2017 State of the Topcoder Community
Happy Valentines Day, Topcoder!
In a blink of an eye, we’re off and running in 2017. Topcoder’s future has never been brighter.
To start, let’s take stock of recent progress since the Wipro acquisition in October. As promised, we’ve remained the same Topcoder that our employees, community, customers and partners have come to know and love. Our mission of being the number one community of software talent on the planet, which began over 15 years ago, is still at the core of everything we do. The positive impact of Wipro’s size and global reach will continue to generate new opportunities for all of us this year and beyond.
Topcoder has been focused on strategic short- and long-term planning, which includes goals and objectives that directly map to each person’s role within our organization. In 2017, we’re going to push the innovation envelope even further with an emphasis on new additions that further improve Topcoder as a community and company: new platform functionality from the product development team, new offerings for our customers, and (most importantly) new ways to engage the Topcoder Community in new activities! Here are a few other things we’d like to highlight, and as always please share your feedback with us directly through Slack or the forums.
Specialty Offerings
Community Segments, like iOS, Predix and our newest Cognitive communities, demonstrate the increased demand from customers like IBM and GE for Topcoder Community members who are experienced in specific technologies—and excited to learn new skills. We are at version 1.0 with our Community Segment offering and will continue to add new features.
Topcoder Connect and our self-service business both continue to show strong signs of growth and customer satisfaction. Small innovative companies as well large enterprises are using Connect to quickly initiate and complete crowdsourcing projects.
The Topcoder Connect experience will be increasingly geared towards standard Topcoder products and simplifying the buying experience. Copilots are key to making our self service business scale, so if you are interested in becoming a copilot please email support@topcoder.com. We need ya!
Continued TCO Expansion
We are really excited for TCO17. Building on the success of TCO16 in Washington D.C with Booz Allen Hamilton, we will continue hosting regional TCO events around the world and expect to make an entrance onto two new continents this year. The global support and love for these events make them worthwhile. We even have members helping plan and bring them to you, and we’re grateful for their assistance!
CAB is fab!
This is our third year of the Community Advisory Board (CAB), and this enthusiastic group is starting to take real ownership of Topcoder! Some of the direct impacts on our platform and websites have been through CAB-run Bug Bash competitions that address specific issues and recommendations logged in the CAB Github repo. The CAB team is working hand in hand with the Topcoder product development team to prioritize future enhancements for Topcoder.com. Way to go CAB!
Community is Everything
As many of you know, we have long had the ability to run individual (or assigned) tasks to members of the community, but it was never a core part of our platform. Now it will be with an upcoming release of Topcoder Direct—and soon-to-launch additions to Topcoder Connect. Competition will always be at the heart of our business model, but there are times when engaging a winning competitor or copilot directly is needed.
Along with our task features we are releasing new version of the Topcoder API to empower all users of the platform to innovate with the Topcoder Marketplace. I’m looking forward to seeing the creativity and innovation that comes from our APIs.
As this is Valentine's day, we would be remiss not to say how much we love our community—and how proud we are to have members in every country around the world! We’ll continue to share updates on these and other topics via the typical channels: email, social, Slack, Topcoder Live on Facebook, and of course the forums!
Thank you,
-Mike
Mike Morris
CEO, Topcoder