There seems to be a misconception about what’s required to build a vibrant open source community and it’s not “community management”. Community management focuses on providing infrastructure and facilitating communication for a community. This includes setting up events, maintaining TO-DO lists, keeping forums under control, making announcements, etc. And that’s all well and good, in fact it’s vital. However, although this role is important it will likely not lead to any significant growth in your community. Communities need Leadership in order to grow because leaders create a vision of the future that draws people to their communities and motivates them into action.

(more…)

No tags Hide

Does instant messaging (IM), email, and social media make us more productive?  Of course they do, right?  …  Well, the real answer is ‘no’ (what would be the point of this post otherwise?:).  As a Community Manager for two open-source projects I reach out and ‘connect’ with people as part of my job.   In doing so I use Twitter, mailing lists, IRC, and discussion forums almost constantly, but what about people who aren’t tasked with making connections and building community?  Is it good for them?  What about the secretary whose Facebook page is constantly updated throughout the day or the sales guy who updates his followers minute by minute?  Are they as productive as they should be or are they just awesome multi-taskers?

Let’s look at a simple fact …

The human mind does not process information in parallel (you may want to go back and read that again).  It just can’t be done.  The Myth of Multitasking by Dave Crenshaw.  In his book he uses a simple example that is very convincing.  Simply take a sheet of paper and draw a line across the page.   (more…)

No tags Hide

Ever wonder why some collaboration projects take off and become successful but you can’t get your company’s users to use a simple wiki?  Do your discussion forums in Sharepoint go unused?  You did everything right… didn’t you?  Well, the honest truth is that there is no silver bullet to making something popular, but there are a few strategies you can use to deal with the biggest obstacle you face in collaboration which is User Discomfort.  That’s right, it’s not your processes or your technology, it’s not even your management.  The biggest impediment to getting your collaboration project off the ground and making it popular is User Discomfort.  Here’s why … (more…)

No tags Hide

This particular post deals with the benefits and challenges of product management.  Where it’s been and where it’s going as it relates to open source.  First, I know what you’re thinking … product management in open source? That can’t be, and in some cases its true (See the summary of Pidgin’s resizable textbox).  In other cases there is too much “traditional” product management and not enough community driven product management.  So what is the happy medium and how should open source projects approach product management?   In this post I’m going to look at how community driven PM differs from traditional PM within a commercial open source project.

Let’s start by looking at a definition of product management.  Product management is discovering, documenting, and prioritizing user stories with the objective of maximizing some combination of users, sales (more…)

No tags Hide