Tackling Technology vs. Community Building

As a community manager, my mission is to build and develop our online community. Yet I am also the system administrator, and at times technology issues consume more of my time than I'd like. The past month has been an especially tough one for our technology.

Change is the enemy of stability when it comes to technology, I am learning. Last month we started preparing for two major changes: upgrading from Jive Clearspace 2.5 to Jive SBS 3.0 and also implementing Akamai's Content Delivery Network (CDN). In the middle of all of this, we suddenly experienced a major loss of system functionality (no one in our largest division could download file attachments from the system).

It took more than a week to resolve the file download issue, and it got worse before it got better. Meanwhile, our upgrade date rapidly approached and we kept our commitment to get that done. Now we are doing our best to thoroughly test the Akamai integration -- which promises to finally resolve our long-standing complaints about slow system response time outside of the US -- and hope to be ready to cutover the entire site by Friday.

The trade-off for all of this focus on the technology is clear: our community has been neglected. I'm looking at usage statistics for April and May and see downward dips after months of upward movement. We've taken our eye off the ball (community development) so it's not surprising that growth and progress have stalled. Still, it's frustrating and discouraging.

The plan now is to maintain a stable technology situation for as long as possible once we get through this push. We'll likely wait until November to upgrade to Jive SBS 3.5 (it's due out in September), both so we can avoid inevitable early-release bugs and so we can extend our focus on community development for a five-month stretch.

There are so many steps we are ready to take with our community. We have raced ahead for nine months now. We've lost a bit of momentum over the past two months, but lulls are to be expected, especially after the new-ness of the technology wears off. I'm hoping we are just catching our breath, so to speak, and with the new features of Jive SBS 3.0 plus the speed enhancements from Akamai's CDN we'll start a new push toward the next levels of community maturity.

That's my mission. Now, if we can just get the technology issues wrapped up so I can get to it!