How to build a great open source community
Open-source communities have changed the way people see and interact with projects, I could remember when people sell and buy code, documentation, designs, software projects, and any other project. Nothing was free even on the internet but now people are thinking of building projects and sharing the entire codebase, documentation, design with the world.
Platforms that aid open-source culture:
- Github: It's now possible to store your codebase online and make it accessible for the public, people can contribute, share, like and donate.
- Stackoverflow: It’s now easy to see solutions online and people are ready to help you resolve the problem., you can also appreciate them by upvoting their answers.
- Medium: It's now easy to write content online free and share it with the world, medium has a very good SEO which means your article will likely be seen by many.
- LinkedIn: It's now easy to interact with professionals and share jobs with people, connect with potential employers.
- Dribble: It's now possible to share your designs with the world free
- Figma: Design UI is no longer a paid thing, you will be able to design and share your works with the world.
The list is very long but I will stop at this point.
A great community yields great community members
What is an Open-source community?
An open-source community is a group of people with a goal of improving either a product, tool, vision, environment, or anything. The community might be owned by an individual, company, or a group of people.
Starting an open-source community requires a lot of hard work to make it great and in this article, I will show you the steps it takes to create an active open source community.
Steps to create a tremendous open-source community
1: Find a platform and stick with it
Finding a platform as the bedrock of your community is the most essential part that leads to the success or failure of the community. For example, you decide to use Discord and later move the community to a forum, then finally you decide to stick with Slack. that process of changing platforms will kill the community.
2: Community bots
The community bot helps in making the community alive by welcoming newcomers, announcing events, meetups, offers, new projects, and sharing social media activities.
3: Get volunteers to work with you
Community work is not meant for one person alone, you will need the assistance of others to push the community further, you will need to recruit volunteers to help you build the community.
There are so many ways members can assist you voluntarily.
* Spread community announcements across their social media accounts
* Help fellow community members solve a technical issue
* Invite their friends to join the community
* maintain community code of conduct by communicating with the offenders
4: Announce the community contributors
Announcing the contributions of the community members that help improve the community will increase happiness, love, and more contribution from the community members
5: Organize Hackertoons and contest
Organizing hackertoons will make the community very busy and attract more members because people are building with your tool and are sure they will earn a prize.
6: Feature a community member
Featuring a community member encourages other members to grow the community for you, preach about, invite, and improve the community because you are helping those doing the hard work in the community to be known for the great work and helping their profile stand out.
7: Send swags, stickers, and badges to the community members
Everybody likes to be given swags in events, contests, conferences, and Hackertoons; sharing swags, stickers, badges in the community will encourage people to do tasks in the community and more individual duties to improve the community.
8: Commit acts of love and joy
How can we help you? That is the big ‘ask’ of the FOSS project. And the help is reciprocal — helping you helps us, helps the project, and helps create something bigger than any of us.
9: Job zone
This is a vital point in the FOSS community, people will be assured of getting job applications from community members, and referrers will make the community the best. having a job zone section in the community can do the following:
* Bring new members ( who joined just to get daily job posts)
* increase activity ( members that joined for the job section will likely check out other areas of the community)
* attract recruiters to the community
11: Sponsorships for Community members
Sponsoring the community members to take paid courses, events, meetups, contests, hackertoon, and job fairs will encourage members of the community to be very active, share the news across, invite new members.
12: Have an official website for the community
The website will serve as a source for connecting new members with the community, showcase the community's success, events, programs, announcements, and other useful information.
13: Have a social media page
The page will serve as a connector for the community to new members, it will make it easier for people to locate the community and also for the community to pass messages across the whole world. some people prefer to just follow a social media account for information than being involved in the community location like Slack, Discord, Forum. that way you get to also retain those members.
With the steps above you will be able to create not just a great community but an active community. A great and active community can still fail with the steps above for just one reason (No continuous process of the steps above).
Conclusion
creating an open-source community requires a lot of hard work to make it a success, the steps listed in this article will grow and propel any open source community to a greater height. The only reason the community might fail is if the community stops the continuous process of the steps listed above.
Thank you for reading my article.
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