Extreme Open Source Community Building

How do you start a project and get lots of users very quickly (and what do you once you do?)? Here's some tips to make things more interesting. A revised version of my Open Source talk from the Charlotte DevOps Days event. A few things not mentioned on slides but mentioned in the talk -- Guest Blogs are a great way to kick off projects, and think about people and groups you know to initially start an idea off with. This could be people at work, college, user groups, etc.

Transcript

1. Extreme Open Source Community Building Michael DeHaan
2. At some point you may have an idea…
3. So you start a project
4. note - Projects are often better when it’s a problem you personally have
5. Projects Are More Fun With Users
6. GitHub, tell friends, now what…
7. Initial Seed Audiences (How?)
8. DOCS are VERY important
9. Clean code is SOMETIMES important
10. So you want to get big?
11. Tests Are Going To Be Critical - Later
12. Mailing Lists & IRC
13. Decide What Your Community Focus Is
14. Full-on-GitHub Is Required
15. good README, PRs, Issues, No Offsite Tracker (unfortunately)
16. meetup.com Effects
17. Conferences? maybe not.
18. 15 minute rule (5 minute?)
19. Perfect Is The Enemy of Good
20. Take Users Along For Journey
21. Get Lots of Feedback
22. Surveys and Lists: Note Trends, Ignore Outliers
23. Share Direction Frequently
24. Don’t Completely Sell Out When You Sell Out
25. Be Open About Focus
26. Don’t Compromise On What Makes You You
27. Users Make Projects Stronger
28. ? info: @laserllama / michael.dehaan@gmail.com