Just a comment. I hadn't realized (remembered) you've been doing it, but this is fantastic job you've been doing Rich. I think this is really cool that a human is sending these messages and responding to questions, even if it's 50% of acknowledgment and 10% follow-up questions This is exactly how you build communities: not by automating things with mindless bots and automated workflows, but by having actual humans spending time and pay attention to newcomers.
This is what makes those - eventually maybe 5% of them - who join actively engaging later on. J. On Tue, Mar 10, 2026 at 1:43 AM Rich Bowen <[email protected]> wrote: > Esteemed Board, > > For close to 2 years, I have emailed each newly-elected PMC member, > welcoming them to the larger life of the Foundation, and pointing them to > onboarding information for PMC members. This is triggered by the [NOTIFY] > emails but each one is individually sent, not automated. > > Roughly half of the recipients respond with an acknowledgment/thanks for > the message. Roughly 10% have some kind of followup question. > > I’m assuming that the Board wishes that this continue, but it makes sense > to me to change hats, and send this as a member of ComDev. If the Board > would prefer to designate one of your members to continue this, I’d of > course turn it over, but I’ll assume, unless you tell me differently, that > I can and should just continue under my own authority as a welcoming member. > > (Full text of email included below, and would of course be updated to > reflect the new sender.) > > ComDev, (copied) do you wish to have visibility of these messages (ie, > Cc’ed to dev@community)? The volume varies of course. There were 17 in > February, and 11 in January, for example. This does not include PMC members > of newly graduated projects, which the Incubator handles separately. > > — > Rich Bowen > [email protected] > > > > Template: > > Dear __NAME__, > > I see that you have been added to the __PROJECT__ PMC. Congratulations! > > As a PMC member, you’re entrusted with the direction of the project, as > well as its ongoing relationship with the Board and the rest of the > Foundation, so we wanted to welcome you to the larger ASF family. > > And in the same way as you have been added by the existing PMC members, > remember that part of your duty is now to be the one who is on the lookout > for potential committers and PMC members for your project, and to mentor > those people into project leadership, to ensure the sustainability of your > project, and of the Foundation. > > We’ve put together some resources for PMC members at > https://community.apache.org/pmc/ That’s still a work in progress and we > hope it will improve over time. We’d like to hear your feedback on how this > resource could be improved, based on information that you learn and wish > someone had told you. > > If you have any questions about any aspect of the Foundation, or want to > chat about how the Foundation can better serve your project, please reach > out to myself, or any other Director. > > Rich, on behalf of the Board of Directors > >
