Chris Brogan once described a community manager as 'part party host, part fine restaurant host.' Part of what that role entails is understanding how to best form your community for success. The other part of that role is understanding how to be the perfect 'party mixer.'

In general, there are two primary camps in your successful software development community - developers and everyone else. Yes, I know, I'm simplifying this quite a bit as "everyone else" includes important folks like testers, project managers, business analysts, and other decision makers. The problems usually come because, in general, both communities have different definitions of what 'success' should be, and also how that goal should be achieved. This situation gets even more interesting if the software being developed is being used as a lever for cultural change (i.e. - moving from traditional waterfall software development approaches to something like Agile).

Being a party mixer in this kind of environment requires some unique skillsets, some of which I talked about in a previous post. You are playing the role of referee, but also coach/counselor, trying to make sure that each contingent's needs are met. A big part of the problem also arises out of the fact that sometimes the non-dev side of this community decides that what they say goes, and then the developers start to feel like they are the people at the party wearing the unfashionable clothes. Your goal as a community leader should be to reinforce the notion of meritocracy, and get everyone to come to the table.

So, what weapon in your community management arsenal is the best bet in this situation? The biggest single thing you can and should use in this situation is your WIIFM sense. These groups each have competing agendas - you need to know what these are, and find a way to bring something to the mix each group can claim as its own. Brent McConnell (Community Manager for Kablink) wrote a blog post recently titled 'What They Don't Teach Community Managers.' He had a great comment about listening:

"So how do you craft a message that resonates with your community? You listen. Listening is the key that unlocks not only the problems of your users but also their perspective."

There are several ways to do this, but I really like how Agile development can be used to satisfy the desire for both types of development personnel to be involved. As a former developer, I can tell you that clarity of requirements, look & feel, etc. is absolutely huge. It helps you deliver code that you can be proud of, and that you know will be used (because it meets the users' expectations). Having business owners/users involved in user story definition and refining small pieces of functionality during short iterations also gives them a feeling of empowerment, which lets them guide the direction of the project at a much more granular level. Most importantly, though, this constant interaction between the developers and non-developers provides a mechanism to allow a lot of listening (if guided properly).

As the community 'party host,' always remember that it is your job to provide the conduit for communication. It is not an accident that the words 'Community' and 'Communication' share the same root. True two-way interaction is the key to a successful community, project, or any collaborative effort. If you do a good job of 'hosting,' you and your constituents will have fun, and be fulfilled, which lead to more productivity all around.

There's a lot of work going on by various companies to build better 'listening posts' for the huge stream of social media that is flooding into companies and communities. There are a plethora of listening tools available, such as Radian6, Buzzlogic Insight, Sentiment Metrics, etc. More recently, Microsoft has gotten into the game with a project they call 'Looking Glass'.

While details are still sketchy, Looking Glass appears to hook into (and lock into) other Microsoft products, and even do some analysis of trends & stats to automate certain actions. At this point, I diverge from the popular opinion that social media stats, ROI, etc. are the end-all and be-all of the social media world. I've argued this point before, but I'd like to reiterate that all of the metrics gathered as part of social media/community really do require a person (be it a community manager or social media sherpa) who can perform the 'Information Synthesis' necessary to build an actionable plan in response to the flood of social media input. We even have a section in our recently released Community Management Cookbook related to this thought. To wit:

"Community health can NOT be determined by simple numbers. It takes a community manager, or several, to read through conversations."

For example, a community could have only a few members (relative to some 'mega-community'), but the conversation/engagement/work produced might dwarf the mega-community. Raw membership numbers might present a skewed picture in this case which could lead to a decision maker thinking they need to shut down a productive community. With the stats, plus analysis by a human, a more educated decision could be made in this case. By the way, there is always the risk of over analyzing the data, and I agree with Jack Repenning, CollabNet CTO, on this point. Providing both the raw metrics, and a reasoned analysis, is the best we can hope to do, but clearly, one without the other doesn't benefit anyone.

Once the analysis is combined with the numbers, the responsibility for a response to something in the social media stream can be farmed out to the necessary department or individual to deal with appropriately. However, the action item may be to adjust an internal process or business decision in reaction to the stimuli received from the social media feed.

There is enough inherent 'squishiness' in social media/community management that you really have to rely on the best social media analysis engine (the one between a talented person's ears) to make sense of what the metrics are saying. Trying to automate thinking in an attempt to scale the social media listening/response function is doomed to failure if your goal as a company/community is to actually do something useful with what the crowd is telling you, and to be perceived as an organization that understands how social media benefits you.

Bottom line - statistics are but one tool in the arsenal of an effective community/social media strategy.