>> Narrator: From around the globe,
it's "theCUBE" with Digital Coverage
of OutSystems NextStep 2020,
brought to you by OutSystems.
>> Welcome back I'm Stu Miniman.
This is "theCUBE" at OutSystems NextStep,
of course, when we gather at the events,
one of the big things to talk about
is the community and OutSystem show is no exception.
Lots of developers lots of community engagement
as they're building and sharing what they have.
So to dig into that topic.
Happy to welcome to the program, Jen Lopez,
she is the Senior Director of Community and Advocacy
at OutSystems.
Jen, thank you so much for joining us.
>> Hi, thanks so much for having me.
>> Well, Jen, there's so much discussion in the industry
right now is like, Okay, what does the current moment
in time with the global pandemic mean for events?
What does it mean for communities?
The term I've heard used so much is,
how do we bring ourselves together even while we're apart.
But if you could, give us, what does the community
and OutSystems look like, you've had this event before,
if this was 2019, what did the community activity
and the community engagement look like?
>> We are definitely in a different world right now.
So in 2019, gathering the community together,
whether it was at NextStep
or at other in person events that we often had,
that is such a huge part of building community
is getting people together
and being able to have those conversations
and sometimes it's just whether it's meeting
at, you're getting some coffee and you meet someone,
all of those in-person things are hard to do online.
But we're really working hard this year at finding
those ways to connect in bunch
of different ways with the community.
We have our regular technical talks
and that sort of thing that we're doing.
But we also have a chat where you can comment
and chat with other community members,
we're going to have a 24...
we have this 24 hour Zoom going on.
So you can, we're trying to find as many ways as possible,
to sort of, at least get those conversations
and have the ability for the community
to connect with each other.
>> I'm wondering if you can, people look at communities,
and especially the Developer Community,
there's so many different pieces of that.
When I talked to Gonzalo he was talking about,
how do we enable the next 10 million developers.
When I talk to Developer Community,
it looks like the optive is obviously a big piece
of what you're addressing, but characterize if you could,
and if you have any staff would love to understand,
the community, the growth of community,
where the engagement activity is.
>> Yeah, thanks.
So the community growth in the OutSystems community,
has been phenomenal.
Last year we saw, just for this year,
we saw 90% growth since last year.
We have 22,000 developers on a monthly basis
who are actively doing things in the community.
That's anywhere from, between building apps
and asking questions in the forum
and using downloading forge components,
which are reusable apps, attended user groups.
There's all these things.
We have this activity level that we've seen,
that has just been through the roof
and COVID for the community
has actually been, we have seen a huge growth.
Specifically March and April,
we saw a great increase in new members coming on.
And then what happened is our other members
jumped in answering way more questions than we've ever had
in the forums, offering to help in different ways
between the increase in the growth and increase in activity.
The community itself has jumped in
to really help out other people.
>> Yeah, well, if you look at the Developer Community,
and the tools they use and how they engage,
they're really the work from home.
Movement probably hit them a little bit less
than the average knowledge worker,
because they're used to being online.
They're used to engaging in these environments often
it is a distributed community.
So it sounds like it makes sense
what else from a COVID standpoint,
I've talked to some of OutSystems customers
and the ability baked into the platform
is something that they are taking advantage of.
Do you have any interesting stories around how the community
is rallying specifically with COVID going on.
>> Yeah, so actually that was a huge thing for us.
We had both internal and external,
we were getting a lot of folks coming to us
and saying, everybody wanted to help,
especially in the beginning, when it kind of hit globally.
Everybody wanted to help.
So what we did is we launched a program
that we called the COVID-19 Community Response Program.
And we weren't quite sure exactly how people might react.
But what ended up happening
is we had thousands of people give ideas,
and with those ideas, we had teams of people
who were working on building these apps,
and actually launching the apps to help
different communities all around the world
with various issues, whether it was, an Uber like app
that was created to help people in a certain community
find somebody who could go to the store for them.
There were these different apps were being created
by the community, the ideas were coming from the community.
And people just really rallied around it
because everybody wanted to help.
And they wanted to participate and be a part of something.
And they were able to get these apps out in record time.
I would see other folks everyone was trying
to rely on technology at the time.
And I would see other folks saying,
we had a team of five people spent two weeks building out,
our first MVP of this app and at our systems
we were seeing two people in one week
having like a fully blown fleshed out app being created.
So we were able to not just help
with the technology standpoint,
but help really quickly when it was needed right away.
>> Yeah, one of the themes I've been hearing a lot
at the show is how do we close that talent and skill gap?
I have to imagine with your community engagement,
the advocacy, you've got some visibility into
what things is OutSystem engage with when it comes to,
educating the next generation,
helping people take advantage
of some of the new technologies,
adoption of the new AI features,
it gives a little viewpoint as the those changing dynamics
in the community and specifically for developers.
>> Yeah, I think it's really interesting.
So we have a number of programs between education program
and low code schools and various programs
where we're getting not just new developers coming in
and learning OutSystems right away.
But actually getting developers who are coming
from other programming languages,
who are ready to learn something new
who are like, Hey, I'm hearing a lot about,
these different ways to be innovative.
And I can like build an app quickly, and it's still secure
and stable and robust and all of this.
And so we have a lot of people coming in different ways.
We're also really excited about a new partnership
that we've just launched with Women Who Code.
We're working really hard at going beyond
just sort of those regular ways of people coming in.
We want to help bring people from normally
who may be underrepresented in tech at the moment,
because we want to help bring that new generation in
and that generations coming from all walks of life.
And coming up with working on lots of different ways
to educate and bring them in and keep them in tech.
>> Yeah, Jen such an important topic.
I'm so glad that you brought it up diversity.
One of things when I think about we're lowering the bar,
and what necessary skills you have
to get started to be a coder.
So often it's I have to have this degree
I need to understand these languages.
So do you feel this general movement
is making it more accessible?
Are we in and what are we doing?
What can we do more to be able to reach out
find some new pools of talent that can help
us close this gap?
And then as you said, keep them in tech.
>> Yeah, and I think that'll be key is keeping them in tech.
But there are right now it's a strange thing
to say this as an opportunity, but with lots of people.
And specifically here in the US where I am, obviously,
&we have a lot of folks who have lost jobs.
People are looking for ways to get into something new.
What's great about being able to learn OutSystems
is that you're going to have a different kind of job,
you're going to have one of those jobs
with an enterprise organization,
or one of our partnerships and it's going to level up
your career in a totally different way.
And there are lots of organizations right now
who &are also looking to find those ways online.
They're like, we have all these members in our community
who were trying to get trained
and into tech in different ways.
And they are reaching out to us as well and saying,
Hey, we're hearing a lot about
all of these innovative things OutSystems is doing
how do we work together?
And so it's been really exciting to see
that it's not just us going out
and reaching out it's people saying,
Oh, I see these really cool things that you're doing.
And we want to help get our members
learning and into this as well.
>> Alright, let's look a little forward if we could Jen,
tell us what do you see in the future?
What feedback are you getting from community?
What things should we be looking at going forward?
>> Going forward, I think that development is really going
to be focused on being able to be creative and innovative
and finding new ways to do things.
We don't have to do things the same old way anymore,
we can build a robust application quickly.
And like we saw with COVID we had big issues,
and people were able to figure out a way to use technology
to actually help fix these issues
or solve a problem really quickly.
And I see that very much that people,
it lights something in people's minds of being a developer
doesn't have to just mean sitting and coding all day.
It means doing really but robust things
that I can do to help people
and use technology in a totally different innovative way.
>> Wonderful, Jen want to give you the final word.
When we talk about OutSystems,
bringing the community together,
what do you want people to understand
and connect with on this community?
>> The community itself is very generous
and giving and one thing that I have really really loved
about being a part of OutSystems is the community itself,
because they are working really hard
to help bring new developers in
help train them, give them mentorship.
So there's a there's a big feeling of it's not just
every person out for themselves,
they really want to help lift each other up.
They think it's really important for feeding
that technology that new generation
and that innovation that is coming from it.
>> All right, well, Jen Lopez, thank you so much
for helping us dig inside the community.
Definitely looking at the engagement
opportunities this week.
And thank you for all the information that you share.
>> Thanks Stu.
Appreciate it.
>> All right, stay tuned for more coverage I'm Stu Miniman
and thank you for watching "theCUBE".
(gentle music)