Seven years ago, IBM's Websphere team were given uncompromising feedback about what developers thought of their software. On a whiteboard at Devoxx 2008, it was called 'WebsFear' and other mean names.
So they had a long think and started to build something that was designed with developers in mind. The result was a new application server, Liberty. They knew they'd done something right when, in 2014, Liberty was described by a developer as 'Awesome'.
How did they get from 'WebsFear' to 'Awesome'?
When they created the new technology, they realised that they needed to build a developer community around it. Impressive technology alone wasn't enough. Even in the traditional, enterprise world, open source culture is influencing the way that businesses choose software.
There needs to be a strong developer community to support users and to share expertise, easy-to-obtain free downloads, lots of credible resources, and (importantly) openness.
Laura talks about their experiences over the past four years of building a developer community around (partly) proprietary software in a (mostly) open source world; the challenges they've faced (both internally and in the wider Java EE community), the successes they've had, the commitment it's needed, and the corporate processes they've broken/changed/circumvented to be able to do things they never previously imagined they could.
Filmed at DevRelCon London 2015 on September 30th 2015.
Photo credits:
Devoxx 2008 whiteboard session was convened by Stephen Colebourne; Sven Reimers
took the photos, which he gave me permission to use:
https://plus.google.com/photos/107881392009025418058/albums/5279201328235757297
Apache Retreat UK wigwams – https://www.flickr.com/photos/zoeslattery/5004533171
Coffee https://www.flickr.com/photos/trophygeek/7309935684
Pipeline https://www.flickr.com/photos/kailehmann/17811970319
Racoon confrontation https://www.flickr.com/photos/tambako/7460999402
Shiny stones https://www.flickr.com/photos/82955120@N05
Binary https://www.flickr.com/photos/lamenta3/2603529812
Eggtimer https://www.flickr.com/photos/comedynose/5118563700
Spiral clock https://www.flickr.com/photos/jdbaskin/7192766626
No https://www.flickr.com/photos/49889874@N05
Empathy map https://www.flickr.com/photos/visualpunch/7245656774
