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
   

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2. At some point you may have
   an idea…
   

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3. So you start a project
   

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4. note - Projects are often better when
   it’s a problem you personally have
   

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5. Projects Are More Fun With
   Users
   

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6. GitHub, tell friends, now
   what…
   

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7. Initial Seed Audiences
   (How?)
   

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8. DOCS are VERY important
   

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9. Clean code is SOMETIMES
   important
   

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10. So you want to get big?
    

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11. Tests Are Going To Be
    Critical - Later
    

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12. Mailing Lists & IRC
    

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13. Decide What Your
    Community Focus Is
    

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14. Full-on-GitHub Is Required
    

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15. good README, PRs, Issues, No
    Offsite Tracker (unfortunately)
    

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16. meetup.com Effects
    

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17. Conferences? maybe not.
    

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18. 15 minute rule (5 minute?)
    

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19. Perfect Is The Enemy of
    Good
    

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20. Take Users Along For
    Journey
    

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21. Get Lots of Feedback
    

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22. Surveys and Lists:
    Note Trends, Ignore Outliers
    

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23. Share Direction Frequently
    

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24. Don’t Completely Sell Out
    When You Sell Out
    

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25. Be Open About Focus
    

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26. Don’t Compromise On What
    Makes You You
    

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27. Users Make Projects Stronger
    

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28. ?
    info:
    @laserllama / michael.dehaan@gmail.com
    

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