Abstract

Growing and maintaining an open-source community can be likened to cultivating a garden. Open source maintainers are the gardeners that plant the seeds, tend to the soil, and cultivate the ideal conditions for a thriving community to sprout up and thrive. In this talk, I detail pragmatic techniques that we use at Gatsby to grow and cultivate a thriving, inclusive open-source community that people love to contribute towards.

Details

Maintaining an open-source project is oftentimes a thankless activity. Most projects try their very best to solicit help from the community, but there are still far too few contributors and maintainers to offer the type of assistance that open-source projects need. How do we grow a community to respond to these needs? How do we create an inclusive, welcoming environment that people want to contribute towards?

This talk begins with some anecdotes and examples that detail the life of an open-source maintainer. Far, far too often this is a thankless job that leads to burn out. How can we improve?

I then shift into the meat of the talk: detailing the Gatsby community and practical techniques that you can follow today to grow your open-source community and inspire more gardeners to join your community.

Finally, I wrap-up with some practical, take-home advice that anyone in the audience can hopefully use and apply to their own open-source projects, or to begin contributing towards an existing open-source project!

• Maintaining an open-source project

  • The trials and tribulations in the life of a maintainer

• The Gatsby community

  • Statistics and metrics of a thriving community

• You belong here

  • Inviting any contributor to our organization
  • The Gatsby Swag store
  • Docs PRs, typo fixes, oh my! All are valuable
  • Pairing sessions with a Core Maintainer
  • Community Maintainers meeting

• Automation and you

  • How do we use automation to reduce mundane tasks?
  • Peril, CircleCI, and more!

• Wrap-up

  • Practical advice to begin growing your community and incentivizing contribution

Pitch

Open-source software seems to be eating the world. React is one of the most thriving ecosystems, and the code base is entirely in the open maintained by a team and valuable contributions from the community.

Open-source software seems like something that is obviously beneficial and a common good, but it is rarely something that is a “live option” that people feel that they can make tangible improvements towards. This talk will inspire and offer real-world, take-home advice for growing your own open-source garden and inspiring a whole host of gardeners to contribute and grow your community.

Working on Gatsby and implementing many of the techniques we use to incentivize and encourage contributors has allowed us to grow our community far beyond we ever expected. People love to contribute to Gatsby, and hundreds of open-source contributors have gotten their start in open-source by contributing to Gatsby. I want to share all I can so others can borrow our techniques and grow their own, thriving open-source garden for the betterment of the community.