Diversity is a fundamentally important indicator of the health of an ecosystem. A diverse committer base ensures that different points of view are well represented and that changing priorities of funding organizations don't result in the extinction of the project. A diverse contributor base ensures that the pipeline toward committership stays primed with new talent and helps to blur the line between the developers and the users. And finally a diverse user base ensures that a good cross section of users' needs are being met and ensures that new capabilities are validated and tested thereby improving the overall quality of the deliverables. Achieving diversity takes effort and working in a diverse environment has challenges that are quite different from the types of challenges that are more typical of closed projects. The Eclipse Modeling project is currently Eclipse's prime example of a diverse project. This talk will focus on strategies for fostering diversity and for coping with it once it's achieved.

1. Diversity is the Spice of Life Chris Aniszczyk [email_address] Ed Merks [email_address]

28. Q&A