In my company, we have a board of, let’s call them, chief developers. In fact it is a mixture of various people and skills along the software development life cycle. Most of the guys one would say are software architects. It’s a pretty small circle but nevertheless we are expected to trigger important changes related to what technology is used and how software is developed within the company. 

Knowing that we do this beside our daily business, we thought it would be a good idea to start an in-house community for all the software developers to receive as many ideas as possible.

Our first step now is to search for a platform to host the online part of the community. We won’t go for the super-fanzy-3D-2nd-life approach like some IBM guys did some years ago… 

We’ll start small and try to maintain a structure by moderating the hot topics. The most important, in my opinion, is that we receive feedback and feel what is really bugging people inside our organisation. Hopefully the community will grow quickly and proves to be a good source for new ideas.

If anyone has experience with building online communities, drop me a note.