How to Cultivate an
Open Source
Community
in 10 easy steps.
(Make that 8 easy steps...)
July 2008

1) Find a reason for
being
The community starts by people asking
“why am I here?” To...
• develop a project or
• advance a cause

2) Create an Open
System
• Creative Commons license
• our User Bill of Rights
• all content is available via RSS
In the future this means:
• source code via subversion
• and bug tracking via sbtp

3) Hire someone to
lead
• For each community you need a
dedicated champion
• In our case, that’s me and any other
employees I nag on a weekly basis

3a) Motivate them
I would like to add...
•Deadline dates and
•Face-to-face meetings
are highly motivating!

4) Recruit from the
community
• Leaders from the community are
crucial
• The best evangelists can be self-
appointed
• Give them tools of promotion!

5) Give them something
to chew on
...and they won’t easily let go.
Content like:
•EC2 install
•open source code
•helpful documentation

6) Welcome criticism
• It’s built into our Drupal commentary
system
• Bug reporting (and tracking) is critical
feedback too
• Mary, Phyllis and I respond directly

7) Foster discourse
• use forums on a whole new level
• add aspect of Social Networking
• add participation points
• get employees involved
• get managers involved

8) Publicize
• Mary — traditional PR
• Silona — Word of mouth, conventions,
blog campaigns
Examples:
• Projects at codeathon for each
targeted HPC market
• PR for Standards groups

Do you have any
suggestions?
• Am I missing anything?

Credits
Borrowed heavily from...
•“The Art of Developing a Community”
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/02/
the_art_of_crea.html