Community Matters!!!111 Kathiravelu Pradeeban AbiWord
What is acommunity? 2
People with a common purpose or goalCommunicating with each otherContributing towards the goalLike a big family 3
Open Source Communities!Volunteers! Not just developers! 4
I CAN HAZ CHEEZBURGER? 5
Your interest.... Not everyone gets a chance to live.. .. a second life .. 6
I put this image of a hexapus,cos I find it motivating!♥ 7
Joining a community..Find the right project.Acquire the skills/expertise.Netiquettes.Sign up to the lists.Join the relevant channel.Observe and adjust yourself.Get your basics and motives right. 8
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Building a communityMore challenging than joining a well-established community.GoalsHow to bring new blood in!Effective Communications.. 10
What makes your organization lovable?Expertise in the domain.Healthy culture.Defined best-practices.Welcoming environment.Research and Learning.Fun. 11
Technologies..Project Hosting SourceForge, GitHub, Google Code, ..Version Control Systems SVN, CVS, GIT, Mercurial, ..Build Tools Ant, Maven, ..Issue Tracker Bugzilla, Jira, Trac, .. 12
Communicating with the community..Mailing Lists Dev, User, Commit lists, sub-groups, ..Internet Relay Chat (IRC)Issue TrackerForums and wikiBlogs 13
Mailing listsThe principal discussion medium. Asynchronous "bring it to the mailing list"Be friendly.Say NO to toxic people.Slow ? 14
IRCA real time medium.Not logged mostly.Not for major decision making.Who hangs here? Mostly devs. Not many designers and localizers. 15
Network EtiquettesBe Specific and clear.Research (google.. ;)) before asking.Be helpful to others.Be ethical; respect.NO CAPS! (UNLESS YOU ARE SHOUTING!)Dont take messages personally.Dnt snd ur sms msgs to thrds or lsts.Language/English 16
Proper Addressing.. over the lists/irc/..Address the devs and users properly. First Name or Preferred calling name. Be gender neutral. Not too personal. Use “Hi”, instead of “Dear”. 17
User Community90% - does not communicate.9% - submits bug reports.1% - involves proactively.Localizers can help! 18
Getting new blood in!Experience Language(s) of the project. Project expertise Bug reports and patches. Assisting others.Willingness To contribute to the community back. We want committers and long time volunteers! Not just users! 19
Development Best PracticesCommit often. with meaningful commit messages.Get feedback from the community.Keep the community updated. Major decisions through mailing lists. F2F discussions with beer are not “decisions”! 20
Be Known..Be heard Academics Events Collaboration! With other communities. The media. The Internet.Be responsive to the users. 21
