Duolingo's Kristine Michelsen-Correa on Empowering Community Volunteers
Transcript of Duolingo's Kristine Michelsen-Correa on Empowering Community Volunteers
Hej, I’m Kristine Michelsen-CorreaHead of Community, Duolingo
@hejkristinemc
Empowering Volunteers to Contribute to a Global Mission
You must be mission driven
Power map data across the world
Spread Ideas
Promote openness, innovation and opportunity on the web
Provide software for the public good
Free language education for the world
To collect knowledge disseminated around the globe
• Can your mission be furthered? • Do people feel a personal connection?• Is there a problem that provides value to
others when solved?• Is your project community driven bottom up
& not top down?
Can your community help?
• Different levels of contribution
• High quality content
• Ease of contributing
• Multiple languages
• Engaging and fun
• Incentives to participate
Challenges
• Why are you doing this?
• How much are you willing to invest?
• What’s your timeline?
• How do you evaluate the program?
• Who are your volunteer leaders?
• What are the community guidelines/norms?
Ask yourself some questions to set realistic goals
How we got started
Launched select languages
Didn’t worry about automation
Found volunteer leaders
Empowered contributors
5 traits of a great volunteer
• Believes in mission• Enthusiastic• Flexible• Committed• Communicative
PhD in the sociology of the internet
Big data consultant
Scientist working on the immune system and
cancer, PhD