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How to Cultivate an Open Source Community in 10 easy steps. (Make that 8 easy steps...) July 2008

Cultivating Community

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This is a presentation I did for grid.org. it is a big sad for me now since because of the recession I didn't get to realize all the wonderful contents. But I think it is a great starting point.

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Page 1: Cultivating Community

How to Cultivate an Open Source Community

in 10 easy steps.(Make that 8 easy steps...)

July 2008

Page 2: Cultivating Community

1) Find a reason for being

The community starts by people asking “why am I here?” To...

• develop a project or

• advance a cause

Page 3: Cultivating Community

2) Create an Open System

•Creative Commons license

•our User Bill of Rights

•all content is available via RSS

In the future this means:

• source code via subversion

•and bug tracking via sbtp

Page 4: Cultivating Community

3) Hire someone to lead

•For each community you need a dedicated champion

• In our case, that’s me and any other employees I nag on a weekly basis

Page 5: Cultivating Community

3a) Motivate them

I would like to add...

•Deadline dates and

•Face-to-face meetings

are highly motivating!

Page 6: Cultivating Community

4) Recruit from the community

•Leaders from the community are crucial

•The best evangelists can be self-appointed

•Give them tools of promotion!

Page 7: Cultivating Community

5) Give them something to chew on

...and they won’t easily let go.

Content like:

•EC2 install

•open source code

•helpful documentation

Page 8: Cultivating Community

6) Welcome criticism

•It’s built into our Drupal commentary system

•Bug reporting (and tracking) is critical feedback too

•Mary, Phyllis and I respond directly

Page 9: Cultivating Community

7) Foster discourse

•use forums on a whole new level

•add aspect of Social Networking

•add participation points

• get employees involved

•get managers involved

Page 10: Cultivating Community

8) Publicize •Mary — traditional PR

•Silona — Word of mouth, conventions, blog campaigns

Examples:

• Projects at codeathon for each targeted HPC market

• PR for Standards groups

Page 11: Cultivating Community

Do you have any suggestions?

•Am I missing anything?