diff --git a/readme.md b/readme.md
index e2cc10081..cf950a1f9 100644
--- a/readme.md
+++ b/readme.md
@@ -2,6 +2,19 @@ Spring Data Cassandra
 =====================
 
 This is a Spring Data subproject for Cassandra that uses the binary CQL3 protocol via
-the official DataStax 1.x Java driver (https://github.com/datastax/java-driver).
+the official DataStax 1.x Java driver (https://github.com/datastax/java-driver) against Cassandra 1.2.
 
 Supports native CQL3 queries in Spring Repositories.
+
+Cloning
+-------
+When cloning this repo, it's a good idea to also clone two others from Spring Data that this project depends on.  Assuming your current working directory is the root of this repository, issue the following commands:
+
+	cd ..
+	git clone https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-data-build.git
+	git clone https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-data-commons.git
+
+
+Building
+--------
+This is a standard Maven multimodule project.  Just issue the command `mvn clean install` from the repo root.