Changing Lives, Saving Lives: Community Intentionality and Impact of Developer Communities in Turkey

In Ilker Akansel’s session at the 2023 Community Rebellion Conference, he talks about changing lives and saving lives through community. 

📽️ Click here to watch the session recording.

Ilker started his session by sharing a story of football and how, though he does not like or care about the sport at all, started off his community inadvertently by working for the Olympic Games, responsible for bringing the team tour buses into the venue. He then quoted Bill Shankly, stating, “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it’s much more serious than that.” 

Transitioning to developer communities in Turkey and his story, Ilker began by explaining the three phases of software development flow - ideation, creation, and problem solving. Where community comes in is the problem solving - helping one another figure out problems and writing and collaborating on code together. 

Ilker helped build the developer ecosystem with Google’s community programs, spanning to 140 countries by the time he left Google in 2020. The challenge in Turkey was that rather than being professional communities, they were highly student communities - Turkey’s ecosystem was young and there was a lack of role models and diversity, and there was little connection between career development and the developer groups. 

Using the word “intentionalizing”, the goal was to create more intention with the groups, being able to increase confidence by moving events out of the schools and providing roadmaps and professional support in areas such as event management and sponsorship. Being able to produce additional value to the members was the priority. 

By pulling out of schools, they were able to hire the biggest venues in Turkey to discuss technology and development, particularly at Devfest in Turkey. Focusing efforts increased attendance rates substantially. Additionally, they were able to get 40 developers from Turkey to Google I/O in Mountain View, USA. This amplified their voices and presence in the developer world. 

As time continued, they continued to amplify voices and stories for developers in Turkey, including highlighting women in the industry. They also opened doors by creating an incubation program, allowing students to pitch to companies and get investments. By “intentionalizing”, you’re channeling the power of the community better. 

When the devastating earthquake struck Turkey in February 2023, costing 60,000 lives, the developer communities jumped in. People from the community gathered together and created a volunteer community to help people trapped under the rubble. There were 23,000 self-organized volunteers who worked to provide rescue services through developing the tools, including providing map services and addresses for people who Tweeted noting they were trapped for rescue services. This really showed the power of community and the importance of intentionalizing your community. 

As you’re calculating the intentionality of your community, you want to think about the type of community you are running and what the values and intentions are. This can then serve as the cornerstone for your members and really help you drive the community’s purpose and value.