Community Introduction: What is UiPath Friends?

Hello everyone.
This time, I would like to introduce the community I am involved with, UiPath Friends.

As a user-led community, we started our activities in September 2019 and have since held 13 events, reached 770 community registrants, and the official community Twitter has reached 690 followers. (As of June 16, 2020)

The community is operated by 37 volunteer users who have stepped up as management members, forming teams for each event to carry out planning.
The corporate point of contact is handled by Watanabe as the community manager, with several other engineer employees also involved.

By the way, I am a beginner community manager. To my great embarrassment, until I joined my current company, I had never even participated in a community myself, and I had absolutely no idea that such a wonderful world existed where communities are now thriving. The stories behind the struggles of launching this are off the record or might get too long, so I will share them another time.

A community where we can learn and grow together while having fun

The vision and policy of the UiPath Friends community are as shown in the figure below.

The main characters of the community are each and every one of the participating users.
We aim for interactivity where opinions can be exchanged in an open, flat, and friendly manner, as suggested by the community name.
There are no hierarchies based on affiliation or job title, whether you are a newcomer or a regular.

• A relationship where users actively share information and exchange opinions, and can help each other when facing challenges
• Skill improvement for individual users who repeatedly share information
• Applying the knowledge and know-how gained in the community to business practices to lead to corporate growth

We strive to build a community where this can be practiced and expanded while having fun. After all, I believe that if it is not fun, it will not last, and I have reflected my desire that if we are going to do it, I want to tackle it with full enjoyment.

I have even been teased by people within the company asking if I am just playing around because I am having too much fun, but I gratefully accept that as positive feedback (laughs).

Turning user thoughts into shape, realizing ideas

At UiPath Friends, because it is user-led management, we genuinely believe that we can turn users' thoughts into shape and realize their ideas.

Below, management members have presented things they want to work on in the community. We are repeatedly practicing this in the community while thinking about how we can realize these ideas.

It has truly been a series of trial and error, and as we recently shifted rapidly to online-centered operations, we have taken on challenges such as YouTube Live streaming with live Tweet commentary, online hands-on sessions, and user discussions. In the past, during a
corporate event with over 2,000 participants, we also held sessions run by community members and hosted booth exhibitions. We were also able to turn user aspirations into reality with initiatives like
UiPath Friends Kansai, which is based on a regional axis, and the Women's Community exclusively for female users. Sometimes we have too many ideas and cannot realize them all, but I feel that our journey so far has started to gain momentum, fueled by the passionate thoughts of our users
.

I believe there is still less information available in the world regarding RPA compared to other fields. How can we achieve results from a business perspective? Which tasks should we apply RPA to, and how should we expand it? How do we measure the effectiveness?
With the product update cycle being so fast, I think there is no end to the topics of interest, such as new features that should be utilized now, and the secrets to implementation and operation.
I am convinced that continuously sharing information and know-how openly in the community space will be an absolute plus for all community participants.

At a recent community LT, someone presented the idea that “Information gathers around those who share it.”.

I completely agree with this; when you share information about topics you are interested in or want to learn about, information gathers from the community. Please bring your topics of interest to the community, and I would like to create a community where everyone can actively exchange opinions together with all of you users!

Bonus: Origin of the community name

The community founding members narrowed down the name to four options and held a user voting campaign. "UiPath Friends" was chosen by a wide margin over the other name proposals.

Below are the expectation comments received for the name during the voting campaign.
We will cherish the origin of the naming and never forget our original intentions!

• I want it to be a friendly community •
Beginners and experts alike as well as those who are interested and those who are not, a place where anyone can participate without discrimination and with a welcoming atmosphere •
Open relationships that transcend company boundaries because I felt like I could build them • Because I
made many friends through UiPath •
Robo = Friend. Because it seems possible to have an image of robots as "work partners". •
Friendly technology sharing. Without forgetting a sense of playfulness, Robot for Everyone