboard. We invest in promotion. We are consistent, because like I said, we had this program that was basically focused in diversity and inclusion. So they see like, okay, I see that Elastic does care about diversity. I see that they're doing this work. So I think that they feel encouraged to be part of the program, but we invest in promotion, personalized invitation, and make sure that we get the word out through all of these affinity groups and diversity communities as well.

Perfect. Thank you. But I mean, we cannot force them to join. Ultimately, it's their decision, but we make sure that at least they get the word out. I'll give it to you. Woo. Thank you.