I took this photo in San Francisco (Hospitality House, Clarion Alley, 2016)

Last week I had the opportunity to do a keynote on “Why Community Matters” at FOSSCON in Philadelphia. I discussed why open source communities are vital and went over some of the ways you can get started with contributing. I gave tips on how to get people to contribute to open source in your organization, or at work, and talked about the various ways you can give back, besides code.

Over the summer, I got a chance to attend a community-building workshop with my colleagues, and Johan Linåker. Johan is a PhD student at the University of Lund In Sweden who focuses on open source community building, and strategy. We went through many exercises and had really great conversations around this topic.

Community building is a focus area that is near and dear to my heart. I put together some steps from past successful experiences, the workshop discussions, and what I’ve learned from others in the open source community to help you build one.

Now let’s get started

You’ve created your project, it’s out in the universe, and you think others can benefit from it, right?

Wonderful! Now what?

Well, without a thriving community, the open source project has the potential of becoming stale. What do I mean by becoming stale? A project that has not been touched for what seems like an eternity, and nobody really knows about it except you. If you examine close enough, you may even find virtual cobwebs forming around it. If you want the project to reach the sky, you will need to form a community. With enough groundwork, you should be able to find folks outside of your immediate circle that can contribute back to the project, and make this happen.