I was particularly influenced by this mental model of thinking about open source contributions in the past: https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.net/dfb15f354706fa763ff385e5eea61520bcdcf8bb/1b0fc/assets/media/community-engagement-oss-image.png
Related article: https://www.bvp.com/atlas/roadmap-open-source While there's a lot more in the article as it focuses quite a bit on vendors and monetization of open source (which is a somewhat distasteful topic to many in the community here historically), I did find the model in that image pretty compelling. It's fairly github central and proposes the following tiers from least engaged / invested to most: 1. Watchers: aware but not active (stars on gh) 2. Users: Downloading and using the project (dnloads, docker pulls, etc) 3. (my revision) Project Contributors: opening JIRA issues / gh issues, bugfixes, engaging on ML and slack 4. (my addition): Code Contributors: submitting PR's, reviewing code 5. Committers / Maintainers Each group has both different metrics of engagement we as a project could measure to gauge whether our actions are doing a good job encouraging engagement and participation, and each group also has different needs from us. While we 100% should crawl before we walk before we run, I figured this mental model may be useful to others. IMO we're not very strong with encouraging / understanding / engaging groups 1 and 2. The barrier to entry is pretty high due to fixed complexity in the system on 3-5 but I think we do decently well there and/or are improving (status updates, better curated LHF, advent calendar, mentoring, etc). ~Josh On Mon, Jan 17, 2022 at 5:08 PM Melissa Logan <loganloganlo...@gmail.com> wrote: > Thanks Benjamin. Regarding contributors, what you say here makes sense and > we will discuss other ways to highlight, e.g. in the monthly Changelog, > interview them for the site, etc. Same for users. Beyond the case studies > page and Changelog blog, we'll discuss other ways to thank/interact with > them. > > Erick, thanks for your comment in the deck. > > Others please do share input on the plan and ideas/recommendations section > so we can best support. Thanks, all! > > > On Fri, Jan 14, 2022 at 2:42 AM Benjamin Lerer <ble...@apache.org> wrote: > >> Sounds great. By community, do you mean both those who build and/or use >>> C* (or just the folks on dev list)? There are a number of ways we can >>> showcase this. And is there a general goal of growing the number of >>> contributors and/or committers? We worked with Ekaterina last year to get >>> this piece published and could do more of the same: >>> https://opensource.com/article/21/5/apache-cassandra. >> >> >> I see 4 circles in our community: users, contributors, committers and PMC >> members. We officially recognize the transition to the committer status or >> to the PMC member status through emails from the PMC members and some >> public announcement but we do not do anything for contributors. It is an >> area where I believe we should improve. Contributing requires some effort. >> We should officially recognize those efforts and let people know that we >> noticed and are thankful for that. >> Some simple things like mentioning first contributions in our monthly >> updates or Tweeting about them. Thanking people for their constant effort >> through time. I see some people that keep on answering questions on our >> user mailing list and we never really talk about it even if they do an >> amazing job. I see them as important contributors and it is important to >> officially recognize our contributor circle. >> Regarding our users, I feel that we need to thank them for their trust >> more often and open the door for as many exchanges as possible. >> >> >> Le jeu. 13 janv. 2022 à 19:23, Melissa Logan <loganloganlo...@gmail.com> >> a écrit : >> >>> Thanks, Benjamin! >>> >>> > One critical part that we should try to put more forward in 2022 is >>> the community. On Twitter people are quite responsive to it. We have a >>> great community and we should make sure that people feel that they belong >>> to it. >>> >>> Sounds great. By community, do you mean both those who build and/or use >>> C* (or just the folks on dev list)? There are a number of ways we can >>> showcase this. And is there a general goal of growing the number of >>> contributors and/or committers? We worked with Ekaterina last year to get >>> this piece published and could do more of the same: >>> https://opensource.com/article/21/5/apache-cassandra. >>> >>> > I know that pushing content to the website has been a frustrating >>> issue. My understanding is that the problem was in fact more due to our >>> tooling and to the ongoing work on the documentation than to the >>> availability of committers. I do believe that the situation will improve in >>> the future. 🤞 >>> >>> In the past tooling had been a factor which continues to improve. We do >>> still see lag times and have started flagging when they come up, e.g. >>> https://github.com/apache/cassandra-website/pull/75/commits/c80cb86ea86dbde0c0d3dee98677e7e399d1a215 >>> >>> > One question that I have is: would it not be possible to have our blog >>> hosted on a real blog platform? I did not manage to find any discussion >>> about that. >>> >>> Mick and Anthony will know more but generally I'd say since we invested >>> in Antora and have a process, I'm not sure how much we'd gain by switching >>> again. We'll work with whatever process the community prefers. >>> >>> >>> On Thu, Jan 13, 2022 at 2:20 AM Benjamin Lerer <b.le...@gmail.com> >>> wrote: >>> >>>> Melissa, Chris, Diogenese, >>>> >>>> Thanks a lot for everything you did in 2021 😀 >>>> >>>> What you propose for 2022 sounds great. >>>> One critical part that we should try to put more forward in 2022 is the >>>> community. On Twitter people are quite responsive to it. We have a great >>>> community and we should make sure that people feel that they belong to it. >>>> >>>> I know that pushing content to the website has been a frustrating >>>> issue. My understanding is that the problem was in fact more due to our >>>> tooling and to the ongoing work on the documentation than to the >>>> availability of committers. I do believe that the situation will improve in >>>> the future. 🤞 >>>> >>>> One question that I have is: would it not be possible to have our blog >>>> hosted on a real blog platform? I did not manage to find any discussion >>>> about that. >>>> >>>> Le jeu. 13 janv. 2022 à 02:46, Melissa Logan <loganloganlo...@gmail.com> >>>> a écrit : >>>> >>>>> Chris Thornett, Diogenese Topper and I compiled a recap of the >>>>> marketing work we contributed to Cassandra in 2021. We also developed a >>>>> recommended approach for 2022. Our aim is to be a resource that advances >>>>> the community's interests, so we would greatly appreciate your input here >>>>> and/or in the deck: >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1tPbU1CtRPvn6tlbuKcYkJL6Wzj0mFzj5OiixSkM5o_Q/edit?usp=sharing >>>>> >>>>> 1. Is the recommended approach aligned with what the community wants >>>>> to achieve this year? If not, what would you modify? >>>>> >>>>> 2. What are the community's thoughts on items in the Ideas & >>>>> Recommendations section? Do you have other ideas not represented here we >>>>> could help with? >>>>> >>>>> 3. Generally speaking, what's working and what's not? We appreciate >>>>> feedback so we can best support. >>>>> >>>>> 4. One of our key challenges has been getting our website pull >>>>> requests (blogs, homepage updates etc.) committed in a timely manner so >>>>> the >>>>> thousands of daily visitors see the most current info. We are grateful for >>>>> the ongoing support of Mick, Erick et al and wonder if others could pitch >>>>> in ongoing? It's typically no more than one commit per week; discussed on >>>>> the #cassandra-website channel. Appreciate your consideration. >>>>> >>>>> Looking forward to your input. >>>>> >>>>> Melissa >>>>> >>>>
