So, You Want To Grow A Community? Plan Your Event By Writing A Goal Statement That Demonstrates Depth and Details

This is the second of a five (or six) part series of a guide that gives you the tools to plan, manage and measure a great technology or creative event—then demonstrate that it can not only impact your community, but also the industry sector surrounding that community, and ultimately, the city-at-large.

This guide is primarily written in the context of my experience living through Portland’s thriving technology and creative communities, and is organized in five sections:

1. Introduction: why Portland is the perfect place to start, and what to do about it
2. Plan: write a goal statement that demonstrates depth and details (you are here)
3. Manage: help your sponsors use their time wisely
4. Measure: continue to engage after and throughout the event’s lifecycle by using a social intelligence dashboard
5. The Big Picture: examining Portland’s capacity for creativity and innovation, making a case for more grassroots initiatives

In the end, I’ll have a downloadable, nicely designed PDF for you to look at.

(Note that the title and content of the chapter is in a constant state of revision, and so may change between now and the final version.)

Part two, here we go.

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Plan Your Event By Writing A Goal Statement That Demonstrates Depth and Details

Unless you decide to host an event because you have nothing else to do that month, every event you plan must have a goal and objective in mind.

For example, I like planning events that share the same spirit with Legion of Tech’s: free, volunteer run and community oriented. But I also know that my time and resource is limited. My partner’s, sponsor’s and attendee’s time and resource also are.

To respect them, I must make sure that the event have clear enough of a value proposition so everyone knows if it is right to help out with, give money to, or spend time with, respectively. This is where the importance of a clear goal statement becomes clear.

A goal statement is exactly what the name implies: a short document contains the things you want to see happen with your event. It can be general or detailed (the latter is generally better, though not always.)

For example, here is a short, informal goal statement from Refreshing Cities:

Refresh is a community of designers and developers working to refresh the creative, technical, and professional culture of New Media endeavors in their areas. Promoting design, technology, usability, and standards.

The Refresh Manifesto

• Let’s Gather Great Minds
• Let’s Share All Of Our Knowledge
• Let’s All Grow And Learn
• Let’s Promote Local Talent
• Let’s Be More Than We Think Can Be
• Let’s Make Our Cities Better

(Source: http://refreshingcities.org)

This statement is succinct, memorable, and provides an idea of the people behind and attending the event, but does not answer the question that should come before all else: what is the event about? With this said, this statement is vague for a reason. ‘Refreshing Cities’ is a name that can be used anywhere freely to indicate the organizer’s participation in the loosely connected collective.

A more specific goal statement may look like this:

We are advocates, developers, and Portlanders making the world better with open source technology.

Open Source Bridge will bring together the diverse tech communities of the greater Portland area and showcase our unique and thriving open source environment. We will show how well Portland does open source and share our best practices for development, community and connectedness with the rest of the world.

We’re setting out to change the structure of conference planning: asking interested people to come together at a Town Hall meeting, and share their collective experience and wisdom. Following the lead of the Linux Plumbers Conference, we’re enlisting curators for our conference sessions, planning mini-confs for critical topics and including unconference sessions. The focus will always be on increasing interaction between participants and engaging everyone in the content.

(Source: http://bridgepdx.org/about)

Note how this statement explains exactly the nature of the event itself as well as its planning process. It identifies not only the planners, but also their goal for planning. These things will help potential sponsors and volunteers identify whether the event is right for them.

The answer to the question “what is the event about” is implied because the idea, while minted carefully, is still open to interpretation at the micro level (ie. The conference name and intent were established, but the timeline and details were not.)

BarCamp, an ‘unconference’ concept that had been adopted internationally many times, took an even more detailed approach:

BarCamp: What’s this all about?

COMMUNITY AND INFORMATION
BarCamp is an ad-hoc unconference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees.

Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to join.

When you come, be prepared to share with barcampers.
When you leave, be prepared to share it with the world.

NO SPECTATORS, ONLY PARTICIPANTS
Attendees must give a demo, a session, or help with one, or otherwise volunteer / contribute in some way to support the event. All presentations are scheduled the day they happen. Prepare in advance, but come early to get a slot on the wall. The people present at the event will select the demos or presentations they want to see.

Presenters are responsible for making sure that notes/slides/audio/video of their presentations are published on the web for the benefit of all and those who can’t be present.

BARCAMP FOR EVERYONE
Contact us if you have any questions or want to participate. Let us know if you’re hosting your own. BarCamp is about support as much as it is about information.

(Source: http://barcamp.org/TheRulesOfBarCamp)

Note how the BarCamp goal statement:

• Answers the question “what is the event about” right away (“BarCamp is an ad-hoc unconference”) then move to the ground rules (“All presentations are scheduled the day they happen”)
• Explains in specific terms what will happen in the event (“discussions, demos and interaction”)
• Identifies the audience (“anyone with something to contribute”), then establishes a social contract by asking them to contribute something (“Attendees must give a demo”)
• Lays out the benefits of the event, rather than the features (“share and learn in an open environment”)

Two subjects missing from the statement are information about the planners and their intents. This is understandable, since, much like Refreshing Cities, BarCamp is a name that one can take, modify, and establish a chapter of anywhere for free, as long as the structure remain the same.

Let’s sum up. A good goal statement:

1. Is specific

It says what exactly will happen in the event and leaves no room for guesswork.
For example, if you’re planning a networking lunch for interactive designers from advertising agencies and software development studio around Portland, so they can plan on working on a collaborative project together, don’t skimp and say “let’s get together and code something.” Be specific, so you know that the people who are going to be there are the right people (otherwise, they will save their time by not attending in the first place.)

2. Establishes social contract

In addition to laying out details, you must also ask your attendee to bring something to the table, and promise to provide something back.

For example, they may bring current projects they worked on, questions they may have, curiosities, commitment to learn from each others, food, an open mind, anything. You may provide the space, food, centralized work table, wireless network, speakers, and so on. The kinds of things you expect and commit does not matter. What matters is that you set an agreement and clearly say, “If we’ll have this, you’ll bring those.” A social contract, even an informal one, helps set everyone’s expectation to the same level and could save you the trouble of dealing with group loafers.

3. Lays out benefits

It is very easy for an organizer to write out all the features of her event. For instance:

• World renowned speakers
• Invite to beta applications
• Strong wifi signals.

The problem is, any event you plan will only matter if it benefits you, your audience and the sponsors. Switching gears from describing features to describing benefits can help. Think in terms of their needs. Change your language from saying “here’s what we have” to “here’s what you’ll get out of this”; then start writing.

For example:

• Learn the principles of identity design from Jeff Fisher, a longtime, award-winning Portland designer who has been recognized by StartupNation as one of the nation’s top businesses in its annual Home-Based 100 competition in the category of Most Slacker-Friendly.
• Make your software work faster with a free update
• Broadcast fearlessly with a high-band wireless connectivity

A clear goal statement will not only provide a good base for your entire planning process, it will also help you manage your sponsors wisely and measure your event engagement online more easily.

So, You Want To Grow A Community? An Introduction

I always have a feeling that every city’s burgeoning creative and technology community would indirectly benefit the its economy and well-being by attracting more movers to migrate or inspiring its citizens to take self-action.

So for the past seven weeks, I’ve been working on a guide that may help you:

1. Grow such communities through organizing great meetups, groups and events
2. Relate and justify your event to organizations, companies and, ultimately, the city

I chose to frame this discussion around Portland, a city that I’ve been living vicariously through for the past 5 years.

The document is meant for both event organizers and sponsors, and will be organized in this manner:

1. Introduction: why your city is the perfect place to start, and what to do about it
2. Plan: write a goal statement you can rave about
3. Manage: love your sponsors, use their airtime wisely
4. Measure: continue to engage by using a social intelligence dashboard
5. Study: where your city ranks, and what to do about it

1. Introduction: why Portland is the perfect place to start, and what to do about it (you are here)
2. Plan: write a goal statement that demonstrates depth and details
3. Manage: help your sponsors use their time wisely
4. Measure: continue to engage after and throughout the event’s lifecycle by using a Social Intelligence Dashboard
5. The Big Picture: examining Portland’s capacity for creativity and innovation, making a case for more grassroots initiatives

Ultimately, this guide isn’t just about organizing your event well, it’s about relating it to the growth of a community and the city’s social capital. The principles could be applied everywhere, but I’ll be writing from the Portland’s point of view.

I’ll be releasing the draft of each part periodically, and, at the end, compile it in a nicely designed package.

We’ll start with the Introduction, then work our way down. Ready?

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Introduction: why your city is the perfect place to start, and what to do about it

A city has to have the right combinations of

1. Community
2. Environment
3. Industry/Governance

To make it a fertile environment for creativity and technology to prosper.

What Makes Portland Unique: Community

There are two facts that contributes to this:

1. It’s an awfully relatively small city
2. People who are “in the know” (for example: developers of certain language, interaction designers, art directors) naturally gravitate toward each other

If you’re an event organizer, there are two actions that can be derived from these facts:

1. Find a niche and start a new community (for example: a mix of designer and developer who thirst for no-holds-barred feedbacks on multi disciplinary projects founded PDX Critique)
2. Linking disparate communities together (for example: Legion of Tech organizes event that brings all technologists, and technology groups from all platforms, together)

Very often, the existence of these two kinds of comminutues is closely tied to a citywide movements toward learning and creativity. In other words: you are not alone. There are others like you, in different fields of study, who are trying to reach the same goal. We’re all just heading toward it a little bit differently.

Also, note that this city has more:

• Freelance/independent workers
• Bike commuters
• Farmer’s markets
• District-wide art events
• Artists
• Professional service industries workers (think advertising, marketing, PR and design)
• Technology workers (this goes without saying)
• Open source practitioners and developers (from Linux to Android)
• Small and micro businesses and startups, like Shizzow and Cubespace
• Awareness for ecology and sustainability
• Breweries (see the Portland Beer Wiki Project for listing)
• Park areas
• LGBTQ population

Per square inch than most other cities in the West Coast and even the US.

On the contrary, we have less:

• Cost of housing
• Cost of living
• Cost of office space
• Cost of flex space

Than many other cities (source: 2008 Greater Portland Prosperity Index: A Regional Outlook)

What Makes Portland Unique: Environment

Many anecdotes have mentioned the fact that Portland’s technology community is more tight knit and supportive than many other cities—even those that are made up of primarily technological industries, like The Valley.

There are many reasons for these:

1. People play in sandboxes that are different enough, so they don’t directly compete with each other.
2. People appreciate the benefit of “staying small” and growing by bootstrapping as a business model, rather than “going big” and growing by venture capitals
3. Many are freelancers, which means that they have to rely on each other for help and support, both in their work and day-to-day life
4. Community members share a natural affinity for technology, not just because it’s their day job. This is evident in many events that are not centered around a specific language pr platform, but rather, social activities like breakfast, lunch or after-work drinks
5. The city is small enough, so that community that are established online can often meet in real life. Real life interaction plays a big (but often overlooked) role in growing a community
6. Meeting members of other communities, or those that belong in a web service like Twitter, is made much easier. In Portland, it is possible to step into a room and see 100 people that you knew from Twitter, routinely every month (called Lunch 2.0.) This may not be as easy to achieve in other locales. Meeting people that you interact with online, in real life, is an activity that is both addictive and can benefit the community-at-large

This isn’t to say that Portland is the only one who experiences this phenomenon. Other cities like San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver, B.C. have been, and still continue to lead the way in technology, creativity and innovation development in years. It’s just that the same energy that they all had in the 80’s and 90’s, that bloomed this movement, now migrates to Portland, if for no other factor, then for likeminded individuals who chose to move here in recent years.

(There are warnings and caveats about this, and we’ll come back to it much later.)

What Makes Portland Unique: Industry/Governance

We know that a thriving community is good for its own sake, but do you know that it can also benefit local companies, industry sectors that the companies are in, and the city-at-large?

1. For companies, more developers and users they can rally under their wings mean that they can greatly simplify the feedback process, which in turn will speed up the development cycle and deliver products that are tailored, hyperlocally, toward its audience, which will generate more profit in the end. Jive Software, Vidoop and Intrigo are just three of many technology companies who relocated to Portland and, in many levels, succeeded
2. For the industry and the city, the more they can demonstrate the uniqueness and vibrancy of their creative and technology communities (and its fundamental differences from other places), the more it can attract out of state talents and companies.
3. For the industry, this means a much easier time to scout and hire talents.
4. For the city, this means more jobs available, higher GDP and stronger economy

You Have A Unique City, What’s Missing?

We know that organizing events is one of the most effective way to create stronger community. But we still have to properly quantify and qualify its success/failure, then demonstrate its values to our sponsors.

So I posit that we as community managers and members develop a framework to gauge just how successful we are, and how can we be more successful at increasing sustainable prosperity for our company, industry and city. Later, I will attempt to quantify these factors in terms of planning, management and measuring, but I don’t think there is ever going to be a hard number.

But I think we can begin to look at it from two areas:

1. Hard Measures Of Success

Why? In a shrinking market, where there are less money available, you have to justify doing everything, if only because you could be doing everything else that may be more useful.

I ask myself this:
How do I know that I organized great events, and that they’re worth my time?

• Should I still look at number of attendance? Or should I look at the number of people who develops anything of equal value from things they learn from the presentation (side projects, implementations, change of attitudes toward an idea?)
• The events are non-profit, so who are giving money? Who should be? Why should my events get sponsored? Do I really have a good reason?
• What’s the value of coverage? Sure, more coverage is always good, but is there a specific one that I need to target? And does one place of coverage means more than the other?

Asking questions like these will help you figure out the value of the events you plan, and demonstrate to the sponsors that those events are worth their time and money.

Remember: sponsorships mean more events, but it also means that the quality of those events must be higher.

2. Understanding Of Objectives

Why? We must remember that with width, there must also be depth. Anecdote: on the last web bubble, it was enough to present 10–15 slides of PowerPoint to get a funding. After it bursts, people actually went back to writing the classic 10–15 pages business plan.

In light of the current situation, we, like them, must also demonstrate understanding and extensive depth of knowledge behind your decision to plan.

In other words, while it’s good to have a strong manifesto when you start to organize events and foster communities, it must be backed up with a sound plan to grow. I still believe that a good plan, no matter how dull and uninteresting, is a key to success. Have the enthusiasm and the vision, but be able to back it up and link it to something bigger than yourself.

In the end, allowing your events and communities to grow organically is good, but growing with noticeable, measurable improvements that generate values for everyone (attendees, organizers, sponsors) is better.

This framework will be organized in three parts:

1. Plan: write a goal statement you can rave about before the event happens
2. Manage: love your sponsors, use their airtime wisely at the event
3. Measure: continue to engage after and throughout the event’s lifecycle by using a social intelligence dashboard

Case Study: Making OakHazelnut.com Read Better [Updated with picture examples]

OakHazelnut.com is a working portfolio site of Amber Case: an amazing independent journalist, search engine and social media consultant. Her site is one that is a resource to the community, and thus is seen by thousands of readers every month.

However, because it contains ample amount of informations (a typical post weighs in at about 750 words) the site has to be easy to read. So easy that only the text that is absolutely necessary to the content shines, while other materials regress. Add the fact that she publishes an article every two days to this.

Readability and legibility is of further concern because, while the OakHazelnut.com’s ultimate goal is to get more subscribers, most readers still interact with its web interface, or at least use it prior to subscribing.

Objective and Challenge

As a typographer, my aim was to make OakHazelnut as easy to digest as possible. As a publisher, Amber Case needs a vessel that will, like Beatrice Warde’s Crystal Goblet, be robust enough to hold any content that she throws at it.

Right off the bat, I was presented with the challenge that the visual language of the site must stay as similar to the old as possible. This makes sense. After all, OakHazelnut.com has been known to use the same theme throughout its inception, GreenWave, and thus must remain consistent.

This means that tweaking navigation scheme is okay (and even encouraged if it can mimic those of other sites to encourage familiarity) but switching images, color scheme or number of columns around must be avoided, or done very subtly at best.

In addition to this, because the author installed many plugins and changed many lines of code already, shifting the structure of the CSS (ie. reorganizing classes) was not to be done, to avoid breaking the theme.

With these constraints in mind, I got ready to work.

The Four Step Process

1. Standardize Typography

The very first thing that I set out to do was standardize the font family used in the site. Many themes rely on using different families to distinguish content. This is fine, but only if done well Blogs have many layers of information that need to be distinguished from each other. For instance, a typical blog page may have:

• Blog title
• Blog description
• Navigation
• Secondary navigation
• Blog post title
• Post heading (h2 through h6)
• Meta information
• Body text

And in most cases, using one font family is enough to get the job done.

But if one would choose to use two, this is how one might group them. One font per group.

Group 1

Primary Information, one where you want the eye to go look at first. Ideally, you would be able to simply hover from item from item in this group and get the gist of the blog.

• Blog title
• Blog post title
• Post heading (h2 through h6)

Group 2: Secondary

• Blog description
• Body text
• Navigation

Group 3: Tertiary

Informations to be “read later” (in most cases, one would group them with Group 2)

• Secondary navigation
• Meta information

On Choosing Typefaces

Some fonts are better suited for one purpose than another. For example:

• While Lucida Grande/Sans and Verdana looks and reads well at smaller sizes, it quickly loses subtlety and elegance when set as headlines (Lucida is more resilient.)
• Helvetica, Arial, Times New Roman, and now Georgia, work equally well at relatively wide range of sizes, thanks to our habit of reading and therefore getting used to it over a long period of time.
• Trebuchet MS, tend to be used prominently at large sizes but hadn’t found many uses in body text (even though it’s just as readable, this I don’t know exactly why.)
• Others, like Hoefler Text, Baskerville and Didot, may be unsuitable to be set small thanks to the monitor’s low resolution
• Others still, like Futura and Gill Sans, comes by default on Mac but never ended up getting used very much (the reason is obvious, for using a font that isn’t installed on 85% of the Windows-platformed systems does not make sense.)
• Finally, Tahoma is face that comes with almost every computer, and one that I find to be of a fitting use in subheadline situations (the spacing is too tight on smaller sizes, yet the construction does no display subtlety at large sizes.)

Getting Into The Code

View GreenWave’s original CSS file.

View OakHazelnut.com’s CSS file.

Of course, then, even though I was forbidden to reorganize the CSS class and ID structures, I must in some ways put some order in its structure. Right off the bat, I noticed (code shortened to highlight important points):


body {
font-family:Trebuchet MS, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
#menu_search_box {
font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
#header_center_text #header_center_body {
font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
#header_title span {
font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
#menu {
font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
#blog_right #sidebar h2 {
font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
#blog_right #sidebar ul li {
font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
#blog_right #sidebar li a {
font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
#blog_right #sidebar ul li ul li {
font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
#blog_right #sidebar ul li ul li ul li {
font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
#blog_right #sidebar ul li ul li ul li a {
font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
#blog_left #blog_comm .comm_panel {
font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
#blog_left #blog_comm .comm_text {
font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
#blog_left #blog_comm #comm_post_form td {
font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
#blog_left .item_class .item_class_title_text .date_month {
font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
#blog_left .item_class .item_class_title_text .end_title {
font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
#blog_left .item_class .item_class_text {
font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
#blog_left .item_class .item_class_panel a {
font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
#blog_left .item_class .item_class_panel a:hover {
font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
div#footer #footer_text {
font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}


Notwithstanding the fact that Helvetica and Helvetica Neue should be specified in front of Arial whenever possible, and that mixing two sans serifs is generally not a sound principle to follow, specifying the same font-family set over and over again for very small levels of CSS class is simply redundant.

To remedy this, I did a Find-and-Replace run, deleted all occurrence of “font-family:…” and replace them with:


body {
font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Grande", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
}
strong, em, b, i {
font-family: "Lucida Sans", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Grande", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
}
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, address {
font-family: "Lucida Sans", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Grande", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
}


These lines of code does much of the same thing that the redundant blocks above do with only the lines that are actually needed to do the job, and nothing more. Much better.

On Choosing Lucida

Note how I specified a different set of typeface to replace the default set that the WordPress theme had. Why did I chose an odd combination of Lucida Sans Unicode, Grande and Sans? And why did fall back on Helvetica Neue, Helvetica and Arial?

Technically, I used a solution from SixThings called “Lucida Hybrid.” Put simply, Lucida Hybrid aims to combine the best of:

• Lucida Grande – only available on Mac, no italic, renders beautifully
• Lucida Sans Unicode – available on Windows, no italic, renders beautifully
• Lucida Sans – available on both platforms, has italic, but the normal weight renders poorly at certain sizes

Typographically, I used the Lucida family because it’s the same face that Mac OS X uses to set the UI texts—bringing familiarity, therefore allowing the typography to disappear and content to shine. On the case that a Window user don’t have this family, the CSS will roll back to Helvetica Neue first, then Helvetica, and, if nothing else is possible to use, Arial. Again, Helvetica and Arial are two faces that computer users are used to seeing.

2. Enhancing Body Text Readability

My next objective is to soup the body text up. GreenWave’s default CSS specified:

#blog_left .item_class .item_class_text {
color:#8a8a8a;
font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size:11px;
line-height:20px;
}


This is the right idea. Any small type on low resolution display must be generously leaded to avoid clumping, and Verdana reads well at 11 pixel. However putting an #8a8a8a (roughly 50% grayscale) color on a white background provides too little of a contrast for such ample amount of texts to read well.

My solution:

#blog_left .item_class .item_class_text {
color:#262626;
font-size:12px;
line-height:20px;
}


On a lit display like a monitor, specifying black (#000) on white (#fff) is too jarring for the eye. I avoided it by using a dark shade of gray. The same solution is used in most books that are printed in slightly tinted, “egg white” paper, because reading a bright white, glossy paper is not easy.

Note how I kept the line-height generous, but increased the font-size by one pixel.

3. Standardizing Behavior

Next, I looked at how the links behave. Notice how, by default, the theme behavior specified light grey for body texts and dark grey for link colors. This is very helpful, but note how hovering at the link does not actually change it in any way. It remains dark grey. No highlight. No underline. Nothing. To aid comprehension, links behavior should be standardized:

• Every link color inside the body of the blog, if put on top of a white background, should be colored green. This includes regular and meta information links. Exception: Post Titles, because it’s big enough to be distinguishable from the rest of the text.
• Every link color, if put on top of a non-white background, could be colored white or grey, depending on the needs and color contrasts
• Every link put on top of a white background, when hovered, should be colored in light green, then underlined. Exception: Post Titles, because underlining a text with small leading isn’t pleasing to the eye
• Every link put on top of a non-white, when hovered, could keep its color or switch to light green, whenever appropriate and beneficial to page contrast, but they should always be underlined.

4. More Tweaks

The last step is to change more colors, increase more leading and decrease more type sizes. To regular readers, the tweaks are subtly visual at best; but remember: the more readers voraciously dive into the material itself without noticing how the type was set (except on highlighted elements), the more the typography had succeeded.

Ready To Make Your Site Or Blog Read Better?

• Compare Romow’s GreenWave theme as-it-stands, and how OakHazelnut.com reads today
• View a more detailed tutorial on this subject
• Let’s chat. This is the kind of work I would love to do all day for you. I’m at brampitoyo@gmail.com and 503-481-4430