Community Building And User-group Organizing: Mike Hall Interviews Mike Clement | SCNA 2012
Meet Mike Clement, the founder of the Utah Software Craftsmanship Group. Learn about the challenges and successes of building a diverse community in a sprawling metropolitan area. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from one of the pioneers of software craftsmanship in North America. #softwarecraftsmanship #usergroup #utah #mikeclement #communitybuilding
The Interviewer
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
The Guest
Mike Clement
community building and user-group organizing
The Conversation
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Hi, I'm Mike with UGtastic, here again at SCNA. This morning I'm sitting down with Mike Clement, who runs the Utah Software Craftsmanship Group. Well, you founded the group. Thanks for sitting down with me. What are you guys doing out in Utah with Software Craftsmanship?
Mike Clement
community building and user-group organizing
So, we started the group in February 2011. It was me and two other guys. The two other guys have become less involved with the group since then. But I just saw that there were other communities being organized in different cities. And so what I did is on the main Software Craftsmanship mailing list, I sent out, is anybody else in Utah, is anybody doing anything like this? And found three or four other like-minded people that were interested in starting up a community. And so we kind of took that core and built on it.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Are you in Salt Lake?
Mike Clement
community building and user-group organizing
So, for the... For those not familiar with Utah, there's the Salt Lake County and there's the Salt Lake Valley and the Utah Valley that are kind of adjacent to each other. And that area along there, including Davis County, is known as the Wasatch Front. And so it's kind of a big metropolitan area, big, you know, a lot of suburbs and stuff like that. So we meet between Salt Lake and Utah County. It's kind of in the middle, so that we can draw from both areas.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
But it's a city area? Yeah.
Mike Clement
community building and user-group organizing
I've noticed that that does influence attendance and the way the community works is whether or not it's a suburban versus like a sprawling area or a centralized metropolitan area. It's a sprawling area. I mean, we're talking, people come from probably 40, 50 minutes south of where, like they live 40, 50 minutes south of where the meeting is. And some people come as far as an hour from the north. Oh, wow. So you're pulling people from a pretty large area. Yeah, we have considered doing two groups, splitting it apart, but we haven't quite reached the critical mass, I think, as necessary to be able to split the group and have them both succeed independently.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
So how many are you seeing at a meeting?
Mike Clement
community building and user-group organizing
So over the last couple of months, we've actually seen a pretty big uptick in the number of people coming. We're sitting like 20, 25 people. That's good for a non-centralized metropolitan area.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Mike Clement
community building and user-group organizing
Well, we're using an area that's a location that's used for a lot of other user groups. So people are used to traveling at least a little bit. Oh, so it's already kind of an established area. People know that's the area you go for user groups. Yeah, we use, we're currently sponsored by Newmont University who hosts the site. They're a university that focuses on computer science degrees and they kind of compressed it into two and a half years.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Mike Clement
community building and user-group organizing
Anyway, so they sponsor a lot of community events and like the . NET user group meets there. I think the Ruby user group used to meet there. I don't know if they still do or not. Like Utah Code Camp has been hosted there. So it's a place where people are pretty familiar with.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay.
Mike Clement
community building and user-group organizing
So they know, so I'm sure that helps with also letting people know about the group or is that, do you think that the fact that you're in this area, it's already known for having groups has helped you with promoting your group or has it? It's made it easier. Yeah, it's made it easier to tell people where it is because people already know the location, but it's, but interestingly enough, next summer they're moving sites to downtown Salt Lake. Currently they're probably about 15, 20 minutes south of Salt Lake and so we're trying to decide what we're going to do going forward and be starting next month.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Whether to stay there just out of history or move to the new location?
Mike Clement
community building and user-group organizing
Well, they're going to close that location. Oh. So it's whether or not we move with them. Or we find somewhere else in a similar location just because it's kind of central or we split the group or whatever. We'll have to make sure. Kind of displaying that decision as long as possible. And I'm, I'm sorry, I just drew a blank on a question I wanted to ask. That happens sometimes. But what I was really trying to get at is you said that there is a body of user groups that were, that are in that area.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Have you done any cross, cross meetings with that?
Mike Clement
community building and user-group organizing
Have you done any, like, oh, you're talking about Ruby. We want to do something about testing on Ruby.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Can we do a cross meeting?
Mike Clement
community building and user-group organizing
We haven't really yet. I come from the . NET community. And so interestingly enough, I guess a lot of the initial people that, that joined the group were from the . NET community, people that I knew. We struggled for probably six to 10 months early on, like every meeting. It was like, at the beginning of the meeting, we do a check in and we would say, you know, what's your name, where do you work, what your primary language.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
And then we'd come up with some goofy question like, what's your favorite candy bar or something, right?
Mike Clement
community building and user-group organizing
Yeah, icebreaker.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Mike Clement
community building and user-group organizing
And so, um, consistently it was like C#, C#, C#, . NET, C# and, um, occasionally you'd have somebody from the Ruby community show up or somebody that did something else. And, but it was, it was really hard because we were trying to be a polyglot group, whatever you want to be, homogenous. And so, um, over the last probably six months or so, we've started to be able to pull in more people, um, because we have some guys who cross over, um, between like the . NET world and like the JavaScript world and the Ruby world. And so, um, we've, and we've tried to coordinate, um, maybe not directly, but at least tried to get a lance before we started, um, to get a landscape of where all the meetings were in the month to kind of make sure we were on a free night. So you weren't competing.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Mike Clement
community building and user-group organizing
Because early on we were competing with the Ruby user group and that basically said no Ruby people were going to come.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Right.
Mike Clement
community building and user-group organizing
And so we, we moved it, I think, twice before we settled on a night that's actually going to, that's for us. So you looked at the calendar and you tried to figure, have you spoken with any of the other user group leaders? Um, I've talked to the . NET user group and we've had different people within the group, um, kind of be proxies or circuits, I guess.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Yeah.
Mike Clement
community building and user-group organizing
Go talk to the groups, the communities that they're a part of. Um, but I haven't reached out specifically. Like I've, um, posted stuff on their groups and stuff to kind of get.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Do you use, um, do you use Meetup? How do you, how do you share your, how do you share your meetings? How do people know when a Utah SC meeting is?
Mike Clement
community building and user-group organizing
Um, so we just use a Google group. Oh, good. Um, I'm talking to Sandro yesterday. It sounds like we maybe ought to try something more. I guess, I don't know, Meetup, because most of the, the user groups in Utah predate Meetup and all of that stuff, um, they all kind of have their own sites and are kind of, it's not terribly, um, unified, right? There are a couple, there is a site, I think, that, that tracks a lot of the, um, activities. There's Utah Geek Events, which is trying to be kind of a hub. Um, but, um, yeah, we haven't used Meetup. Maybe we should. We just use Meetup.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Mind if we write something down?
Mike Clement
community building and user-group organizing
Utah Geek Events, I'm going to check them out. Um, yeah, they, they, uh, are a group that, um, the core group started, was the one that was organizing, or is organizing Utah Code Camp, and then they organize a SQL Saturday, and they've kind of tried to, um, try to help organize different other communities. So they, they, they kind of act between the different groups and say, okay, let's, this is, let's try to work out a schedule and, um, well, it's more, they're more about putting on events as opposed to user groups. Oh, okay. So, like, annual-type events, conference, you know, mini-conference-type stuff, um, that are community organized. Again, one of the challenges they've had is that they come from the . NET community and try to reach out to, um, you know, the Java guys and the Ruby guys, and just trying to pull the community together has been somewhat difficult because there is, you know, I don't know, for whatever reason, there's a little bit of -- It's still different cultures. It's just different cultures, yeah.
Mike Hall
Interviewer, UGtastic
Okay, well, thank you very much for taking the time to sit down. Appreciate it. Thanks, Mike.
Critical Insights
durable
"The group faced challenges in attracting a diverse audience, particularly from the Ruby community, and had to coordinate with other groups to avoid competition."
durable
"The group's success is partly due to its location, which is already known for hosting other user groups."
durable
"The group is considering splitting into two separate groups to better serve the needs of its members."