Community Over Code: How to Build a Successful Project
0 likes378 views
This document discusses how to build a successful open source project with an emphasis on community over code. It recommends defining clear project goals and governance guidelines, investing in infrastructure like mailing lists and code repositories to support the community, engaging users through marketing and promotion, and focusing on open communication, mentorship, and diversity. The key is treating community as a continuous process rather than an end state and ensuring the project evolves to meet changing needs.
Community Over Code: How to Build a Successful Project
- 1. Communities Over Code How to Build a Successful Project Joe Brockmeier (@jzb) PRESENTED BY: Manager, Community Team (OSAS) This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- 2. About Me (Briefly) · Red Hat since August 2013 · Apache Member, CloudStack PMC, Incubator PMC · Former openSUSE Community Manager · Technology Journalist ~1999-2008, 2010-2012 · Likes books, Vim, cats, music, beer, and polar bears – not necessarily in that order.
- 3. What We'll Cover · Why “Community Over Code”? · Defining Success · Governance and Community · Infrastructure · Marketing · How Can We Help?
- 5. What is “Community Over Code”?
- 6. Community Over Code · How You Do Things is as Important as What You Do · A Healthy Community Can Roll with Changes · People Come and Go – No One is Irreplaceable or Permanent · “But they're a great contributor” – doesn't matter · “We'll do it right later” – maybe there won't be a later...
- 7. Core Principles · Communication & Openness (“If it didn't happen on the mailing list...”) · Mentorship · Earned Rights (“Leave Your Hat at the Door”) · Quality > Speed · All Contributions Matter · Users Matter
- 9. What Does Success Look Like? · Define Project Goals · What are you building, for whom, and why? · Measurable · Can you track your success? Can you trace it back to causes? · Communicate the Goals Often, to Everybody · It's easy to lose sight of the big picture. · You can be successful accidentally, but don't count on it!
- 11. Governance · One Size Can't Fit All · Have Clear Guidelines on How Things Are Done · How does a user become a contributor? · How does a contributor become a core contributor / earn rights? · Golden Rule · Diversity · Skills and people
- 12. Governance Suggestions · Everything happens on the mailing list* · 72 hours for feedback · Use “lazy consensus” to make decisions* · Exceptions: Legal, missing stakeholder, security, etc. · Leave your Hat at the door · Company / titles shouldn't matter · Make decisions stick · Document, document, document
- 13. Infrastructure
- 14. Care & Feeding for Community · Mailing Lists · Forums ? · Bug Tracker · Documentation / Wiki · Code Repositories · Trello / Kanban, etc.? · Continuous Integration (CI) & Testing Infra · Translation tools
- 15. Face to Face · Nothing beats in-person bonding. · We still don't have beer over TCP/IP! · You can't depend on in-person collaboration all the time – but try to make it happen sometimes! · Find time for learning, doing, and socializing. · Carry as much as possible back to the rest of the community.
- 17. Audience & Goals · What are your goals? · Fuzzy goals == unfocused · Who are you trying to reach? · Personas / profiles of users · What do they want? · Craft a story / message around how your project fits their needs. May need to “fix” the project! · Feedback loop · Talk to users, use their ideas!
- 18. Project Voice and Messaging · Tailor Website to users · Have talking points / messaging for the project that explains it to new folks · Explain benefits, not features or low-level technology · Show me how to be successful, quickly
- 19. Blogging and Social Media · Take the time to write about what you're doing. · Video / screencasts are also good – but remember the old-timers. · Find contributors to help run social media, blogs, etc. · Provide social media guidelines! · Advanced: Editorial calendar, SEO, scheduled tweets, target influencers
- 20. Releases! · Start planning release announcements early · Ideally, before the first alpha · Identify publications that might be interested · Identify partner projects that might help promote your project · Go big, but don't just focus on releases!
- 21. Summary · Community is a process, not an end state · You will never, ever, ever be “done” · Successful communities change · Single-company projects < Diverse projects · If you build it, you still have to promote it · If you're not growing, you're dying · Golden Rule
- 22. Questions? [email protected] CONTACT: License statement goes here. Creative Commons licenses are good.