Building a community

I was talking to someone today about the TokBox Platform that we’re building. It’s been something that I’ve been working on since I joined the Box, and something about which I’m very passionate. I was discussing with them my three goals for the Platform from a developer point of view over the next six months. The three goals are:

1. Build out a second layer of abstraction into all of the SDKs as has been done for the PHP SDK, and continue to improve the widgets to make them as customizable and flexible as possible
2. Write tutorials, blog posts and show off use cases on a weekly basis on the TokBox blog
3. Have a large, involved community on the developer mailing list who answer questions for each other

I think the second task is really the easiest one to do. Why? It comes down to organization and discipline. I’m going to spend some time this weekend working through six weeks worth of blog posts (at one per week, that isn’t too hard), and start outlining the content. I want to start with what a user can do with the basic embed, both the call widget and the recorder/player combination, and then work my way into some use cases and sample applications. Hopefully there will be some readership at that point which will allow me to understand what new posts the readers want.

That’s a weekend’s worth of work, and then of course somewhere between one- to two-hours of writing per week. I think the big win there will be driving traffic to our blog, and getting more exposure for how simple the Platform really is to use. I also hope that personally it will help me improve how I communicate technical concepts to a broader audience.

The SDK work, in my opinion, is just a labor of love that is necessary to improve the Platform, and to march towards my goal of doing everything in ten lines of code or less. Even if those ten lines of code come from layers of abstraction, I think simplifying the underlying actions of the Platform will make it much more attractive to potential developers, and that leads me to my final goal…

Building a strong community around the TokBox Platform. I’ve been working in the developer list and with partners for two years now. It’s a very humbling experience. I’m totally convinced that adding video chat, or video messaging, capabilities really adds a lot of value to a whole laundry list of services that are already out there. The amazing bit is that most of the individuals with whom I’ve spoken in those industries agree. They just don’t have time, money or a compelling use case to make it happen.

And so, humbled, I’ve focused on the little things, and making the little things count. Respond on the developer list as quickly as possible. Listen to feedback. Maintain good documentation. Build sample applications. All with the hopes of building a community that then starts to do these things for the Platform because the community has also discovered the potential of video chat and messaging. We still need to better address some of these issues, especially documentation, but we’re slowly starting to get to a place where I think the foundation is really well developed.

What then needs to happen to reach the tipping point, and go over it? I don’t know. I want to spend some time thinking about this over the weekend. I think the obvious first step is patience. I’m not good at that, but I’m learning. I think step one-a is luck. Sometimes you just need the ball to bounce your way, and of course laying a good foundation makes it more likely that when the time comes that lady luck will favor the solution we’ve built.

I’ll do a follow up to all of this at the end of the weekend, but would love to hear about any opinions or thoughts about the building of a community or the goals I’ve laid out. At the very least, let me know where you think video chat should be, and maybe that will be the idea that makes it all happen.