Recruiting Open Source Contributors: a lesson from Benjamin Franklin

You made a passion project and the seemingly impossible happened: people use it! A lot! And now you’re overwhelmed as the only maintainer. Or maybe you never have a project posted because you're scared of what success means to your mental health.

This talk takes a lesson from OG Thought Leader Benjamin Franklin on how to win others over and get them to help. It highlights some tactical tips for GitHub contributor management, but focuses on the impact of psychology to get people to participate.

Transcript

1. Recruiting Open Source Contributors VP Community, Sensu Inc. Matt Broberg @mbbroberg Monitorama 2018 a lesson from Benjamin Franklin
2. A Favor Please & Thank You @mbbroberg
3. @mbbroberg
4. Patterns @mbbroberg
5. @mbbroberg https://www.designhacks.co/products/cognitive-bias-codex-poster https://www.goodreads.com/book/s how/11468377-thinking-fast-and-sl ow
6. Ask* @mbbroberg
7. @mbbroberg Responsible for the awareness, engagement and health of the Sensu Community. Matt Broberg VP Community, Sensu Inc 200+ Plugins On GitHub 10+ Maintainers Volunteering to make monitoring better Open Framework To connect all your monitoring pieces
8. @mbbroberg
9. Asking for Help On GitHub • License • README.md • CONTRIBUTING.md • Pull Request Reviews • Issues • Labels • Releases • Milestones • CHANGELOG.md • Templates (.github/) • Permissions (Teams & .owners) • Saved Replies Beyond GitHub • Acronyms (LGTM) • Continuous Integration (Travis) • Chat (Slack/IRC/Gitter) • Recognition (All Contributors) • Social Media (Twitter, etc) • Sharing (Blog, Podcast, Talk) Psychological • Just ask (Ben Franklin Effect) • Make it easy (Sunk cost) • Tell a good story (survivor bias)
10. @mbbroberg
11. Basics @mbbroberg
12. Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer! License Basics Choose how open you are for contribution (and ownership). Permissive MIT Protective Apache 2.0 @mbbroberg
13. Pull Request Reviews Basics Do you accept PRs? Good default: • Be responsive • Have tests @mbbroberg
14. Basics @mbbroberg https://bluedynamics.com/blog/joha nnes/watch-all-your-repos
15. Advanced @mbbroberg
16. Psychology How are you helping people help you? Good default: • Accept contribution liberally • Encourage repeat contribution @mbbroberg Advanced
17. @mbbroberg Advanced
18. Advanced @mbbroberg https://github.com/blog/2135-saved-replies
19. Decision Tree (Simplified) Should I share? Yes @mbbroberg
20. Decision Tree (Simplified) Should I share? Yes @mbbroberg
21. Decision Tree (Expanded) Could I share? Yes Do I have to? No @mbbroberg
22. Your Reason Avoid other people’s @mbbroberg
24. Asking for Help On GitHub • License • README.md • CONTRIBUTING.md • Pull Request Reviews • Issues • Labels • Releases • Milestones • CHANGELOG.md • Templates (.github/) • Permissions (Teams & .owners) • Saved Replies Beyond GitHub • Acronyms (LGTM) • Continuous Integration (Travis) • Chat (Slack/IRC/Gitter) • Recognition (All Contributors) • Social Media (Twitter, etc) • Sharing (Blog, Podcast, Talk) Psychological • Just ask (Ben Franklin Effect) • Make it easy (Sunk cost) • Tell a good story (survivor bias)
25. Start Simple The basics are enough 99% of the time. @mbbroberg
26. Ask @mbbroberg Don’t go it alone
27. Learn Brains @mbbroberg They’re more important than algorithms
28. Thanks! VP Community, Sensu Inc. Matt Broberg @mbbroberg Open Source 101 Maintainer Bits • Learn GitHub (bitly.com/git-it) • Readmes (awesome-readme) • Advice for maintainers (thread) • GitHub Maintainers program • All Contributors project • Sane GitHub Labels project Psychological Bits • Ben Franklin Effect • Buy the cognitive bias codex