Keeping up with the pace of a fast growing community without dying

New open source communities are born everyday. Some of them are meant to last long and some others aren't. There's a moment in every community where it needs to outgrow itself, expand its limits and aim way higher than ever. This is no necesarily related to its goals but the ecosystem it needs to stay alive.

Once a community has gone beyond its limits, the community members, consumers and leaders will have to keep up with its pace. How do we help it to remain sane? How do we keep our goals on track while allowing for further growth? How do we allow it to keep expanding without further damaging the community?

These are all questions we ask ourselves everyday in the OpenStack community and that we've managed to work on without killing ourselves on the way.

Transcript

1. Good Morning
2. Let’s talk for a moment
3. What’s a system ?
4. Means to empower humans to be amazing
5. What’s a culture ?
6. The way humans actually do things
7. What’s flexibility ?
8. The level of tolerance for variance in the system
9. You must tolerate variance in your community, to empower humans, from any culture, to be amazing
10. I’m Flavio...
11. … or @flaper87
12. Growing your community ... Without dying
13. For attending Still here feel free to interrupt @flaper87 flavio@redhat.com
15. The community creates processes
16. And processes are a way of governance
17. Governance is necessary
18. Growth is evident when governance exists
19. So, get out of the way of the community
20. Governance should follow the community
21. For that you must know your community
22. “Users” will eventually outnumber other members
23. But you must listen to everyone
24. Although you can’t make everyone happy
25. We are customers of each other
26. Keep it humble and objective
27. To be objective, there must be clear expectations
28. Being open is not enough, let the outcome be affected
29. Let the community set the expectations
30. Set the bar at a reasonable level everywhere
31. Having expectations is having a contract
32. Communicating expectations is the key
33. It’s, sometimes, better to “over-communicate”
34. Even if it won’t get rid of surprises
35. So, acknowledge humans
36. Strive for diversity
37. Be aware of the culture-gap
38. Be aware of the TZ-gap
39. Different cultures bring different perspectives
40. Emotions matter
41. Assume good faith
42. Tribal thinking ain’t good
43. Many humans wear multiple hats
44. Some roles require putting the community first
45. Build a community of doers
46. There will always be “ranters”
47. Be part of the change
48. Automate governance processes too
49. Processes that can’t be automated are likely subjective
50. Stats are not always a source of objectivism
51. Stats indicate stats ain’t good
52. Wrapping up
53. Give humans a number and they’ll do the impossible to make it grow
54. Community growth has to do with many things
55. Processes will evolve as your community grows
56. Technology is social before it’s technical - Gilles Deleuze
57. Also, say thanks!
58. So, THANK YOU!