Taking your open source project to the next level - Promoting your project to users and contributors
328 | Fri 01 Aug 4:30 p.m.–5:15 p.m.
Presented by
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Tom is a Principal Open Source Strategist for AWS. He has been a part of the FOSS community since 1997, when he skipped his last day of junior high to go to Linux Expo. During college, he worked for a high-availability startup to cover tuition, and when they crashed along with the majority of the IT sector, he dropped out of college and went to work for Red Hat full-time. He worked for Red Hat for almost twenty years, in Support, Sales Engineering, Release Engineering, Engineering Management, University Outreach (CTO's office), and Employment Brand. He’s an active contributor to Fedora and helped to write the Fedora Packaging and Legal Guidelines which are still in use today. He is co-author of Raspberry Pi Hacks (2013, O’Reilly). When he’s not working, he finds enjoyment in 3D printing, pinball, hockey, games (board & video), geocaching, craft beer, B-movies, science fiction, trivia, and traveling.
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Hannah Aubry
https://hannahaubry.online/hi-there
Hannah Aubry is a community builder and an advocate for open technologies with roots in communications and program management. Currently, she’s an open source developer advocate for the AWS Open Source Strategy & Marketing team where she crafts open source messaging and advises engineering teams on community engagement. She also serves as a Board Director for the Mastodon project, providing strategic direction and oversight to their executive team. Previously, she led Fastly's $50 million commitment to the open internet through its Fast Forward initiative, coordinated the world’s largest multi-team system study to date as part of the S.O.N.I.C. Research Group, and created activism-driven installation art & theatre. If she were a bird she’d be a roseate spoonbill.
Hannah Aubry
https://hannahaubry.online/hi-there
Abstract
You’ve written some excellent code and you’re ready to turn it into a community project. You want to attract new users and maybe even some contributors. To go from code to community, you need people to see, understand, and get excited. In other words, you need marketing.
Marketing is not just promoting a product. It is also fostering a deep understanding of your potential audience. You need to learn not just what they like but how they think and act. We believe that the four principles of marketing (Product, Price, Placement, and Promotion) apply as well to open source as they do to any offering. Through strategic thinking and disciplined communication, marketing an open source project can help grow your userbase and create opportunities for contributing to the project in ways you never imagined. The small details in how your project presents itself to the world provide signals to others that help them decide if this is a project they can take seriously. How you communicate is as important as what you communicate, and by applying open source principles like transparency, collaboration, and recognition, you can encourage community growth around your project.
In our presentation, we’ll discuss how planning and executing strategic marketing efforts can accelerate the success of an open source project and its surrounding community. By building a community-centered marketing approach, you can create opportunities for people to contribute to your project through content, messaging, and organic storytelling.
After all, if your tree falls in a forest and no one hears about it, does anyone buy the wood?
You’ve written some excellent code and you’re ready to turn it into a community project. You want to attract new users and maybe even some contributors. To go from code to community, you need people to see, understand, and get excited. In other words, you need marketing. Marketing is not just promoting a product. It is also fostering a deep understanding of your potential audience. You need to learn not just what they like but how they think and act. We believe that the four principles of marketing (Product, Price, Placement, and Promotion) apply as well to open source as they do to any offering. Through strategic thinking and disciplined communication, marketing an open source project can help grow your userbase and create opportunities for contributing to the project in ways you never imagined. The small details in how your project presents itself to the world provide signals to others that help them decide if this is a project they can take seriously. How you communicate is as important as what you communicate, and by applying open source principles like transparency, collaboration, and recognition, you can encourage community growth around your project. In our presentation, we’ll discuss how planning and executing strategic marketing efforts can accelerate the success of an open source project and its surrounding community. By building a community-centered marketing approach, you can create opportunities for people to contribute to your project through content, messaging, and organic storytelling. After all, if your tree falls in a forest and no one hears about it, does anyone buy the wood?