SA Developer.Net

After an absence of over a month the SA Developer.Net website is finally up and running again thanks to Craig Nicholson, one of the leads and also Microsoft X-Box MVP. The site has been giving problems for a while, and has been hosted on a sponsored server at IS for a few years, however the sponsorship of the server fell through. Thankfully William Brander, one of the moderators, was able to secure us some new sponsorship and hosting. Unfortunately the downtime does mean that there has been no visibility to the members of the community and we have to rebuild our visitor base and search rankings, which can take some time.

This particular issue has once again highlighted the dependence communities have on sponsorships. It is rarely understood that most technical communities in South Africa has no revenue streams whatsoever, and the communities exist due to the passion of the people involved. There is no compensation for the time and effort put into building, managing and maintaining these communities, nor is any compensation ever wanted by the individuals leading these communities.

However these communities require resources. Companies often falsely associate requests for sponsorship with money, and more often then not expect communities to become their personal advertising ground. The truth is technical communities, both in the server and development space, are not about products, but much rather about sharing of information, the abolishment of myths, and the promotion of growth and passion in these industries. Community sponsor do gain however, by getting themselves seen as supporters of passionate and powerful individuals, bound to make a difference in the future, if they have not already. SA Developer.Net has existed for almost 10 years because of this, and hopefully will rebuild itself quickly, with leads and moderators who do care about keeping it alive.

Catering Sponsorships

There is also various ways companies can become sponsors of these communities, without having to make financial investments. Often sponsorships can be provided in the form of event venues, catering assistance, media exposure and in return gain valuable advertising and promotional opportunities. The technical communities play an important role in events like Tech-Ed, allowing their sponsors access to these events with their presence through initiatives like the community lounge. The current recession has become an easy way out for some sponsors, and it has become harder and harder to find committed sponsors.

Behind the scenes there are a few existing community leads working hard on improving this situation however, and hopefully within the next year the gap between community sponsorship and communities will become smaller. If you or your company is interested in supporting any of the technical communities in South Africa, feel free to get in touch with myself or the various community leads directly.

I have found being part of these communities invaluable to my work in the past. Some of the technical communities in South Africa can be found online and are listed below for reference.

A special thanks once again to Craig and William for the hard work with getting SA Developer.Net going again!