Traditionally, a great deal of importance is placed on the value of technical contributions to a project. However, an oft-overlooked aspect of open source development is the community itself, as well as the ability of a project to attract (and maintain) a wide variety of contributors.
This talk will focus on the importance of growing new contributors using real-life lessons, and examples encountered in SWT.
It will begin with non-technical aspects of community management, namely:
- managing bugzilla: triaging incoming bugs, responding to users, and cleaning up old/outdated tickets
- interacting with users on mailing lists
- managing patches: providing meaningful feedback, reviewing patches in a timely manner, and growing contributor engagement
- writing clear, and concise documentation
Additionally, it will cover more technical topics relating to community management, such as:
- making efficient design decisions, especially with a small or dwindling number of contributors
- prioritizing which bugs are to be fixed, and when
- removing technical hurdles that encumber, and turn away potential contributors
This talk will have a slight Linux bias to it with respect to some of the technical examples, but no technical knowledge is required in order to attend. Anyone interested in learning more about community management will gain insight from this presentation. Lastly any SWT beginners, veterans, or aspiring contributors are welcome to attend, and/or provide feedback about SWT in general.
