Presentation at Monkeyspace

1. From 1 to 100
Building Your Project Community

3. What we’ll cover
• The Funnel
• Design for Division of Labor
• Being Welcoming
• Licensing (if needed and time suffices)

4. THE FUNNEL

5. Categories
• Defines levels of community involvement
• People can move from one category to
another, including in reverse.
• Typical Categories are:
– Users
– Contributors
– Committers
– LeadersPMC membersetc.

6. Categories
• Defines levels of community involvement
• People can move from one category to another,
including in reverse.
• Typical Categories are:
– VisitorsPotential Members!
– Users
– Contributors
– Committers
– LeadersPMC membersetc.

7. Visitor to User Funnel
Users
Visitor
Visitor
Visitor

8. Turn Visitors Into Users
• Optimize homepage for new users, not
development.

9. Example: Jenkins

10. Turn Visitors Into Users
• Make it easy to find the appropriate
downloads

11. Simplify Downloading
Example: OpenLP

12. Turn Visitors Into Users
• Make it easy to find the appropriate
downloads
– Pro tip: Put on NuGet Gallery, Microsoft WPI,
Xamarin Component Store, etc.

13. Turn Visitors Into Users
• Simplify setup
– If it’s three steps, make it two. If it’s two, make it
one.

14. User to Contributor Funnel
Contributors
User
User
User

15. Turn Users into Contributors
• Recruit them to do user support, particularly
new users
– New users often have similar issues

16. Turn Users into Contributors
• Mark bugs for new contributors
– Should not take more than two hours TOTAL

17. Example: Mozilla

18. Turn Users into Contributors
• Tag bugs with a specific mentor for new
contributor

19. Example: Mozilla

20. Example: Mozilla

21. Turn Users into Contributors
• Simplify (developer) Setup
– If it’s three steps make it two, if it’s two steps
make it one.

22. Example: Outercurve’s Signing Service
• “ServiceStack based web service and client
tools for performing remote Authenticode and
.NET Assembly Strong Name signing”
• A single Powershell command or MSBuild
tasks can sign PE files, Powershell scripts,
MSIs, or OPC files

23. Example: Outercurve’s Signing Service
• Source is designed for hacking by default, NOT
production
• ASP.net Signing Service
– Defaults to a sample signing certificate
– Defaults to using the Azure Storage Emulator
• Cmdlet DLL
– Has a debug command set in .csproj
– Debug command starts new Powershell session,
removes installed Cmdlet version and imports the
debug module

24. Turn Users into Contributors
• Design for division of labor

25. DESIGN FOR DIVISION OF LABOR

26. Two types of productivity
• Individual productivity
• Community productivity

27. Individual vs. community productivity
• Tools for one don’t necessarily help with the
other

28. Does LINQ help community productivity that
much?
var max = list.Select(i =>
i.SomeProperty).GroupBy(i=>
_service.Call(i.MethodCall())).Max(i =>
i.AnotherProperty)
• Side effects of Select? SomeProperty? Call?
MethodCall? AnotherProperty/?
• Side effects to any side effects?
• How does this line fit into the other 1000?
10000? 100000?

29. The Problem of Explaining Code
• There’s only one of you!
• People will have the same questions.

30. You’re a Finite Resource
public Answer GetAnswer (Question q)
{
lock (you)
{
return you.Answer(q);
}
}

31. Collaboration is hard!
• Multi-lingual communication is hard
• Working in different time zones is hard
• Not everyone looks at code or even life in the
same way
• People in OSS projects are often faceless

32. Modularity
• Don’t design for a few developers.
– How most software development on teams occurs
• Design for a radically large number of
developers
– 50? 100? 500? More?
• Very, very clearly document your interfaces
• Require only the minimal amount of
knowledge to complete a development task

33. Example: NuGet
• NuGet has 14,233 packages (7/15)
– Almost all created by non-NuGet team members
• Why so successful?
– Package creators don’t need to know how NuGet
is constructed
• Simple, straightforward interface that hides
the details

34. Plugins
• “Modularity taken to it’s logical
consequences”
• True extensibility doesn’t begin with external
interface!
• Extensibility starts at root of the core
• If core can do it, plugins can do it

35. Example: Orchard
• Uses dependency injection through Autofac
IoC

36. Example: Orchard
1. Create an interface inheriting IDependency

37. Example: Orchard
2. Implement your interface, using other
IDependency-inheriting interfaces

38. Example: Orchard
• Other interfaces:
– ISingletonDependency
– IUnitOfWorkDependency
– ITransientDependency

39. “If core can do something plugins can’t, that’s a
bug.”
- Kohsuke Kawaguchi (creator of Jenkins)

40. Example: Orchard

41. GREAT Way to Recruit Long Term Contributors
• New contributors can accomplish tasks with
minimal time and effort
• Contributors are now invested
• More likely to look into other parts of the
system

42. BEING WELCOMING

43. BEING WELCOMING
“Don’t Be An Asshole”

44. Don’t be an asshole
• How many positive interactions does it take to
offset a negative one?

50. • It takes 5 positive interactions just to offset 1
negative interaction

51. • It takes 5 positive interactions just to offset 1
negative interaction
• In workplace, 66% of targets of assholes had
decreased performance by and 38% dropped
their quality.

52. So how many people really quit?
• 25% of targets quit
• 20% of witnesses quit

53. What isn’t an asshole?
• Someone who respectfully disagrees on
technical changes

54. What is an asshole? A simple test
“After talking to the asshole, does the target feel
oppressed, humiliated, de-energized, or
belittled?”
- Donnie Berkholz (Gentoo Linux leader)

55. Ways You (and Your Community) Can Be
Welcoming
• Be positive towards people in public
– If you MUST be negative, do that in private.

56. Ways You (and Your Community) Can Be
Welcoming
• Be positive towards people in public
• Have a way of reporting assholes

57. Ways You (and Your Community) Can Be
Welcoming
• Be positive towards people in public
• Have a way of reporting assholes
• Believe people when they say something hurts
them AND fix the problem.

58. Ways You (and Your Community) Can Be
Welcoming
• Be positive towards people in public
• Have a way of reporting assholes
• Believe people when they say something hurts
them AND fix the problem.
• Be flexible on technical and coding standards
at first

59. Ways You (and Your Community) Can Be
Welcoming
• Be positive towards people in public
• Have a way of reporting assholes
• Believe people when they say something hurts
them AND fix the problem
• Be flexible on technical and coding standards
at first
• Create a Code of Conduct

60. LICENSING

61. You need a license*
• If Companies can’t use your code without a
license on it And Full time employees working
on your project is really good
• Then…

62. You need a license*
• If Companies can’t use your code without a
license on it And Full time employees working
on your project is really good
• Then you need a license on your code.

63. You need a license*
• If Companies can’t use your code without a
license on it And Full time employees working
on your project is really good
• Then you need a license on your code.
• EndIf

64. You need a license*
*Public Domain will suffice as well

65. Questions?
@EricOutercurve
eschultz@outercurve.org

66. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.