Outreach Tactics

Community outreach is an effort to find the right people in the Community of Practice.

There are several tools to help span this network. These include:

• Company and personal 'rolodexes', whether paper, electronic, or in your head
• Team brainstorming
• The community itself
  

The last point has two aspects. First, those you contact, even if they are surely not the right individuals for an engagement can help direct you. Use their good will, their rolodex, and their tacit knowledge of who is in the community or who can help navigate the community.

At the first contact be sure to ask for help in finding the right people. At the last contact, at the end of the engagement, be sure to ask who else we should connect with. Now that they've seen the types of questions we are asking, they will have a better idea of who can help.

Coordination

Since the Community Map is a shared resource, and all team members will be in and out of it often (to claim ownership of branches and individuals, or to add content back), here are a few things to do to avoid stepping on each other.