n8n has seen incredible growth. We’re closing bigger customers than ever. Obviously this is amazing.
But what does this mean for our community, who’s been with us this whole time?
What we wanted to learn
The n8n ecosystem is made up of people from around the world teaching each other, creating, and running businesses in a new era of computing.
Because of all this growth, we could see that subgroups of our community were emerging with different motivations, needs, and goals. But we had no formal definition of these groups, and no way to know how to serve you as your needs evolved.
We wanted to remain curious. What were we missing, and how could we catch up to all this momentum?
The same thing that makes this community wonderful is what made the task tricky: our ecosystem is complex.
There’s a variety of pathways in, and it’s common for community members to occupy several roles at once. Further, a lot of what happens with n8n is users influencing each other—on our platform, but also on YouTube, Discord, and group chats we never see. This doesn’t always show up easily in spreadsheets.
So we teamed up with Ana Hevesi on a round of community research. We started by identifying a number of groups at different stages in their journey who play important roles in that flywheel. We honed this as a team, defining what we think those groups want, and what n8n wants from them.
We chose a subset of these groups for the first round of research:
- New users
- Ambassadors
- Expert partners
- Content creators
- Template creators
We recruited ~4-5 people from each group for qualitative interviews. Inevitably some folks occupied several roles at once. When that happened, we’d make a call about where to bucket someone, and these overlaps helped us understand the full spectrum of your needs.
We conducted interviews as in-depth conversations. The focus was on participants’ technology stories, personal goals, and their relationship to n8n’s product and community.
What we figured out
Soon we were drowning in wonderful stories, data, and insights. Here are some things we know now.
You want help keeping the culture that drew you in
Participants spoke lovingly about finding n8n, then encountering other users who made sure they succeeded. Some said n8n connected them with new friends or partners who helped with big career changes.
Many long-time members spoke about the generous, non-transactional community culture. You want ways to keep that feeling, even at n8n’s increasing scale.
You want help building your business
Many of you run businesses in the n8n ecosystem. In some cases, you’re hungry for ways your community contributions can make it easier to pay the bills.
This might sound at odds with protecting early community culture. However, we see it as a signal to find new ways for one to support the other.
You need help with platform integrity
n8n is a path to opportunity. Most users contribute in earnest, and try to get ahead by helping others. But among all this growth sometimes folks are more drawn to attention than to giving back.
As the platform grows, we’re thinking about how to encourage and reward the users who invest in each other’s long-term success.
You need more support outside Europe and the US
Some of n8n’s strongest growth is happening outside of Europe and the US. We heard stories of community members bringing n8n to their local tech ecosystems in Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
Local leaders have context and relationships we don’t. And they need more targeted backup from us.
Some of what you can expect because we learned this stuff
This isn’t an exhaustive list. We’re still working through how this research can help us deliver the best n8n community possible. But below is some low-hanging fruit.
Peer-to-peer Ambassador community-building
Right now Ambassadors really only have access to the n8n Community Team, and not much interaction with each other.
To keep the community feel as the program scales, we’ll be experimenting with opportunities for Ambassadors to connect with each other, informed by things like region and tenure.
Platform curation
When users interact via workflows, nodes, or content, we want everyone supporting each other’s success. That means helping you create high quality templates for your peers.
As an early way to encourage this, we’ll be experimenting with content that emphasizes good template design and architecture.
Business-building support
To support your entrepreneurial goals, we’ll be piloting an online peer group for community members just getting started as agency owners.
Thank you
This community is the reason we’ve come this far. By learning with and from you, we can fuel more success for us both.
If you don’t see what you asked for reflected here it isn’t because we’ve ignored you, we’re just being realistic about what we can promise right now. We’d like community research to be the start of a practice, not a “one and done”.
Thanks for talking with us!