RailsConf 2014 - Branding for Open Source Success by Bree Thomas

BREE THOMAS: Hi. How's everybody doing?

It's nice to see you. In case you're wondering

what I'm doing - this is a tip from Ben Orenstein,
who said to get rid of pre-presentation

jitters, you should power pose.

I want you to know that, if this doesn't work,

I am going to fucking punch him.

So, my name is Bree Thomas. I think we

can put these down now. I also wore black

so you couldn't see the armpit sweat. It's
a

good trick.

My name is Bree Thomas. I am a brand-spanking

new developer, as of like, eight months old.
Yes.

Yes, thank you. Thank you.

So I, I'm, I work with a product company

called iTriage and so I spend much of my

day spelunking a very intimidating code base,
and I

spend a lot of my time studying and pairing

with anybody who will have me, to be honest.

But in a past life, not too long ago,

I was a product marketer. Dun duh duhh.

And that's what I want to share with you

today, a little bit of that experience. Specifically,
I

want to talk to you about brand. What brand

is, why you should care, and how you can

use brand in your open source projects to
start

differentiating yourself in, face it, what
is now a

very saturated and competitive landscape.

But before we can, before I can tell you

how to do this, we've got to level set

at the what, right. So what is brand? And

to do that, I'm gonna show you some logos,

K. Don't worry. They're not. Some big brand
logos,

and I just need you to tell me what

they sell.

K. Does anybody know what this brand sells?
Anybody?

Mike! What does this brand sell?

MIKE: Sporting equipment.

B.T.: Very good. Are you a runner? Not so

much. OK. Just checking. Just checking. What
about this

brand? Does anybody know what this brand sells?

AUDIENCE: Computers. Hardware.

B.T.: Hardware! OK. Great. Good. What about
this brand?

Jeremy Jackson, what does this brand sell?

JEREMY JACKSON: Shoes?

B.T.: Oh, shut up. See, and here's what he

doesn't want you to know. He doesn't want
you

to know that he drives on of these.

All right. So, those were good answers, OK.
But

really, let's start with Nike. What Nike sells
is

more than just shoes. Nike sells empowerment.

Nike sells a belief that greatness comes from
within.

It's not a gift. It's not destiny. Actually,
it's

a fierce commitment, right. An unyielding
focus, that you

can make yourself into anything you want to
be.

You just have to do it.

And, how they communicate empowerment, well,
that takes different

forms, depending on who they're talking to.
How they

communicate with women. How they communicate
with men. What

they're advertisements look spanning sports,
race. It's all different.

But at the core, it's really about empowerment.
They

are the constant voice of empowerment, telling
you that

you can do it. You can be better.

And when Apple launched their Think Different
campaign, at

that time, for Apple, it was a summation of

what that company stood for. At the time.
And

in positioning Think Different, they didn't
do it with

products, right. No. They did it with humans.
Accomplished,

iconic humans, right, to quote some of their
advertising

that I'm sure we're all familiar with. The
crazy

ones. The misfits. The rebels. The ones who
see

things differently.

And while their ads have changed quite a bit,

Think Different is still a very prevalent
part of

their DNA. So whether we're looking at the
iPod

ads from way back when, when there was literally

nothing about their product on these - just
a

silhouette on a bright-colored background
- to the ads

you see today. There's just this very inherent
attitude

that is simply and beautifully executed.

And, what's great about their ads is, for
them,

I mean, they spark immediate iconic status.
So there's

lots of creative spin-offs of their ads. And
copy

cats. But really what they do is they spark

this crazy group of devout followers on every
single

product release.

BMW. The passionate driver's car. They are
about aspiring,

not actually to luxury, but the joy of driving.

And that that happiness, the joy of driving,
that's

inherent in the BMW itself. Regardless of
your station

in life, be that a biker or a mother,

the BMW is the car to suit your inner-driving

enthusiast. Because at the end of the day,
it

isn't about status. It really is about joy.

So why did I show you these brands? Because

they don't just sell a particular style of
footwear

or fancy color of an iPod or even heated

seats in a car. Actually, what they sell is

a belief. Empowerment. Think different. Joy.

And beliefs are held by humans. And humans
build

relationships. And relationships build community.
So take a look

around you right now. For better or for worse,

we are all a community. Right, we share some

common beliefs in how to build software, for
instance.

But just having a good product, right, just
having

a good product anymore, or some pristine lines
of

code that you've written, whatever the metric
dujour is

of what pristine is, that's not enough anymore.
No

matter how amazing your project or your specific
product

is, if only you, or a very small few

are at the epicenter, then it's just a matter

of time before it breaks down.

And while we can all completely understand
Ryan's burnout

with RailsCast, it's really doesn't lessen
the blow when

we lose that. I can speak for me personally

as a new developer.

So as you look to develop your open source

project, how are you going to foster a community?

How are you going to attract contributors,
maintainers, adopters,

for that matter, how are you actually gonna
keep

them?

So the really great brands, they symbolize
more than

just those products that they sell. The really
great

brands are a culture of people who share some

common beliefs.

The really great brands are human. And that's
what

I want to talk to you about today. I

want to talk to you about how you can

build a who at the same time that you're

actually building your what.

And so to do that, we're gonna walk through

just some brilliant basics, and I've got a
couple

open source projects who are doing parts of
this

really well. So I'll illustrate that with
them. And

then we'll move to in practice. I'm going
to

give you actually a scalable framework that
you can

start using immediately, and I'm gonna give
you some

methods for how to populate that framework
with content.

And then lastly, I'll give you a couple examples

about how you can actually, in real life,
apply

this.

So the basics of brand, right, is really just

about personality traits. How would you describe
your best

friend to someone you've just met? How do
you

set your sister up on a blind date?

Brand strategists have a go-to set of personality
traits

that they like to use. We'll start with purpose.

Why does a brand exist? What do they seek

to change in the world, right? What, where
did

their motives originate from? What do they
stand for?

What do they hold as dear and unshakable truths

as they're interacting with us and the rest
of

the world?

What do they say? When they speak, do they

speak the truth? And what do they do? I

mean, are they doing it? How would I know

that they're doing it? And do their actions
speak

louder than their words?

What do they look like? What is their image?

How do they portray themselves? Is it something
that

I want to be seen with? More importantly,
do

I, on a personal level, identify with them
enough

to do this? For the record, I do not

have any Harley Davidson tattoos.

But the beauty of this guy and this tattoo

is that he isn't making a statement about
Harley

Davidson. He's making a statement about himself.
And Harley

Davidson symbolizes things about him.

So, let's take a look at some of these

traits that I just ran through across a couple

open source projects.

We'll start with Ember. I mean, seriously.
An adorable

identity. OK. This is just the cutest thing
ever.

And here's what's great about Ember, right,
they deliver

this character that is inviting and approachable,
but most

important, when I look at this, here's what
else

they're conveying, that's really important.

A child-like easiness. Even their shwag is
in-line with

their persona. And that's really interesting
to me, because

when I look at their purpose, a framework
for

creating ambitious web applications - holy
shit, that's scary

to a new developer. I just want something
that

works.

But it just sounds big and daunting. But what

you see here is that right below that, around

more adorable and inviting cartoons, they
have this comfortable,

easy feeling with more productivity out of
the box.

And they're very clear in what they value.
Writing

less code. Avoiding trivial decision turn.
And, my favorite,

developer ergonomics. I don't actually know
what that is,

but I know that ergonomics is healthy, which
means

it's beneficial so I love it.

So they're good at that, right. Like, this
feels

good to me. This feels like, OK, I can

use this.

Here's something else that Ember does that
I really

like. They post all the minutes from their
core

team meetings. And this creates a transparency,
right, which

invokes a trust from me. I gravitate towards
this.

And, and as a new developer, this really reinforces

to me that they are approachable. That they
are

inviting.

Another open source project. Ghost. Ghost
is just a

blogging platform. So talk about an open source
project

with a tremendous amount of competition, right.
I mean,

there are tons of static sites, blog site
generators

out there right now. WordPress. SqaureSpace.
Jekyll. OctoPress. Some

of these players have even got the backing
to

be running TV commercials.

But here's what I love about Ghost. They put

a very, very, very specific stake in the ground

that they're just a blogging platform because
they really

stand for one thing, and that is publishing.
This

is why they're going to focus on just one

thing, because they want to do this one thing

better than anyone else does it.

And for them, focusing on publishing, from
a value

perspective, this is about taking the future
of freedom

of speech to the next level. OK, I can

get behind that. That sounds good. I should
be

involved in that. And Ghost is guided from
some

very, some values that support this, right.
Users first.

Always, for them. That's what it's about.

Secondly, it's for love, not for profit. Right,
so

they are free. And they do this because to

accept money would consequently impose some
changes in how

they approach development, and I think that's
really interesting,

right.

So these brands, these brands I showed you,
they're

very clear in their beliefs. You know what
they

stand for and you see that represented from
everything.

Coffee. How they, how they talk. Their aesthetic.
Their

shwag. Even down to their development ethos,
right. How

they're making choices in features and enhancements.

So it should be simple enough to do, right?

I think it's important to know that developing
an

honest, believable, truly authentic brand,
it's more than just

slapping a bunch of adjectives out there or
paying

for a really slick logo. It's a little bit

more than that. And that there's actually
a method

to that madness.

So, I'm gonna walk you through a process to

get to kind of your who, right. That's what

we're trying to build. And the first order
of

business is that you can't do this alone.
You

can't do this in a vacuum. Cause, let's be

honest. You've been drinking your particular
open source Koolaid

all day long. You need some healthy perspective,
OK.

You need one other person who's willing to
go

sit in a room with you for four to

six hours, at least, and psychoanalyze the
shit out

of your project.

And if you can find more than one of

those people, great. Grab them. But let's
not get

a classroom, OK. Let's keep it small. Small
team.

People who are, have no problem telling you
what

they really think. So you do want them to

understand the space, OK. And you want them
to

know a little bit about you and you want

them to know about the project.

Now, for the process. You're gonna see that
the,

the exercises I'm gonna take you through,
they really

consist of the same three basic steps. We're
gonna

have a shit ton of sticky notes and we're

gonna write a lot of words on them. That's

the ideation process. After that, we're gonna
take those

words and we're going to start to group them.

Categorize them by common themes. Once we
have that

done, then we're gonna prioritize, OK. We're
gonna have

some winners.

To get started, we gotta know where we're
going.

Right, like, what is this thing that we need

to fill up, if you will, with all of

these words? And so, I have a simple brand

structure in mind. Because when you're starting
out, I

think when you think about words like purpose
and

mission and values, that feels really heavy.
Or, for

some of you, it just feels like marketing
jargon.

Whatever your take on it. That can be a

very daunting thing, right.

So, I actually like to start here, with just

a simple why, how, and what. And what you'll

see is that at the end of this, we're

gonna get to the same juicy stuff.

Why? This is a sentence, OK. This is why

you get out of bed in the morning. Or

I'm presuming, for most of you, stay up till

four AM. Whatever the case may be. This is

a personal and a passionate statement, OK.
This is

why you are doing this.

How? How you do this, right. This is where

we're gonna talk about what are those things
that

make you different. What are your points of
difference?

And what's your personality? So if we do need

to describe you or set you up on a

blind date, how are we going to describe you?

And then, lastly, what. This is what you really

deliver. And a hint here, this is gonna be

more than just a list of your product features.

It's gonna be bigger than that.

A few notes on the content that fill this

brand structure. Before we get started. It's,
it's not

copy. So, don't get so wrapped up in the

words because you're worried about them being
printed somewhere

forever. It's really about getting the words
down on

paper and making sure that they express the
intent.

It should be organic, OK. It can grow and

it can change as your brand and your team

changes. But you do want to try to get

to kind of that core piece of positioning,
much

like Nike has a core piece of empowerment
positioning.

But they express that differently, depending
on venue and

audience.

And lastly, this is probably the more important
one.

As we go through this work, remember to make

it about you. Because, if your reason for
being,

the why you get out of bed in the

morning, is just focused on your competitor,
someone you

see as your competitor, then your brand is
automatically

gonna have a pretty short life.

OK. So now that we know where we want

to be, it's a matter of how to get

there. And to walk through this, I'm going
to

use a current open source project to walk
through

these examples. I don't know, maybe you've
heard of

it. Yesterday, even. Exercism. So Exercism
is something that's

really important to me as a new developer.
This,

this tool has been instrumental in my learning.
And

Katrina, as well, who developed this, has
been instrumental

in my learning.

And for those of you who don't know, Exercism

is essentially crowd-sourced code reviews
for daily practice problems.

Here's how it works. As a user, you pick

a language. You pick an exercise. You download
a

test suite. You write the code to solve that

problem, and then you resubmit that solution
back to

Exercism, where all other members of Exercism
can come

in and comment on your solution.

OK. And the goal here is iterating over small

chunks of code. And also to engage in a

thoughtful dialogue. Some back and forth.
Constructive feedback about

new ideas. Things we could be doing better,
or

what if you chose a different label for this

or that method.

OK. And so for our structure, I also want

to let you know that there is some purpose

in this line up with why being at the

top. I mean, that's really kind of your archarching

umbrella. Like I said, it's also the hardest
thing

to fill out.

So when I start this exercise, I like to

start smack in the middle. Because for most
people,

their points of difference - how what they
have

is different - is just the most straightforward.
So

what makes your brand different enough to
care about?

And your points of difference can span implementation.
They

can span customer service, language, design
patterns. The idea

right now is you want to get all of

those out onto sticky notes, write them all
out.

You've got you and your other friend in the

room. And then get them all up on a

whiteboard. Maybe, for exercism, it looks
something like this.

Imagine this is a whiteboard of sticky notes.
Keep

it short and simple here, OK. No novels. That's

part of the reason why you use post-its. And

now once you have them in front of you,

now you're gonna start to group them, right.
How

can you start to align these in categories
that

make sense? And then once you have them in

a category, what are you gonna label those
categories?

For exercism, it might look something like
this. Mentorship

is a point of difference. How Exercism creates
a

platform for people of all skill levels to
be

mentored by others. Intrinsic motivation,
right. So, if you

saw before, Exercism doesn't use score boards.
OK. This

isn't about, like, trying to get to a badge.

OK, this is about becoming a better programmer
working

on small, little problems iteratively.

And so there's an intrinsic motivation about
that. That's

really the goal. And then a safe forum, because

it's a very important piece of Exercism. OK,
we

must be nice to one another and have constructive

feedback. And as you can see, these are, so

for Exercism, these are points of difference,
but they

also start to sound like values, right. Things
that

Exercism really cares about.

Now, when it comes to your points of difference,

I personally am a fan of three categories.
That's

not a scientific rule by any means. I'm just

a fan of three categories. I think four categories

is fine. I think if you only have two,

that's good too. I will say that five and

above, baby kittens start to die, because
people just

cannot focus on, like, what you're talking
about. That's

too much.

OK. So let's slug these into our framework
and

move onto personality. Again, with the sticky
notes. We're

going to start to think about how Exercism
looks

on the inside. And what does it look like

through a competitive lens? Who else are doing
things

like this?

What does it look like to users? What should

it look like to users? And we're gonna use

adjectives here, right. Some personality type
adjectives. This is

what we're gonna write down. And the goal
here

is to get as many words as possible. So

you write, you write all the words out, and

then the first thing you should do is grab

a thesaurus and add to them. K.

Now we're gonna group the words. Again, looking
for

common themes, overlap. And this might be
what it

looks like for Exercism. And you want to make

sure that the group is weighing in on these,

on these categories here, right. You want
to make

sure that within the room, everybody's very
clear about

why the word was offered. What was, what was

the thinking that was happening at the time.
What

are they trying to express with this or that

adjective?

And you can have as many categories as you

want here. There's no danger to kittens. Yet.

Now you're gonna vote. So per category, you're
going

to vote for your first, second, and third
word.

And the objective here at the end is to

tally the results, and for each category,
one word

wins. And so now that you've got those words,

these are gonna be your working elements moving
forward.

This is what many brand strategists would
call your

brand DNA. So for Exercism, we've got engaging,
analytical,

obsessive, education, motivating. And now
we've got to start

building a person. So how do we do that,

right? We have these DNA elements. Well, we've
got

to start thinking about a character that matches
these

words.

And if we've got a character, we've gotta
think

about, what does, what does that character
sound like?

And to do that, you take your DNA and

then you just map additional words against
that, right,

corresponding. So if a DNA element is analytical,
well,

that's probably a very rational character.
It has a

very reasonable, calm voice. Right, those
are, those are

some words that might come in to start describing

a person.

And now to actually get it to a place

where we can describe it as we would our

best friend, we've got to make it do something.

You've gotta make it do something. So you've
got

that working set of words, and now we want

to craft a sentence, several sentences actually,
where we

are trying to kind of introduce Exercism as
a

person.

So, Exercism is inviting, and always looking
to collaborate,

for example. An infectious enthusiast. Pushy,
but in a

thoughtful way. So let's record those into
personality. And

now we can move on to the what you

really deliver.

As a reminder, what you deliver is actually
bigger

than just a product description. Often, this
is really

a promise. This starts to become your mission
statement.

To do that, we're gonna have to go back

to our brand DNA, where we started, and first

we made it do something. Now we have to

make it say something.

So to make it say something, this is where

we want to craft a sentence that expresses
the

collective meaning of these words. Not just
their meaning

from the dictionary, but, again, when we were
in

the room, what was that collective intent?
Why did

these words win our vote? What was the conversation

that was happening?

And as a platform, Exercism is about improving
your

skills in writing code. It's about giving
and taking

feedback and solving problems. So if we're
gonna make

it say something, I often like to start with,

Exercism delivers - whatever your product
is delivers. Maybe

it looks like this.

Exercism delivers practice for those who do
not settle

at good. That's what what. So let's add that

to the framework and let's keep trucking.

So for the why. I like to start this

one with, I do this because, OK. This is

that personal and passionate statement. So
think about things

like, what was the event that sparked you
starting

this open source project. Was there something
that was

pissing you off at the time? Were you searching

for something but you couldn't find it? What
do

you really believe in at the end of the

day?

For Exercism, it might look like this. I do

this because I hate lazy code, and teaching
actually

takes a village, for example. That persistence
in the

detail matters. And so once we've got these
on

our sticky notes again, now we want to start

to group, right. This is a slightly different
grouping

exercise here. We want to group, but what
we're

really trying to get to is what is the

one liner?

Cause this is the why. Now we want to

look at these. These are gonna be similar
in

a lot of different ways. And now we want

to get to just, what is that, that one

liner, be it a word or a short sentence.

A statement. That sums up the belief. Like,
what

is most representative of all of this about
why

we do this? And what we're passionate about.

As a reminder, here's what it was for some

of those larger brands. Whoops. Damn it.

Totally ruined it. OK. So where we started
was

Exercism, which is a crowd sourced platform
for code

reviews, right. But if we're really gonna
get to

the why, OK, the thing that is so important

about, about why Katrina stays up till four
AM

in the morning, or for those of us who

participate in Exercism, why we love to be
nit-picked.

It might look like this. That the Devil is

in the details. That this is really what's
important

and what matters about thinking about becoming
a good

programmer. About mentoring others.

This is what it takes to be better than

just good. That you have to practice this.
A

lot. And so this is a different story and

a different feel than just a platform for
daily

practice problems and crowd source code review.

So now that you have this story, what are

you gonna do with it? Now that you have

a who in your brand structure, how do you

use it? Oh shit. Marketing.

Don't worry. I'm gonna keep this simple. And
really

focus on some low-hanging fruit. Because while
it's true

that I've shown you a lot of big players

here, if you take the time and the due

diligence up front to not just think about
what

you're building but who that looks like, what,
what

that is as a person, then that upstream work

is gonna reap some rewards in your downstream
work.

Because now you have a place in which to

start communicating out of the box differently,
right. Immediately,

in your README. I mean, I know we've heard

tons of talks, READMEs are important. One
thing that

I think really is important about a README
that

I don't see very often is voice.

How it sounds. I mean, yeah, it's great to

have a README that has plenty of directions,
but

I want to know a little bit more. I

wanna, I wanna feel a little bit of personality

when I'm reading a README and I'm going through

instructions. At least for a new developer,
it's very

hard sometimes, to work through some of this.

So, understanding a little bit more of the
who

makes an open source project stand out for
me.

I remember it better. And so when you're constructing

your README, think about all of this work
that

we've done, all of these adjectives that we've
put

up on the wall, and so write, in that

tone of voice.

Because here's the thing. You might be a total

jerk. Or boring and passive. But your code
doesn't

actually have to be. You can build a whole

new character. And once you've got a voice,
now

you're ready to tell your story. OK. You can

tell your story everywhere.

Blogs, conferences, events, social media.

And what's important is,

as you're telling your story,

make sure you're hitting those key points
of difference,

OK. Those things that you value. That are
most

important. And that you hold dear. And be
clear

about what you deliver.

Because it actually is more than just a list

of your product features.

Otherwise you wouldn't stay up

until four AM in the morning doing this. It

does mean more to you, right. And it probably

means a lot more to the community, too. So

don't just tell people what you've made. Tell
them

why you've made it.

Tell them what you believe. Because beliefs
are held

by humans. And humans build relationships.

And relationships build

community. Thank you. That's it.