
Creating a dashboard for measuring developer evangelism impact - timfalls
http://purevirtual.eu/2015/02/09/creating-a-community-and-social-media-dashboard-using-dashing-and-keen-io/
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panbanda
This seems like a very hot topic in the community, but no one has really
figured out how to measure things out side of click through to signup. The
magic of evangelism is in creating real connections with people, helping solve
problems, and encouraging creativity. I don't see a way that can be measured,
and frankly, I don't even know if it should be.

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timfalls
I completely agree that the magic exists in the real, genuine human
connections, the satisfaction and impact of selflessly helping others, and the
act of inspiring someone to further reach toward their full creative
potential. (see: [http://timgrid.com/fuck-leads-generate-
relationships/](http://timgrid.com/fuck-leads-generate-relationships/))

After five years of doing the community/evangelism thing, and much resistance
to tracking/measuring my/our team's activities, I'm finally /gradually coming
around to appreciating the concept of collecting data and performing analytics
on community efforts.

The key, IMHO, is to focus on metrics that _really_ matter, as opposed to
devoting resources to surfacing meaningless ("vanity") numbers for the sake of
having numbers. (see: video of a talk I gave on this topic here:
[http://devguild.heavybit.com/developer-
evangelism/](http://devguild.heavybit.com/developer-evangelism/))

I believe that it's up to us to figure out how to measure the impact we have
as evangelists/community professionals, because other people (coworkers,
investors, partners, etc) will always demand some insight. And if we don't
figure it out for ourselves, they'll try to figure it out for us (and,
logically, we're better positioned in this regard than those who don't spend
their time doing this stuff.)

So, in light of that, we're catalyzing a collaborative project to help figure
it out together: [https://github.com/keen/dashboards-dot-
community](https://github.com/keen/dashboards-dot-community).

Since we'd been working on the concept presented in the Github repo linked
above, I was super excited to find Jonas's project (hence my share here on
HN.)

I'd love to continue the conversation! @panbanda, maybe you'll join us on
Github to provide your additional perspective?

