Title: Creating Community: A frank discussion between a megacorp and a start-up Presented at All Things Open 2022 Presented by Karen Chu & Matt Butcher Abstract: Creating community is hard. But is it equally hard? In this session, Karen (from mega-corp Microsoft) and Matt (from tiny start-up Fermyon) get together for a frank discussion about fostering open source communities from two very different angles. Microsoft has (for historical reasons) often encountered negative perceptions about its goals, intentions, and methods. Fermyon has faced the opposite challenge of having to build a reputation from scratch. Having collaborated in the cloud native space since 2015, Karen and Matt will compare notes and talk about their challenges when engaging in open source work from different angles and the strengths that can come from working together. Some things don’t change whether you’re a big or small company while other things require you to have a tailored approach depending on your company size. Things that are different: - Budgets: Big vs small - Conferences: Sponsorship, floor space, etc - DevRel and Dev evangelism: Convincing internal DevRel vs building a team - Perception by open source developers: Borg vs. "who are you, anyway?" Things that are the same: - Reaching Developers - Social media and GitHub - Handling community growth - Tools for tracking community (orbit.love, Google Analytics)

1. Creating Community
A frank discussion between a megacorp and a start-up

2. Who we
are

3. Who We Are
Name: Matt Butcher Name: Karen Chu
Company: Fermyon via Microsoft Azure via Deis Company: Microsoft Azure via Deis
Location: Boulder, CO Location: Brooklyn, NY
Vice: Coffee Vice: Popcorn 🍿
Communities: Cloud Native Computing Foundation
(CNCF), Helm, Wasm, Bytecode Alliance
Communities: Cloud Native Computing Foundation
(CNCF), Kubernetes, Helm

4. Our time working together
2015
Deis
Microsoft
Sept ‘15: Helm is born
June ‘16: The Illustrated
Children’s Guide to
Kubernetes is released Dec ‘18: Phippy donated
to CNCF and Phippy Goes
to the Zoo is released
Oct ‘21: From 00-K8s,
with Love is released
Feb ‘18: first Helm
Summit in PDX
Sept ‘19: Helm
Summit EU in
Amsterdam
Apr ‘21: Helm
Contributor
Summit [virtual]
Jun ‘22: Fermyon’s
first conference:
Open Source Summit
NA ‘22
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
Fermyon

5. Sometimes Size Matters
Things that are different depending on size

6. Things that are
different:
Budget
● It’s not “marketing
budget,” it’s “runway”
● Flexibility: “Is it
worth it?”
● We go deal hunting - a
little secret about the
Phippy giraffe design
● “Put it on the card” –
less paperwork
● Dedicated budgets but other
orgs may ask to use your $$
- need think about guarding
your budget
● More money = more red tape
● Approved vendors can be
more expensive
● Moving money in different
directions is complicated

7. Things that are
different:
Conferences
● Sponsorships are $$$ –
consider sponsoring
smaller auxiliary items
● “Look bigger than you
are”
● Fight for brand
awareness
● Engineers/dev rel staff
the booth
● Sponsorships are usually at
a high level
● Many teams to work with
● Less need to focus on brand
awareness
● Product/field help staff
● Expectation you get talks
● Customers expect special
treatment

8. Things that are
different:
Devrel & Dev
Evangelism
● DevRel has been our
hardest hire (sometimes
engineering does this
for a while)
● It’s like shouting into
a crowd
● To reach devs, we have
to get very creative
● Internal feedback loop
is GREAT, higher dev
involvement
● Often PMs do a lot of the
DevRel work
● Lots of well known people
with existing platforms
● People look to big
companies to prescribe
solutions
● Org is often outside of the
product/emg org - lack of
alignment

9. Things that are
different:
Perception by open
source developers
● Benefit of the doubt
● Limited resources
● People are eager to
contribute & help out
● You are not there to
make money
● Accept that you’ll make
mistakes (you just don’t
know what you’re doing)
● You might not be around
later
● Company history follows you
● Unlimited resources
● People expect you to do the
heavy lifting
● You’re there to sell
● Less forgiving when
mistakes are made - more
eyes on you (malintent)
● If you open source
something – stability

10. One Size Fits All
Some things are the same regardless of size

11. Things that are the same: Reaching Developers
● People desire a sense of belonging/appreciation in
their OSS community
● Both startups and big companies participate in neutral
meeting grounds
● Tone and vernacular can be more casual and less
sale-sy/formal
● It’s important that environments we provide are
consistent with expected practices/procedures of the
community

12. Things that are the same: Social Media/Github
● GitHub is the de facto place to do open source (hard
to convince people otherwise); unspoken processes are
relatively consistent across projects
● Hacker News, Twitter, and Stack Overflow are hugely
influential
● Chat should feel like a “public forum”
● Individual identities in OSS communities extend beyond
your company identity

13. Things that are the same: Handling Growth
● Technical resources (Github -> CICD -> Slack)
● Successful projects can be expensive (Azure instances
$$$ - Helm)
● Hard to grow community from 0-100, and then it gets
easier; growth timeline is the same
● As the project grows, you NEED to rely on your
community more to help out
● You will need to turn over and transition

14. Things that are the same: Community Tools
● Want to measure the same kinds of things – know your
OSS funnel
● Contributor pipeline/ladder
● Social media scheduler (Tweetdeck, Buffer, etc)
● Orbit.love/Common Room
● Github (stats)
● CRMs/newsletters
● Twitter lists/communities

15. The Takeaways

16. Many
differences in
big corp via
startup are
neutralized by
the open source
way

17. No matter your
size…the north
star is always
respect for
your community

18. Reaching new
people
requires
creatively
“breaking out
of the noise”

19. Appreciation
and gratitude
for your
community will
always be
important

20. Thank You
Stay connected on Twitter ~
@technosophos & @karenhchu