Lessons learned from 18 months of the endeavour for community growth

Wataru Yamazaki: Today I'm talking about lessons learned from 18 months of the end of the for community growth days of failures and success. Allow me to introduce myself again. Hello. I am Wataru Yamazaki DevRel for a IOT application development tool and the product marketing team Lead joined Uou Corporation. My company since March, 2018. The coffee and craft beer and a Mini Cooper and enabler. Nobody knows Sub knows. I hope.

What is enabler? What is it? And its name? Enabler comes from Enable and enabler lots of stars. And what its nature is NORAD based IOT development tools and its screen is just like this and the flow-based node connecting development application by connecting nodes node means this kind of small rectangle.

Okay, before start I have to explain the background. Zero background. Several years past since the initial product lease enable but not so well known by developers, the management team wanted to increase users on revenue from the product.

What, like myself was hired as a developer to establish user community. Some people might expect after this some specific will come out. No, this is just a presentation. Okay, let's start the very beginning. It was June, 2019. It was the first meetup came out, studied as a hands-on lab. First attendee, only six people came out to the hands-on lab. Well the permission time is not so enough.

Six people, not same enough, but it's okay The next time we go. And the next time, oh six attendees again, just like that horizontal six attendees and the next time switch to lightning talk session. Healthy session increased MODERAT retreat, 80 attendees. Wow. Great. Come out. And the next time, hands-on lab with line corporation. Make a visual user interface scale rapid growth.

Full attendees increase C 2 120 5%. Wow. Rapid growth and switch back to lightening talk sessions. But this time, this month slowed down a bit but not so much. Bit a little, just as the first and the second month because the last time increased awareness makes this session's attendees.

So I have to do something. I had to do something new. So I asked IOT LT community for help.

Yes, hit record high in case the people who might not know I-O-T-L-T is IOT. LT is IOT community, which has over 10,000 members. One of the great number of members, number of communities in Japan. Invincible. We got a lot of attendees at that time. So I tried to remains club the PI was not so big enough. Well, change does not change. Okay.

Little bit decreased. So run out of data and run out of idea. Number of resistance became decreasing.

Decreasing. Every month. I opened the meetups. So next time I have to change again. So I new idea came up.

How about a change the meetup name originally the media name is enabler Developer media product based name. So I changed to content based name. Yes. Plus 47% increased. Yes. Okay. I have to add, try something more. New play music with musical digital interface.

Hands on that. It is a little bit different from an iot, but it's okay. Yeah, we got more new users and we live happily ever after. I not, not aaf. The happiness did not continue. The attendees seem to increase, but oh and the degrees again. Again, adjunct. More fascinating ideas are required that time.

At that time.

I think enabler is just a tool development tool. It works very well in conjunction with another services, cloud services, materials, themes and so on. So let's collaborate with others. First of all, idea number one, e textile and non-coding. iot E textile means that conductive cloth, which can be used as a controller of devices, just like an iPad or some kind of tablet things. You can swipe those clothes and the tablet can be controlled. It's a great material.

Item number two, food tech meetup. Food tech and non-coding. iot. I idea number three, visual programming tools. This was the L sessions by visual programming tools users. We can appeal enabler to other developers who uses similar tools. For example, voice flow, UI flow, no red noodle, organised microbit and scratch I Number four. Machine learning.

Machine learning seems so difficult to learn. So we made this meetup. So a kind of easy and relaxed atmosphere. So we call this meetup beautiful machine learning. Let's play machine learning with cloud services is Japanese. It's kind of easygoing or relaxed or soft.

Okay. And the results are I?

Yes. Not serving. Not serving, but food tech. Food tech. Not enough ready for contents. Yes. That's great. The answer for that time.

The effort for community growth lacked well with not product oriented style, but technology oriented style. Yes. And focus on the nature of the product. Not name, not function. The journey never ends. Yes, the origin original presentation was dumb, but yeah, not only 80 months. We have another six months. So I made another additional one for 24 month of the end of her, let's start again.

The Johnny started again. This was the attendee graph.

Yes. From 2019 November we started developer meetup again. Again. The result was attendees are decreased again, failed Lessons learned from this fail failure. Do not forget what I learned before. Do not focus on the product.

I forgot because I got a good result from some new ideas. So enabler has a little bit more awareness. So I thought we can get some more attendees and resistance, but not yet. Not now. Not now. Next time. Next month. FinTech and Enable.

That's the I FinTech just like a UFO. Machine learning, soft, relaxed machine learning. And the result was the attendees decreased once again.

Once again failed. Again, lessons learned from this time. FinTech was not interested in the target audiences. Target persona should be clearly defined. What are targeted audience for community enabler community must be clearly defined.

FinTech was not the theme for them. That's what the lesson I learned. Next one is, so I have to recover from this miserable situation. So we have to recover this again for machine learning. The result was slightly recovered. Recovered, but it was so slightly I, okay, once again, let's play the popular song again. eTech style conducted with the cloth and the non-coding IOT meetup. Again, February 20, the date.

Maybe some people might, the date is so sensitive because at that time in Japan, the fear of COVID-19 was spread it out. So we have to cancel due to Covid to 19.

But the number of ion was not so bad. Recover. Convert slightly once again. So I have to switch every meetup from physical meetup to online meetup like everybody else and not stick to iot. Even the machine learning or even the conductive clothes. eTech style.

I stick to iot. IOT and conductive clothes, but this time not stick to iot. And the results were And the results was yes. Hit the record high again this time with that theme of that time was RPFO. Robotic process Automation for engineers, not iot, just only using their cloud services. This time success, the lessons learned are the lesson I learned from this time. Online media overcome location. Restrictions.

Restrictions, physical media only gather people around the Tokyo area. But this session meet, gather people, restaurants all over the Japan. So online media overcome location restriction just like others and RPA provide what the target audiences wants, not what we provide.

We want to provide, we want to provide enable as IOT development, but enabler is just a zoo. Not only can be used for IOT development, but also a cloud service conjunction. So RPA is one of the most suitable area done for enable development. That's why we provide this metre as a RPA for engineers. That's what I learned from this session.

Okay. Almost my presentation will be end. I'm not so sure that my experience will help somebody else because failure, failure, failure and a little success. But I entered this on earth because my master said the greatest teacher failure is pass on what you have learned. I have learned a lot of things from my failures. So I have to pass on what I have learned to other people. That's why I came here and have a presentation and from the next month I will have a failures again. But I will do the presentation made apps.

Because do or do not? There is no try muscle iota set. That's why I wear this T-shirt display. Thank you. May the force be with you.