Gardening is often used as an analogy for communities, and for good reason. You start with a need (fresh fruits and vegetables); you plan it out, prep the soil and plant the seeds; and then you give your garden the resources you think it needs to thrive (water, nutrients, pesticides). Your end result can vary based on any number of factors, but if you know what you’re doing and follow those steps, you’ll have a pretty good idea.

The same goes for developer communities. Just like in a garden, you start with a need, plan the community, plant the seeds, and give it the resources it needs to thrive. Planting the seeds is about engagement and evangelism – getting the word out by running workshops at events, reaching out to developers and getting their feedback, and publishing technical content, samples, and tutorials that developers care about.

Aside from Mountain Dew and pizza, the primary resource that a developer community needs is a space where they can share what they’re working on, collaborate with others on ideas, reach out to others to get assistance when needed, and share their thoughts on whether or not Star Wars or Marvel’s Cinematic Universe is the best movie franchise (hint: there’s only one right answer).

Launch of our Community Forum

That’s why I’m so excited to announce the launch of our dedicated community forum. This has been a long time coming and reflects the important role developers play at Solace. Using Vanilla Forums, a leader in forum software, community members from all backgrounds and experiences will be able to socialize, share resources, organize projects together, and help each other.

As part of this community forum, you will start to see things like Tips and Tricks, Tutorials, general discussions, and PubSub+ Software and Cloud topics, questions, and answers. We encourage you to get involved wherever you can and want to.

Growing our Developer-focused Content

Another aspect of our renewed focus on developers is the content we are creating. If you haven’t already noticed, we’ve been ramping up our developer-focused content on our blog, as well as posting to Dev.to, the top place for developer content on the Internet. We’ve also recently rolled out our revamped Developer Portal, along with TutorialsSamples, and Quick Starts.

Conclusion

We would love to hear from you on everything from your thoughts on our product to how we’re doing with providing you the tools and resources necessary to help you be successful. All types of feedback are important, and we value every bit of it we can get!

Jeremy Meiss

Jeremy was previously the Director of Community at Solace, formerly at Auth0 and XDA. He is a lover of all things coffee, community, open source, and tech. He is also house-broken, and (generally) plays well with others.