3 months on, and so far so good. What a relief!

The Cadence user community celebrates its three-month birthday Oct. 13. I must admit it seems longer than that. Not sure why because it’s been a very busy three months. One thing for sure: the community’s launch was a success. I had been worried there for awhile because the Wall Street Journal decided to publish an article headlined “Why Most Online Communities Fail” just three days after the launch of my online community.

But my worries were short-lived. We now have more than 20,000 registered users who have contributed to 3,413 threads and 12,513 posts. We also have dozens of Cadence expert bloggers –- mainly engineers, software architects and product managers –- who between them post fresh content daily.

In case you’ve never heard of Cadence (which I’m betting is the case), the company makes the software and hardware tools that very smart people use to design the latest and greatest chips and circuit boards for computers and electronic devices.

I know three months is hardly enough time to start throwing around numbers, let alone alleged trends, but nevertheless I will do just that –- mainly because I enjoy throwing things.

For each of the three months since its inauguration, approximately 6,600 people have created individual community profiles (and believe me, creating one can take some time). We’ve also seen around 1,150 posts per month. (I’d like to get that number up soon.)

This fits with Joe Cothrel’s “90-9-1 rule,” which says that 90 percent of visitors will browse the forums; 9 percent will participate casually; and 1 percent will account for most content. (Read more about this in my last post)

So on the forums front, we are doing great. Our blogger corps is also doing a fantastic job –- though I will admit it’s not easy getting all of them to post regularly. It’s a challenge. You can’t force them to blog, because they’re all volunteers. They are blogging because –- though a new experience for most of them –- it connects them directly to the community they serve.  And they dig that.

It can be fun, too. Many have already met (via comments) other bloggers from within the same industry who are considered rock stars for their own blogs. I’m inviting these bloggers to join us on our monthly all-blog meetings to share experiences, best practices, tips, etc. (OK, a quick exercise: I challenge you to count how many times I’ve used the word “blog” in this blog post – d’oh! I did it again!).

One thing I do that helps keep our bloggers on track is to set an editorial calendar. I know this runs counter to many diehard beliefs on blogging (that it should be spontaneous and all that hooey), but it really does help.

I set up a wiki-based calendar that my bloggers use to “pencil in” blog topics and tentative post dates. I also send out a customized dashboard of sorts to bloggers that includes:

• “In the news” (industry-related news that pertains to their specific area of expertise)
• Upcoming events (trade shows, industry events, user conferences, etc.)
• Related conversations from the forums (a great source for blog material)
• Conversations from other bloggers talking about Cadence or an area related to what we do.
• Upcoming product releases/updates

But my bloggers come up with the coolest ideas on their own. For example, one very popular post was from Bob Dwyer, an applications engineer. At our big user conference last month in San Jose, Bob spotted a customer running Cadence’s SoC-Encounter software — on an iPhone!  He shot the following video on the spot, did a quick edit, uploaded it to Viddler.com, and then embedded the video into his post. Have a look!

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