Is it concerning that organizers of community events are very focused on receiving credit for the event's success?

Identify why freelancers would be willing to join a paid community when there are so many free communities already available to them. In order to get people to join and stay they must know what value you can bring that they can't get elsewhere without paying. It is difficult to keep people active even in free communities. Charging them for the privilege is a tougher challenge. Either way, it is typically the leader(s) who keep things going. In every group I've ever joined or started when I stopped driving the bus the groups faded and died. You may be, hire, or partner with strong leaders who become a major attraction. Freelancing is very broad, so unless you bring on other experts you might consider narrowing your focus to a specific type of freelancing skill or at least start out in a particular industry.

Not necessarily. What's key is to build relationships with the organizations that work most closely with the munis and local leaders. Often times the money comes from them (i.e NGOs, local companies, social ent orgs). In some cases software can be piloted at low or no cost with muni leaders and from there, government sees value and invests accordingly. Where will you be working? Of course every region and location is different but building relationships with organizations that work globally and know how to tap into the local groups is a great first step. Happy to chat further if I can be of help.

The best way to build an engaging audience is to lead with value. You want to provide others with more value by sharing relevant content and information. A great way to do this is through social media platforms such as Facebook. Going live is a great way to connect with your audience and give valuable content. I suggest going Live at least 3 times a week. Another tip is to make sure that you are providing good, valuable content when you do so. Don't just go live, just to go live. You want to keep them engaged and interested on your topic!

One of the best and most popular script used is Vbulletin. Most of the reputable forums are powered by Vbulletin. The second recommendation I'd have is phpBB. It is absolutely free and open sourced versus Vbulletin which is licence based. I have used both and had no problems with either of them. If you can fork out some money I'd suggest going with Vbulletin. Here is a list of the biggest internet forums http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_forums. You can see most of them are powered by Vbulletin and the second most popular script is phpBB. Regarding fresh look you can simply hire someone or buy a Template.

After looking at your site, I definitely belive that you have something that is extremely valuable and can definitely be popular in tech communities. Yes, your copy needs to be more focused. What is it? I would have a landing page (or a cover page) that makes it really simple for a visitor to understand what it is and why this will help them. Include an email field and offer a free eBook. I would highly suggest that you use Optimizely or Unbounce to A/B test your copy and call to actions. (Side Note: Keep in mind how much traffic you have when calculating test significance) Since you are focusing on a developers/engineers, I would reach out to 10 of your most passionate fans that have contributed or have shared your GitHub repo. Ask them if they would be willing to contribute to the site sharing their thoughts. The more influential these people are the better. Instead of assuming they have a login ask them to create an account right on that page. Also, include Twitter login. One point I would make regarding SEO: Include the name of the articles in the URL of the comment pages. This helps with sharing and rankings on SEO. Use Twitter as a growth engine and tweet out all the latest posts that you are curating to your sites Twitter account. Then if you have an active twitter following start engaging fellow engineers asking them questions about these posts. This heightens engagement and starts getting your audience engaged (some of which will convert). To take this one step further find the author of the posts you are sharing and mention them in the post saying that their article has been curated on your site (better yet you could say their article is being discussed on your site). The author will be inclined to retweet and share their post with their following. Have some variability in using this tactic, variability makes it more valuable. Use SumoMe as a really simple way to add email capture popups on the site. In regards to strategy, you may find it more sustainable to use the closed/invite only model for commenting like Product Hunt used. This creates a higher perceived value for those that access to commenting which in turn increases engagement. This strategy would go nicely with the initial outreach I mentioned above. I hope this helps. I would love to chat further here is my Clarity VIP link for a free call. https://clarity.fm/lipmanb/vip/t