The Secrets of Building and Participating in Open Source Communities

Everyone knows that the most successful open source projects are those that are built around thriving communities and an active and creative developer base. But how exactly is a participatory open source community built and nurtured?

Likewise, the most successful open source projects also benefit from an active non-developer base of users that are influential in shaping how the community evolves and flourishes. But what does “active participation” actually mean and how involved should non-developer adopters and end-users be in the building and support of open source communities?

In this session, Drupal project lead and Acquia co-founder and CTO Dries Buytaert will share his secrets for building and participating in a thriving open source community and how collaboration amongst developer communities and non-developer adopters is critical to a healthy and sustainable project. He’ll describe the mind set, mechanisms, and policies that are essential for community growth and share examples of both success and failure that he’s directly experienced while succeeding with the Drupal project. He will discuss how to turn a developer-only community into a healthy open source ecosystem which includes designers, developers, documentation writers and even corporate adopters and evangelists.

Community managers will come away with clear action plans for kick-starting their development efforts and strategic adopters of open source will learn how to leverage open source project participation to multiply return on investment.