1. Building a Community:
Lessons and Challenges
Dr Russell Keith-Magee
PyCon Russia 2013

4. 2003

6. So much choice!
• CherryPy • WebWare
• Quixote • Spyce
• Paste • Nevow
• Wasp • SkunkWEB
• Snakelets • ... many more!

8. February 2005
• djangoproject.com: Doesn’t exist
• Not open source
• Handful of developers (3?)
• Handful of sites (all Lawrence local)

9. May 2005

11. July 16 2005

12. July 17 2005
• 100 people in IRC room
• First contributions from community

13. November 2005

15. January 2006

16. July 2006

17. March 2007
• djangoproject.com: 1m hits/month
• 1000 downloads/day
• 4500 subscriptions on django-users
• 2000 subscriptions on django-dev
• 5 committers
• 160 entries in AUTHORS

18. September 2008

19. April 2009

20. November 2009
• djangoproject.com: 4.7 million hits/month
• 1000 downloads/day (5000/day peak)
• 16000 subscriptions on django-users
• 5100 subscriptions on django-dev
• 15 committers
• 447 entries in AUTHORS

21. July 2010

22. March 2012
• djangoproject.com gets 6m hits/month
• Downloads/day? But 10% of PyPI
• 21700 subscriptions on django-users
• 7000 subscriptions on django-dev
• 28 committers
• 524 entries in AUTHORS

23. How did this happen?

24. Right place,
right time.

25. A little bit of
WOW!

26. Solved a real problem

27. Solved the
whole problem

28. Documentation

29. http://goo.gl/Epzms

30. Backwards
Compatibility

31. What have we
done badly?

32. Communications

33. Not my elephant,
and not my room.

34. Bus factor

35. Engaging
non-developers

36. Shoemaker’s children
have no shoes

37. Everyone can say No.
Nobody can say Yes.

38. Resources

39. Paying the piper

41. What about
user groups?

42. You need to have a
reason to exist.

43. Culture matters

44. Bus factor

45. Different skills required

46. Resources

47. Good software takes
10 years. Get used to it.
- Joel Spolsky

48. Expectations

49. Questions
http://djangoproject.org
http://cecinestpasun.com
russell@keith-magee.com
@freakboy3742