Building Momentum with the Docker Captains, featuring Jenny Burcio and Victor Coisne — EP005
The enthusiasm of the participants in the Docker Captains Program and the overall Docker Community is a testament to our guests this week, Jenny Burcio and Victor Coisne. They share their strategies and tactics, and give advice to those who are starting a new program!
Docker has a huge amount of momentum in the community, and you can feel their enthusiasm and energy, both virtually and at live events like DockerCon, which is where we recorded this podcast with them! The Docker Captains Program is about a year old, and is a calculated way of helping the most active people in their community feel connected to the company and help them grow. We appreciate the way they are both organically and strategically approaching their program, and growing globally. Docker Community has been a large engine to their growth as a company, and they see community as a way to help all sectors of Docker — technical, marketing, etc. They are building a program as a way for passionate community members to bring their value to Docker. They are constantly taking feedback and making changes. At the end of our podcast, Jenny and Victor’s smiles said it all: when a program like Docker’s works so well, magic and synergy happen, to elevate all of those involved. They are proud of the way the program enables members, provides education, and creates a network effect across the globe, and how much is done for community, with little resources.
Subscribe to the Influence Marketing Podcast on iTunes
Links: Episode 005 mp3 file, Influence Marketing Podcast RSS feed
Key Takeaways
[3:30] Today we are talking with Jenny Burcio, who leads the Docker Captains and speaker program, and Victor Coisne, who leads Docker’s community team and oversees events and ambassadors programs. We recorded this episode in Austin, TX, at DockerCon.
[4:13] The Captains program is about a year and a half old, and an award that Docker has given to some of their most enthusiastic community members who are Docker experts, and are out speaking and blogging their knowledge about Docker. They were inspired by their passionate community, and they felt a need to create a program to support and highlight those spreading the good word about Docker.
[5:00] Before the Captains program started, John came in to the Docker office for an afternoon and shared his experience at VMware; one takeaway was that it’s not just one tribe that makes up a successful advocacy program, but bringing all together the different roles — speakers, user groups, partners, customers, etc. — can yield synergies.
[5:36] Docker Captains are made up of a well-rounded group.
[6:35] When starting out, their goal was to recognize the amazing contribution the Captains were making and to enable them to do better.
[7:45] Something interesting about Docker is that they have the community team, which is all about the programs, organizing events and the online community, and the Developer Relations (DevRel) team which is technical, but both work together. Jenny works on the DevRel team, and she positions one of the benefits of the Captains program as scaling what DevRel would do internally. The Captains program is out of the DevRel organization but works very closely with the community marketing team.
[9:17] Their advice for people just getting a program started: start small and really focus on the people you are going to pick. Then make sure it’s something they will find value in. They have 70 Captains, and they have focused on the quality of their content and activities, instead of their quantity. Take the time to learn about your participants.
[11:07] They had speaker and user group programs that were working well, so they built more around what already existed.
[11:50] Some of the benefits for the Captains: the swag of course, as well as the platform to make their voice and efforts more heard in the community; access and friendship with Captains, career growth, briefings, and direct access to the tech lead at the Docker team.
[13:47] Captains are selected via nomination process either internally or by Captains themselves. They look at activities and passion around Docker, and will reach out to them directly.
[16:00] They communicate via live events, Slack, emails, Captains’ briefings, and Captains’ roundtable.
[17:19] There are 500 meetup organizers, 287 user groups in 80 countries, in a community of about 200,000 members on MeetUp.com.
[18:05] They have a strong mentor team teaching the new members.
[18:29] Engineering and marketing interact with the Captains program.
[19:07] Jenny was previously an attorney in software. Victor started at Docker as an intern in the marketing department. They were strictly community based.
[22:45] They are constantly taking Captain feedback, and making changes and adjustments towards the future. DockerCon 2017 has a good representation from program members.
[27:53] They have hired way too many Captains! You can’t be a Captain if you work for Docker.
[28:52] It’s important to foster your community both in person, and virtually. When the Captains get together, magic and synergy happens.
[31:02] MeetUp organizers were the original ambassador programs for Docker. This helped scale the education of Docker globally.
[34:20] Docker.com has an area for the Captains program.
About our guests, Jenny Burcio and Victor Coisne
Jenny Burcio runs the Docker Captains program, where she helps awesome Docker community members inspire and educate others. Prior to Docker, Jenny worked at Apigee helping to build their community programs and partner ecosystem. Jenny is a recovering attorney, mom, and wannabe plant whisperer. Victor Coisne is the Head of Community Marketing at Docker. He likes fine wines, chess and soccer in no particular order.
Mentioned In This Episode
The Influence Marketing Podcast, a podcast brought to you by the Influence Marketing Council, an industry council for B2B brands who innovate in influencer, advocacy, and community marketing. Your hosts, John Mark Troyer and Kathleen Nelson Troyer, are co-founders of the IMC. The Influence Marketing Podcast is part of the research program of the IMC. For more information, go to influencemarketingcouncil.com.
