HiveMQ Community: Connecting People, IoT, and MQTT Together

The HiveMQ Community is a community of practice and product, a place for folks to connect, communicate, and collaborate with other people using MQTT to create a central nervous system connecting and managing IoT devices and data.

While we’re still early in our journey of building community, we’ve seen tremendous growth over the past year and still have much to learn as we build with not for our community.

Wherever someone asks me about community building, I often say that the basics of community building can be ironically simple in principle, but also a lot of work to actually make happen. Personally, I love this list of steps from the fantastic community book Get Together:

• Find your people

• Do something together

• Get people talking

• Attract new folks

• Cultivate your identity

• Pay attention to the folks that keep showing up

• Create and supercharge the leaders

• Celebrate wins together

• Repeat, repeat, repeat

So what does that look like for us in the HiveMQ Community? Let me share some insights.

Our People: United by IoT, IIoT and MQTT

Our people include our customers and others using MQTT in their daily work. They come from many different roles across IT and OT, but also non-technical backgrounds and roles. Some of the typical folks we see are:

• Technical architects

• Engineers

• Hobbyists and enthusiasts working on amazing side projects

• People building products/services using MQTT

• Partners and Integrators using HiveMQ to support their customers

• Students

Our people are also diverse, with representatives from around the world — EMEA, North America, APAC, and LATAM — and each bringing their own unique perspectives and context to our community. You can check out some of our community members profiled on our HiveMQ Community LinkedIn page.

We Do Things Together

This takes many forms, but some great examples are:

• Our monthly community-led events featuring our community members sharing their expertise and experiences. These sessions run virtually and are really fantastic with tons of insights into different IoT and MQTT. You might catch a presentation, a panel discussion, a fireside chat, or something else. You can watch our past events on-demand on our HiveMQ Community page, HiveMQ Webinars page, or YouTube channel. And if you’re interested in being a part of our community-led events as a speaker, get in touch with us.

• Our in-person CONNACK! events — which we’ve done in Boston, Munich, and Paris —  feature MQTT and IoT thought leaders and members of our HiveMQ team sharing content across a wide range of topics. You can check out some of the past event recordings on our CONNACK! YouTube channel playlist. Keep an eye out for our next one later in 2024.

• Our monthly Conversation with Kudzai events (third Wednesday of each month) where you can learn from and ask questions about topics like Unified Namespace (UNS) from Kudzai Manditereza, our Senior Industry Solutions Advocate.

• Our monthly Community Chat events — these member-only events are the perfect opportunity to meet new people, catch up, and casually chat about projects, share ideas, and ask questions.

All of these events are great places to connect with other people across the world, learn about MQTT, and see hands-on examples of how others are using it in their work. Through these we can all get better at our craft and  support each other in doing our best work. And we’re excited to add more events in the future.

And Sometimes Do Things On Our Own

Not everything has to be in a group setting. One of our most valuable community places is HiveMQ University. HiveMQ University has seen thousands of students enroll and expand their learning on their own schedule. Get up to speed with all things MQTT via our HiveMQ Training and Certifications and progress from Associate to Professional to Expert via in-depth training courses and certification exams. We also have additional learning on HiveMQ Edge, Unified Namespace, plus many more courses being added regularly. 

We Find Ways to Stay Engaged in the Community

We also have lots of great programs to stay engaged in our community:

• Community Connections: 1:1 virtual networking with others in the community

• Industry Groups: Automotive, energy, transportation & logistics, and smart manufacturing

We like to chat — whether that is a conversation in one of our Slack channels — MQTT, Security, UNS, or random conversations and banter, sharing a project, or chiming in on one of our Topic Tuesday posts.

We Like to Listen and Learn

Our community is also a place for our product team to engage and hear how you are using our HiveMQ platform and other products day-to-day. Through conversations we continuously capture customer feedback, understand pain points and needs, and make more informed product decisions. We can also co-create and build together along the way via beta programs and other early-access opportunities.

We Celebrate

Whether that’s someone sharing that they got a new job or promotion, or just did something great at work, we love a chance to give a high-five. We also like to recognize the contributions of our members — whether that’s a recent thought-provoking message, or shouting out our top contributors and learners.

Want to Get Involved?

Sign up and join our community, if you haven’t already, then get involved in any of the events, University, conversations, or share your product feedback. We’d love to have you join us!