07-11, 13:15–13:45 (US/Pacific), Room 317
Open-source projects are intricate ecosystems that consist of humans contributing in a diverse manner. These contributions are one of the essential elements driving the projects and must be encouraged. The humans behind these contributions play a vital role in constituting the lively and diverse community of the project. Both the humans and their contributions must be preserved and handled with utmost care for the success and evolution of the project.
As with every community, certain best practices should be followed to maintain its health, and certain pitfalls should be avoided. In this talk, I’ll share what I have learned from maintaining the vibrant and wonderful Zarr project and its community over the years.
The project’s maturity levels define the size of the community. Although the larger the size, the more effort it requires to manage it, certain practices can be applied to every project, no matter the size. In order to maintain a community, the maintainers should focus on building and growing it. I’ll talk about ways in which you can identify your community and how to grow it. I’ll then dive into certain practices to preserve and flourish it.
Here’s the outline—
First, I'll talk about:
Introduction (5 mins.)
- But wait, what is the community?
- Identifying the community of your project, including users, maintainers and essential stakeholders
- How do I identify the maturity level of my project?
- How do I grow my community?
- Ensuring essential guides, licenses and documents are updated
- Having a comprehensive contributing guide
- Ensuring the CoC and Governance are complete and include essential elements, such as a reporting mechanism, project lead team, adding a new core member, etc.
After this:
Best Practices (15 mins.)
- Various ways to effectively engage with the community
- How to make your community meetings enjoyable and not so boring!
- Office hours—a hidden venue to understand and help your community
- How to manage online spaces like chat rooms, forums, and mailing lists like a pro
- Conflicts—we hate it! Contributions—we love it!
- Establish conflict resolution mechanisms
- Creating processes and workflows to handle substantial contributions
- How do I grow my community?
- Building scaffolding to streamline, attract, and encourage contributions
- How do I identify important stakeholders or potential donors for my project?
- Leverage educational programs like GSoC and Outreachy
Then, I'll discuss:
Pitfalls (5 mins.)
- What should you avoid when your project expands exponentially? (Note to self: Welcome bot for PR and issues stuff)
- How can you identify and remove the bottlenecks in various aspects of your community?
- How do we ensure that harmful elements do not hinder growth?
And finally, closing by:
Conclusion (5 mins.)
- Key takeaways
- QnA
This talk aims to address humans who are maintaining open-source projects and looking for the best advice on managing the open-source community. I’d also like to invite anyone interested in the lessons I’ve learnt by maintaining the Zarr project throughout the years.
The tone of the talk is set to be informative, story-telling and fun.
After this talk, you’d:
- Understand how to identify your project’s community
- Best practices to manage and evolve it
- And what not to do when managing it
I’m a software engineer deeply invested in the open-source scientific ecosystem. I love working with OS communities and contributing to various projects. I wear multiple hats in the open-source software world—writing code, creating processes and workflows, steering various committees, organising technical meet-ups and global conferences, and many more.
When I’m not working, you can find me trekking in the Himalayas. Mountains are my second favourite thing, right after computers. I also play video games, watch movies, play football and run marathons.