jasonbrooks · June 13, 2018 22:18
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  <title>Red Hat Open Source Community</title>
  <updated>2018-04-19T13:30:00+00:00</updated>
  <author>
    <name>Red Hat, Inc.</name>
  </author>
  <entry>
    <title>Crafting an Open Source Product Strategy</title>
    <link rel="alternate" href="http://community.redhat.com/blog/2018/04/crafting-an-open-source-product-strategy/"/>
    <id>http://community.redhat.com/blog/2018/04/crafting-an-open-source-product-strategy/</id>
    <published>2018-04-19T13:30:00+00:00</published>
    <updated>2018-04-19T09:52:27-04:00</updated>
    <author>
      <name>Dave Neary</name>
    </author>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;img alt="chess" width="640" height="365" src="/images/blog/chess_figures.jpg?1528384281" /&gt; "Should we open source this project?" An easy question to ask, and a hard one to answer. The goal of this article is not to answer the question, but maybe to give some tools that you can use to find the answer when the question arises.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;The first question to ask is why the project leader is interested in open source in the first place. Typical answers might include "because we want a community" or "because we want to be the Firefox of our field." But when you dig deeper, there may not be a clear understanding of how an open source project can benefit your company's goals.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;The creation of an open source strategy is about finding that benefit. In short, you want to understand why open sourcing this project will benefit the company.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Open source is not a business model. Fundamentally, it is two things: a way to develop software collaboratively, and a way to increase the distribution and reach of your project by lowering the cost of acquisition. Your goal is to make a connection between one of these two things and a concrete benefit for your product and company.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;h3 id="the-economics-of-open-source"&gt;The Economics of Open Source&lt;/h3&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;To explain the product strategies that make sense for open source, there are three very basic economic principles it is worth understanding.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;The first principle is, when you reduce the price of a good, you will see an increase in demand. In the case of open source, by lowering the cost of acquisition, we maximize demand and thus maximize adoption of the project. It is worth noting that the "cost of adoption" is not just money, it also includes time and effort to adopt and migrate from whatever you are using now.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;The second principle is, when the price of one good goes down, demand for its substitutes will also go down. Open source projects can undermine established proprietary software companies by being convenient to adopt, and lower cost. This principle explains how open source can be an agent for market disruption. Linux disrupted the Unix market, and MySQL disrupted the relational database market. Incumbents may have a lot of inertia to change when their flagship product is threatened by an upstart, giving you an opportunity to capitalize on this adoption to grow some other market.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;The third economic principle explains how to make money off open source.  All else being equal, when the price of a good goes down, the demand for its complements goes up. This is why mobile service providers subsidize the cost of cellphones for people who buy 24-month monthly subscription plans, which is where operators make the real money.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Every successful open source business model is based on this principle. If your goal is revenue, you need to find the complements to the software you are releasing as open source which offer a lot of value to your customer, and charging a fair price for them.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;h3 id="generating-a-draft-strategy-proposal"&gt;Generating a Draft Strategy Proposal&lt;/h3&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;You can combine these three principles of increased adoption, market disruption, and increased demand for complements, to define a product strategy. No two projects will have identical goals, so no two projects will share exactly the same product strategy. The first step is to isolate a specific, high-level goal.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;To do this, you will need the right voices around the table. Make sure that when you run a strategy workstream, that you take some time to consider the constituencies who will care about the result. If you want your strategy to stick, it will need the buy-in of people other than your engineering organization. Others who will care will include your business leadership, sales and field organizations, product management, marketing teams, brand, and security teams.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;There is a balance between having too many people involved at an early stage, and ensuring buy-in from a diverse group of people. Use the principle of growing concentric circles, where the core team talks to other groups to be aware of any concerns or constraints, and shares draft proposals early and often to head off any major objections. As your draft matures, working meetings will become bigger, and many more people will see the draft, but if you do things right, you will catch all the big deal-breaker issues early enough to be able to address them. That might involve changing plans, or converting critics into advocates.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;When coming up with the strategy, it will be important to understand both the landscape in which the project operates, and the relative benefit of investing in one thing over another. I have found &lt;a href="https://medium.com/wardleymaps"&gt;Wardley maps&lt;/a&gt; a useful tool to help describe the state of play, and creating one is a useful means of exploring a new area visually to ensure that you and others have a shared understanding of a space.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;A final strategy proposal will contain a few important ingredients. First, an elevator pitch, with a high level description of what the goal of the open source project is, and how this benefits the sponsoring company. Second, a business rationale, which describes how success for the community project translates into success for the company or product team, and third, a high level plan for execution, identifying the key performance indicators (KPIs) which will be important for the project.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Some examples of the rationale for an open source project might be:&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Wide adoption of this project will help people get more benefit from our other products&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;An open source reference implementation of a standard will encourage adoption of the standard by multiple companies, enabling a network effect for others building on top&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;This technology area is still new, and an open source project people can download freely will educate the market, and shorten our sales cycles for potential customers who already understand the market segment and benefits of our products&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;We want to create a successful platform for people to build lots of things on, and our plan is to monetize the creation and distribution channel for things built on the platform&lt;/li&gt;
 &lt;/ul&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;In each of these cases, a potential set of KPIs is suggested by the goal. If your goal is a &lt;em&gt;de facto&lt;/em&gt; standard implementation with wide adoption, then measuring the number of vendors distributing standard-compliant implementations is a great measure. If your goal is wide adoption of a piece of software, downloads and engagement metrics will be more important. Similarly, areas of focus are obvious. If your goal is market education, then getting started documentation, learning paths, tutorials, and magazine articles will be the top priority, for example.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Also, in each case, the relative benefit of the open source project is obvious to everyone in the company. The sales teams will not see money spent on community promotion as money taken away from selling or marketing products, if you are telling a compelling story about how community growth helps them in the long term, and can point to measures supporting that. Everyone has limited resources, and along the road, trade-offs will need to be made, but if everyone concerned understands the goal, you will find fighting the budgeting and resource allocation battles much easier.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;h3 id="translating-strategy-to-action"&gt;Translating Strategy to Action&lt;/h3&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;The final step of the journey is making the strategy stick. Strategy documents are useful if they affect action, if they allow individuals to make local decisions in the knowledge that they are supporting an overarching goal. Communication of your strategy is crucial for this. I recommend having a mantra, something you can repeat often, put on a t-shirt, make into stickers.  If everyone knows the mantra, and understands how their work is affected by it, you have won the battle.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Another key to making it stick is to monitor and communicate progress towards the goal. If your community goal is supported by a diverse group of co-developers, then celebrate contributions from new participants, and include growth figures in your monthly newsletter.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Once you have a strategy to execute against, resourcing for success is crucial. If your goal is to move an entire industry from a proprietary competitor to an open source project, and you have one person working part time to promote the open source project, your chances of success are low.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Finally, as the world changes, you may find that the reasoning behind your rationale changes too. Ensure that your strategy doc is a living document, and revisit regularly with key stakeholders (I suggest annually) to ensure that the strategy stays fresh and relevant.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;h3 id="conclusion"&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h3&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Crafting a product strategy around open source requires having all of your key constituencies represented in the process so that you will have buy-in for the result, exploring in depth why open sourcing makes sense for the organization's goals, make sure you're measuring the right things to gauge the success of your efforts, and finally, be prepared to pivot if circumstances impose it.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;When you do it well, you turn everyone involved into an advocate for the open source project, and can have a very powerful force multiplier for the project, for the industry, and for your company.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Good luck!&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Image by &lt;a href="https://www.maxpixel.net/Chess-Game-Strategy-Chess-Pieces-Chess-Lady-Fig-1697301"&gt;Max Pixel&lt;/a&gt;, under &lt;a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en"&gt;CC0 Public Domain&lt;/a&gt; license.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 &lt;hr/&gt;&lt;p&gt;This article originally appeared on
 &lt;a href="http://community.redhat.com/"&gt;community.redhat.com&lt;/a&gt;.
 Follow the community on Twitter at
 &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/redhatopen"&gt;@redhatopen&lt;/a&gt;, and find us on
 &lt;a href="https://www.facebook.com/redhatopen"&gt;Facebook&lt;/a&gt; and
 &lt;a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/113258037797946990391/113258037797946990391/posts"&gt;Google+&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 </content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <title>Staffing the Conference Booth</title>
    <link rel="alternate" href="http://community.redhat.com/blog/2018/04/staffing-the-conference-booth/"/>
    <id>http://community.redhat.com/blog/2018/04/staffing-the-conference-booth/</id>
    <published>2018-04-17T12:00:00+00:00</published>
    <updated>2018-04-19T09:52:27-04:00</updated>
    <author>
      <name>Rich Bowen</name>
    </author>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;img alt="FOSDEM 2018 Booth" width="4032" height="3024" src="/images/blog/fosdem_booth.jpg?1528384281" /&gt; This morning, I was asked to give a few tips about staffing a booth at a technology conference—or, indeed, any conference. This got me thinking—there's things that I do at a conference that come out of years and years of experience doing it wrong, and then tweaking it the next time.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;I've been to a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of conferences. And I've spent hundreds of hours staffing the booth.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;To skip to the punchline, everything flows out of deciding what the conference is &lt;em&gt;for&lt;/em&gt;. If you know what you hope to get out of the event, everything else flows out of that.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;If your goal is to make connections, then that influences how you interact with people. If your goal is to demonstrate a product, well, that leads you in a different direction. It's not usually that simple—there's usually lots of goals. But everything you do should serve those goals. Otherwise you're wasting opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;So, for example, here's a few:&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;h3 id="try-to-remember-your-conversations"&gt;Try to Remember Your Conversations&lt;/h3&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;You'll meet eleventy bazillion people at the conference, and every one of them will have an interesting story, and you will promise to follow up with them next week.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;They will hand you a business card, and you will promptly forget why you have it. Even before they are out of sight. Don't let this happen. Write a note on the card as to why you are following up with them. You might even go so far as to take a selfie with them so that you'll remember who they are.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;(Note: This isn't always culturally appropriate. In Japan, in particular, writing a note on someone's business card is very disrespectful. Educate yourself on culture when you travel.)&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;If you use Evernote (you should), put the card and the selfie, into Evernote, with a note to yourself. Pretend you are writing it to someone else who will follow up with them, because by the end of the nine-hour conference day and the three drinks at the booth crawl mixer, you'll have no idea what you talked about.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;h3 id="roll-out-the-red-carpet"&gt;Roll Out the Red Carpet&lt;/h3&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;On the practical end of things, at the end of a six-hour booth shift, your feet will hurt. A lot. Taking a square foot of carpet lets you survive that and still be able to do it again the next day. If you forget, a piece of cardboard from the box your booth swag came in can help a lot too.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;h3 id="get-them-on-camera"&gt;Get Them on Camera&lt;/h3&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;People love to come to your booth and tell stories about what they are doing with your product. Get a video camera, take it with you, and ask them if they're willing to tell the story on camera. This makes them feel listened to, and it gives you marketing material and user stories, which is one of the most important things you can bring back from a conference.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Here, too, this won't work everywhere. Some people feel quite free telling you a story, but if they go on camera they have to get the approval of their manager, as well as their marketing and legal teams. If they say no, let it go, and ask if it's okay to take notes, or if they prefer to be referred to anonymously.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;But get the story written down, since you will forget. See above.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;h3 id="pack-a-snack"&gt;Pack a Snack&lt;/h3&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Booth hours are long. Have I alluded to that? I've also observed that the last ten minutes of the last hour of the last day of a three-day conference lasts roughly a million years.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;You're going to get hungry. Pack a snack in your bag. And a phone charging battery. You'll need both of them.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;h3 id="invite-people-to-join-you"&gt;Invite People to Join You&lt;/h3&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;If you're staffing the booth, people will generally assume that you've got it covered. But if you ask them to help for an hour—even a half hour—some people will find the time, as long as they know they're not responsible for the whole day.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Make a Google doc listing the hours for which they can volunteer. Make sure that these times correspond with the conference schedule so that they can come when they're not attending a talk, and leave in time to attend the next talk. Expect that people will not sign up until the last week before the conference, because that's when they're planning what talks to attend.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Ask them what their expertise is, so that when someone asks a question, you can say, with confidence, I don't know, but Julie will be here at 2:30 and she's an expert on Outreachy. Or whatever the topic may be.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;People are, for the most part, glad to come be part of the solution, and share their expertise. But people usually like to be asked. If you don't ask, most people won't proactively volunteer.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;h3 id="dont-take-all-your-gear"&gt;Don't Take All Your Gear&lt;/h3&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Conference booths are tiny, and there's no space for your stuff. If you lug your laptop, your novel, and your yo-yo with you, there won't be time to use any of them, and you won't have anywhere to store them, so not only will you be tripping over them, you'll also be worrying about who is going to steal them. Leave them all in your room. Take your phone or your tablet, and a charger battery (like I mentioned above), and a pen. That's all you'll need.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;h3 id="have-fun"&gt;Have Fun&lt;/h3&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Conferences are fun. Don't miss out. There's evening events. There's after-hours dinners with friends, old and new. There's swag. There's awesome talks. Make the most of the time. You can sleep when you get back home. All of your coworkers that didn't get to go are jealous of you, mostly because they don't always realize what hard work it is standing around all day. But don't miss out on the fun of the event. You're in a new city, seeing new things.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Be sure that you take a half day, or even a few hours, to see the city. When you look back on the fact that you visited Seattle, Paris, Berlin, Chicago, and didn't see anything but the convention center and the hotel room, you'll wish you'd taken that time. If your manager doesn't agree, you are clearly in the wrong job.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Image by Brian Proffitt.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 &lt;hr/&gt;&lt;p&gt;This article originally appeared on
 &lt;a href="http://community.redhat.com/"&gt;community.redhat.com&lt;/a&gt;.
 Follow the community on Twitter at
 &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/redhatopen"&gt;@redhatopen&lt;/a&gt;, and find us on
 &lt;a href="https://www.facebook.com/redhatopen"&gt;Facebook&lt;/a&gt; and
 &lt;a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/113258037797946990391/113258037797946990391/posts"&gt;Google+&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 </content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <title>Communication as a Roadblock?</title>
    <link rel="alternate" href="http://community.redhat.com/blog/2018/04/communication-as-a-roadblock/"/>
    <id>http://community.redhat.com/blog/2018/04/communication-as-a-roadblock/</id>
    <published>2018-04-12T13:40:00+00:00</published>
    <updated>2018-04-12T11:21:32-04:00</updated>
    <author>
      <name>Brian Proffitt</name>
    </author>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;img alt="tin can over IP" width="640" height="426" src="/images/blog/canned-phone.jpg?1528384281" /&gt; It's a bit like the turning of the leaves, or the return of the swallows at Capistrano. Invariably, the wheel of community management will always slog back to the the topic of "which is the best communications platform for my users?"&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;In the past, and for the most part in the present and future, the answer is usually something along the lines of "whatever your community prefers." If you have a community that does most of its communication on a mailing list and communications are active and vibrant, why change what works?&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;But is this don't-rock-the-boat attitude potentially keeping some new community members away?&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;The problem with communications platforms is pretty simple: there's too many of them. And each of them have a set of pros and cons that make it hard to outright dismiss each of them. We have grown far beyond the mailing lists, Internet relay chat (IRC) channels, and bulletin board platforms of the deep Internet past. But the core functionality has not changed. These are still the three core categories in which most platforms fall: mailing lists, chat, and online forums.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Software has evolved that some of these categories can be blended: Hyperkitty for Mailman adds forum-like features to mailing lists, and Google Groups lets emails get displayed in forum-like online pages, just as two examples. But basically, these three categories cover the bulk of the communication systems out there.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Within those categories there are a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of tools. One of my teammates on our staff IRC channel listed just some of the tools he had to use to communicate with projects: Mattermost, Gitter, and Slack. Plus IRC, mailing lists, GitHub comments, and Signal.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Typically, the discussion of what's the right tool to use ends up going like this. Someone brings up a desire to move to a new channel for their community. Lately, it's been Slack, because—usually anaecdotally—there's a notion out there that newer and younger developers are using Slack and it would be a preferred chat platform over something like IRC.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;The response is usually: "you're an open source project, why do you want to use a proprietary tool? Plus, what's wrong with IRC?"&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;"Nobody knows IRC anymore."&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;"Well, then point them to an IRC client."&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;"There are no good IRC clients on mobile."&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;"Does your community want to chat on mobile?"&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;"Um…"&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;And nothing gets changed.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;The problem with this repetitive argument (and it's not just Slack vs. IRC, you can insert any pair of similar tools into this discussion) is that most of the time a desire to move is done by a feeling that this is where everyone wants to go. That may or may not be the case. Is most of your community using Tool &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt;? Or do you think they are? And (conversely) is using the tool you have already really causing friction among your community members?&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;The solution here is straightforward: don't base your need to switch platforms on a gut feeling. Actually do some research. Survey your community and see what tools they are using as well as where and when? The "where and when" is an important question, because you need to find out if indeed your community participants like to use mobile. But you need to ask when, too, because some participants may not &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to have mobile availability to communications so they can maintain a better work-life balance.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;It will vary from community to community, but this is the crux of the argument: you need to ask first and see what current and potentially new contributors would prefer to use. Then you can determine if your current platform is actually a barrier to entry that should be changed.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Image by &lt;a href="https://pixabay.com/en/users/blickpixel-52945/"&gt;blickpixel&lt;/a&gt; under &lt;a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en"&gt;CC0 1.0&lt;/a&gt; license.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 &lt;hr/&gt;&lt;p&gt;This article originally appeared on
 &lt;a href="http://community.redhat.com/"&gt;community.redhat.com&lt;/a&gt;.
 Follow the community on Twitter at
 &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/redhatopen"&gt;@redhatopen&lt;/a&gt;, and find us on
 &lt;a href="https://www.facebook.com/redhatopen"&gt;Facebook&lt;/a&gt; and
 &lt;a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/113258037797946990391/113258037797946990391/posts"&gt;Google+&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 </content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <title>Night of the Living FUD</title>
    <link rel="alternate" href="http://community.redhat.com/blog/2018/04/night-of-the-living-FUD/"/>
    <id>http://community.redhat.com/blog/2018/04/night-of-the-living-FUD/</id>
    <published>2018-04-10T09:40:00+00:00</published>
    <updated>2018-04-10T06:40:59-04:00</updated>
    <author>
      <name>Brian Proffitt</name>
    </author>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;img alt="FUD scoop" width="240" height="134" src="/images/blog/fud.jpg?1528384281" /&gt; It was one of those moments where you weren't quite sure you heard something right.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;It was day-whatever of the &lt;a href="https://www.sc-asia.org/"&gt;Supercomputing Asia&lt;/a&gt; conference in Singapore, and I was halfway listening to one of the speakers explain his company's advances in deep learning and artificial intelligence. "Halfway" because the material of this particular talk was soon way, way over my head and on my laptop I was trying to figure out why Travis seemed to be borking on the update pull requests for the new &lt;a href="https://redhatofficial.github.io/"&gt;Red Hat on GitHub site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;But I snapped back into the room when I thought I heard what sounded like a full-tilt FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) rant about open source. I glanced at my colleague Rich Bowen, also in attendance, and he was shaking his head.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Yep, it was FUD all right. Suddenly, it was 2000 all over again.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;The speaker's arguments against open source was that the tools available in his particular space in computer science were "not as stable" as those his company offered as a proprietary solution. Nor were they as widely used. This was interesting, because all throughout the conference, Rich and I had seen quite a few mentions of the use of open source projects in artificial intelligence.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Other arguments the speaker used to deride open source technology:&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Poor support and training&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Poor efficiency&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;No access to state-of-the-art research and development&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;And (here we go) "intellectual property issues"&lt;/li&gt;
 &lt;/ul&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;I don't run around in the AI sector, so I can't speak with any certainty about the state of the open source projects in this space, but given that the last two points in this list were pure old-school FUD, I'm willing to take a guess that the first two points were off the mark, too.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;And I get it, this speaker was trying to make a pitch to the audience about their company's software. But rather than highlight the features of their code, the speaker opted to knock down a whole known class of software that was in competition.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;The facts around open source no longer support this kind of FUD. No state-of-the-art R&amp;amp;D? Really? The entire big data sector was innovated from the start with open source software. Much of the code in Internet of Things technology is open source. And even speakers at this same Supercomputing conference were praising the availability and feature sets of open source software like &lt;a href="https://kubernetes.io/"&gt;Kubernetes&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://pytorch.org/"&gt;PyTorch&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href="https://www.tensorflow.org/"&gt;TensorFlow&lt;/a&gt;. In fact, given the largely academic affiliation of this conference's attendees, I was submit this speaker was tone deaf to the fact that students and their teachers in cutting-edge tech like this tend to want to get into the guts of the code and optimize it. Can't do that with proprietary software.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;As for the IP issues dog-whistle argument, it has been shown time and again that the use of free and open source software is no riskier than license compliance on any other kind of software. It's really very simple: use software, abide by its license. Any sort of patent threat isn't something unique to open source software: it's just the weaponization of IP by organizations and patent trolls to try to get money for work they didn't do. Sad, but not an inherently open source-only problem.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Again, open source is not magic pixie dust to make any software amazing. But it goes both ways: software isn't all bad because you can see its code, either.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;All code has its good and bad qualities whether you can see the source. Which is why FUD belongs in the past.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Image by &lt;a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/opensourceway/4535073892"&gt;Libby Levi&lt;/a&gt; under &lt;a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/"&gt;CC BY-SA 2.0&lt;/a&gt; license.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 &lt;hr/&gt;&lt;p&gt;This article originally appeared on
 &lt;a href="http://community.redhat.com/"&gt;community.redhat.com&lt;/a&gt;.
 Follow the community on Twitter at
 &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/redhatopen"&gt;@redhatopen&lt;/a&gt;, and find us on
 &lt;a href="https://www.facebook.com/redhatopen"&gt;Facebook&lt;/a&gt; and
 &lt;a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/113258037797946990391/113258037797946990391/posts"&gt;Google+&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 </content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <title>A Community Manager's Sorting Hat</title>
    <link rel="alternate" href="http://community.redhat.com/blog/2018/04/community-manager-sorting-hat/"/>
    <id>http://community.redhat.com/blog/2018/04/community-manager-sorting-hat/</id>
    <published>2018-04-05T19:55:00+00:00</published>
    <updated>2018-04-06T10:31:58-04:00</updated>
    <author>
      <name>Sanja Bonic</name>
    </author>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;img alt="sorting hat" width="250" height="179" src="/images/blog/sortinghat.png?1528384281" /&gt; Previously, we talked about &lt;a href="https://community.redhat.com/blog/2018/03/project-management-in-communities/"&gt;Project Management, Gantt Charts, and Communities&lt;/a&gt;—let's take a look at the other hats a community manager wears and vice versa. Sometimes your job description within the company or project will differ but you'll still be known as the community manager because it's a more established title.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there is a lot of connotation around the title of a community manager, especially in tech. If you cannot prove a significant amount of contributions that developers value, you will quickly be disregarded as "the marketing person" (often accompanied with some eye rolling).&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;As a community manager, you'll also be a&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Project manager&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Product manager&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Content creator&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Content editor&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Technical writer&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Developer advocate&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Marketing specialist&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Social media manager&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Event manager&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Budget manager and bookkeeper&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Professional poking person&lt;/li&gt;
 &lt;/ul&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;None of these are avoidable as a community manager. You will always have to be aware of your project's milestones, goals, and who the stakeholders are. You will have to know who the key players are and which people you have to keep happy for your project to succeed.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;&lt;img alt="writing" width="1776" height="1184" src="/images/blog/calum-macaulay-60673-unsplash.jpg?1528384281" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Content creation such as blog posts, documentation, tutorials, visuals, videos, podcasts, and social media interaction as well as editing and reviewing other people's content are the key factor to a project's success. Without content covering your project, you cannot grow a community. Ideally, you will get your community to generate content for you.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;As a developer advocate, you will have to understand your project, what it can do, and be an active presence advocating your project's usage. Marketing is another important aspect of community management. You will have to know who your target audience is, where and how to reach them, and how to monitor your impact. There are lots of tools to help with this. Tooling needs to be both appropriate for measuring what you need measured and right for your community.  For example, do not use Google Analytics on your site if you are promoting privacy and data collection awareness. Sometimes you will have to weigh the benefits of measuring metrics over the benefits of staying true to your personal and your project's cause.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;In order for your community to grow and connect, it is ideal to participate in events, although you might not have the budget for it in the first steps—that is okay. If you cannot afford a booth at an event that is important for your community, try to get at least one talk or workshop. This enables you to get your message through to the audience and you will automatically gain some search engine points. Bonus video content points if the talk gets recorded.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Events are great, but so is social media. Social media is usually global and you can reach a worldwide audience, even if you only use English as your language. You can encourage people to hold meetups or give talks at meetups in their area. This is where you become the &lt;em&gt;professional poking person&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;&lt;img alt="concert" width="4608" height="3072" src="/images/blog/william-white-34988-unsplash.jpg?1528384281" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;The professional poking person is one of the most important people in a project. You have to be the person who gets people together and who knows what's going on. Most importantly, you need to anticipate who is going to be annoyed at what and try to mitigate anger. The professional poking person is the one who gets people to go to events, give talks, hold meetings, generate content, and interact on social media because one thing is true: as a community manager, &lt;em&gt;it's dangerous to go alone&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You might be a&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Developer&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Systems engineer&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Mediator&lt;/li&gt;
 &lt;/ul&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;You might have to dig deep and solve issues that are outside of your comfort zone, be prepared to learn and to deal with systems and people alike.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You don't want to be&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Someone people have to work around to get to results&lt;/li&gt;
 &lt;/ul&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;What you don't want to be is the person people have to work around in order to get results—and they &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; do that, if you constantly complain without offering solutions or don't keep them happy.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Acknowledge everyone's good work, collaborate, poke where necessary, and your community will grow and be happy forever after!&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sorting hat image by Sanja Bonic. Writing image by &lt;a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/CxYHfBkC0vs?utm_source=unsplash&amp;amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;amp;utm_content=creditCopyText"&gt;Calum MacAulay&lt;/a&gt; and concert image by &lt;a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/TZCppMjaOHU?utm_source=unsplash&amp;amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;amp;utm_content=creditCopyText"&gt;William White&lt;/a&gt;, both via &lt;a href="https://unsplash.com/license"&gt;Unsplash&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 &lt;hr/&gt;&lt;p&gt;This article originally appeared on
 &lt;a href="http://community.redhat.com/"&gt;community.redhat.com&lt;/a&gt;.
 Follow the community on Twitter at
 &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/redhatopen"&gt;@redhatopen&lt;/a&gt;, and find us on
 &lt;a href="https://www.facebook.com/redhatopen"&gt;Facebook&lt;/a&gt; and
 &lt;a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/113258037797946990391/113258037797946990391/posts"&gt;Google+&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 </content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <title>Box. Outside. Think.</title>
    <link rel="alternate" href="http://community.redhat.com/blog/2018/04/box-outside-think/"/>
    <id>http://community.redhat.com/blog/2018/04/box-outside-think/</id>
    <published>2018-04-03T18:20:00+00:00</published>
    <updated>2018-04-03T15:02:52-04:00</updated>
    <author>
      <name>Brian Proffitt</name>
    </author>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;img alt="Empty Box" width="240" height="180" src="/images/blog/box.jpg?1528384281" /&gt; A friend of mine recently had to go to the cardiologist to figure out what was what with a racing heartbeat. The cardiologist looked at my friend's current history, including all the current prescriptions my friend was taking… and promptly added one more medication—a beta blocker—to the list.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;When my dismayed friend related this to me, I drew upon the wisdom of the old and replied "a cardiologist is like someone with a hammer… they're always looking for a nail to hit." She's getting a second opinion… a perhaps a less cliché friend.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;As trite as my response was, there is quite a bit of truth in it. We are all guilty of relying on our internal bias when doing practically anything: what we eat, what songs we like, how we work. I love peanut butter, but you may not. I like wearing dark and black clothes, while my wife thinks I look better in blues and greens. So I wear blues and greens. And on down the list.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;The way we approach tasks is certainly reflected in our own experience and biases, and community management is no different. In fact, because it is such a malleable job to begin with, often you will find a wide spectrum of approaches to the way people accomplish community management.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Someone who is a developer, for example, is likely going to go into a community project and seek out the most optimal ways coders can get their work done. Best practices with languages, deployment, DevOps, whatever their specialty is, that's what they'll focus on. Admins will work on project infrastructure. Writers (ahem!) will focus on documentation and project advocacy.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;This is all well and good, and to be expected. The trick is to watch out and make sure that you don't get stuck in the same approach &lt;em&gt;all of the time&lt;/em&gt;. Not every problem needs a hammer, and your talents may not always be the thing that can solve your problem.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;In the past, telling someone that they had better be ready to think outside of the box might be a significant obstacle. Perhaps mentally it can be, but in terms of actual knowledge, the Internet is worth far more than cat pictures these days. Last week when we released the new &lt;a href="https://redhatofficial.github.io/"&gt;Red Hat GitHub page&lt;/a&gt;, I got a very crash course in JavaScript and Travis CI, acerbated by the fact I was on the opposite side of the planet from my usual haunts and thus could not rely on human expertise from my friends.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Picking up a new skill is a tactical way of thinking outside your box. You can also try new strategic approaches. By watching the talented people around me, I have learned to try to approach problems as they would—especially in areas in which I am weak, like diplomacy.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;It is never too late to try new ways to solve problems. Use the whole toolkit at your disposal and alternate strategies. You'll be a strong community manager and also gain insights into the skills and others.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Image courtesy of &lt;a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/z287marc/"&gt;z287marc&lt;/a&gt;, under the &lt;a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/"&gt;CC BY 2.0&lt;/a&gt; license.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 &lt;hr/&gt;&lt;p&gt;This article originally appeared on
 &lt;a href="http://community.redhat.com/"&gt;community.redhat.com&lt;/a&gt;.
 Follow the community on Twitter at
 &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/redhatopen"&gt;@redhatopen&lt;/a&gt;, and find us on
 &lt;a href="https://www.facebook.com/redhatopen"&gt;Facebook&lt;/a&gt; and
 &lt;a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/113258037797946990391/113258037797946990391/posts"&gt;Google+&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 </content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <title>Project Management, Gantt Charts, and Communities</title>
    <link rel="alternate" href="http://community.redhat.com/blog/2018/03/project-management-in-communities/"/>
    <id>http://community.redhat.com/blog/2018/03/project-management-in-communities/</id>
    <published>2018-03-29T13:20:00+00:00</published>
    <updated>2018-03-29T21:52:08+08:00</updated>
    <author>
      <name>Amye Scavarda</name>
    </author>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;img alt="community" width="250" height="188" src="/images/blog/community-management.jpg?1528384281" /&gt; Being a project manager in your community is an important part of any community lead role. Your job as a community manager is to help feed and water the community, and when I’m asked about how to describe my job, it’s usually "everything that isn’t code is part of my problem." My role is to help guide and catalyze the community to grow beyond where it is now, and for that, you’re going to need some project management skills.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;As a project manager, some of your skills include managing information to a wider team, communicating throughout all aspects of the project, managing budgets and generally being the person who knows where the project is at any time. As a community manager, you’ll need a lot of the same skill sets.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;I moved from being a project manager to a community lead, and there are aspects of each that are very different! Project managers have a lot of different pieces to manage in their day to day work, and they’re really good at working in conflict-rich environments. There’s always a negotiation going on, between time and budget and features. Community leads have a much broader view of a project, and usually a significant amount of stakeholder management, so there might not be as much day to day conflict—but there’s a lot of relationship management that goes on. The two are well suited to each other, and your project management skills aren’t as tied to the fact that communities are largely volunteers: you’d be the same person regardless of the goal.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;This isn’t always all about Gantt charts. A Gantt chart is a project manager’s tool to help manage schedules for a project. It’s really just a way to be able to visually organize dependencies and project timelines in one space. You may not always have that in your project, but it’s a nice toolset to have: thinking about ways to able to communicate information about your project and community in a way that’s easily accessible. In order to figure out where your project is going, you’ll need to be able to write things down with which other people can work.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Think of your role of the catalyst as someone who takes a lot of information that’s somewhat disparate and hard to understand and turns it into a narrative for your community to understand more about itself. Communities aren’t always in the same place for a tool like a gantt chart, but they have project roadmaps and goals. They’re not always using the same tools, but as a community lead, you can help create alignment by calling out what those goals are and what progress looks like on those goals.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;This can take a few different forms! One thing that I like to do for the community is write a monthly newsletter about various things coming up in Gluster, but also highlighting important mailing list threads that people might have missed. It’s a way to be able to pull information out of a sea of email and while it’s Yet Another Email, it’s another communication tool that is part of the project.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Another thing that I’ve started doing is using GitHub as a project management tool: we have a community repo for the Community Working Group, and while all of these things may have been on my own to do list for the project, it’s even better if I can expose the priorities for the community this way. Anyone can come in and add a issue, I can add issues to the work in progress and completed columns, and I create a project board for every three months. This breaks work down into rough milestones, allows us to maintain a reasonable project backlog and take input from the community. It’s led me towards finding things that the community wants that wasn’t necessarily top of mind for me. For example, I found out when I created the board that our community wanted to have an easy way to be able to request swag for meetups—because people came in and filed tickets for that. It’s a great way to find out where community growth is happening that you didn’t know about.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;One of the other duties for project managers is managing budgets. As a community lead, you may also have a budget—but it’s a little different. You’re not going to have billable hours going towards a project, but you do have the chance to be able to see what things budget could be useful for. Your project may need a way to connect more with community—what events could you be sending people towards? What are your expectations for those events? Maybe your web presence could use more love, but your project isn’t necessarily the most design-forward, so being able to pay for consulting on a new open source website might move your community forward as well.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;What aspects of being a project manager do you see in your community work?&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Image courtesy of &lt;a href="https://pixabay.com/en/users/geralt-9301/"&gt;geralt&lt;/a&gt;, under the &lt;a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en"&gt;CC0 1.0&lt;/a&gt; license.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 &lt;hr/&gt;&lt;p&gt;This article originally appeared on
 &lt;a href="http://community.redhat.com/"&gt;community.redhat.com&lt;/a&gt;.
 Follow the community on Twitter at
 &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/redhatopen"&gt;@redhatopen&lt;/a&gt;, and find us on
 &lt;a href="https://www.facebook.com/redhatopen"&gt;Facebook&lt;/a&gt; and
 &lt;a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/113258037797946990391/113258037797946990391/posts"&gt;Google+&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 </content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <title>Celebrating 25 Years of Red Hat and Open</title>
    <link rel="alternate" href="http://community.redhat.com/blog/2018/03/celebrating-25-years-of-red-hat/"/>
    <id>http://community.redhat.com/blog/2018/03/celebrating-25-years-of-red-hat/</id>
    <published>2018-03-26T12:45:00+00:00</published>
    <updated>2018-03-26T21:38:40+08:00</updated>
    <author>
      <name>Brian Proffitt</name>
    </author>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;img alt="Red Hat logo" width="538" height="221" src="/images/blog/logo-redhat.png?1528384281" /&gt; Twenty-five years ago today, Red Hat got its start. A quarter century of creating and supporting world-class software is a pretty big deal for us, and we wanted to celebrate the occasion by demonstrating just how far and wide Red Hat as a company participates in free and open source software!&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;It is a great pleasure, then, to announce the launch of &lt;a href="https://RedHatOfficial.github.io/"&gt;Red Hat's new GitHub organization page&lt;/a&gt;. The page will try to list every known free and open source project hosted on GitHub in which Red Hat staffers directly participate as part of their work. As you can see, it's gotten off to a good start.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;The page, which is a hosted GitHub page, is open and free to edit. If anything is in error or was missed, feel free to create an issue or submit a pull request to the &lt;a href="https://github.com/RedHatOfficial/RedHatOfficial.github.io/"&gt;page's repo&lt;/a&gt;. Detailed instructions are found in the repo's &lt;a href="https://github.com/RedHatOfficial/RedHatOfficial.github.io/blob/github-init/README.md"&gt;README file&lt;/a&gt;. Right now, the criteria for inclusion is straightforward: if an employee is working on a project or Red Hat team hosted on GitHub as part of their job responsibilities, then it can be listed.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;These are not just Red Hat-stewarded projects… there are many many, many projects (like the Linux Kernel, OpenStack, and Kubernetes, to name a very few) that are also listed, because we don't just work on software for us. We work on a lot of projects for the benefit of many.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;GitHub is not the only home for our free and open source software. We work on software hosted on other platforms (like GitLab and Pagure), and a &lt;a href="https://community.redhat.com/software/"&gt;broader list already exists on this site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Beyond this new /RedHatOfficial GitHub page, the /RedHatOfficial organization can now directly host repos for projects that may not be affiliated with a given upstream project, but, rather, at the corporate level. Currently, for example, the &lt;a href="https://www.redhat.com/en/open-source-stories/colab"&gt;CO.LAB&lt;/a&gt; project's &lt;a href="https://github.com/RedHatOfficial/CO.LAB"&gt;code repo&lt;/a&gt; is being hosted here.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;This is a project that has been in the works for quite some time and by many, many people. Though I am the current stakeholder for the page, in reality I am just the last person carrying this ball. The past efforts of Adrian Likens, Eric Hayes, Jason Frey, and Ruth Suehle must be thanked for keeping this content and idea going. I cannot stress enough the efforts of our Legal team, particularly Erin Britton, in working to acquire the GitHub user names we needed to have a place to host this page. Our own OSAS team was instrumental in providing initial feedback on the organization of the content.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Finally, a huge thanks for the collaborative efforts of Ellie Johnson and her Digital Experience team in getting this page put together in time for Red Hat's 25th anniversary today! Cas Roberts, Nicholas Heling, Dongni Wang, and Jenna Slawson were among the key players in taking my spreadsheet of projects and turning it into a gorgeous page that we can all use and update. In reality, I think the entire team had input at one point or another and more than a few people mentioned how fun it was to pull something together like this in an open and collaborative way.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Red Hat has been about more than just Linux for a long, long time. We want to recognize all of the efforts our employees around the world make, celebrating the many projects in which we collaborate. Open is not a sales gimmick; it is who we are.&lt;/p&gt;
 &lt;hr/&gt;&lt;p&gt;This article originally appeared on
 &lt;a href="http://community.redhat.com/"&gt;community.redhat.com&lt;/a&gt;.
 Follow the community on Twitter at
 &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/redhatopen"&gt;@redhatopen&lt;/a&gt;, and find us on
 &lt;a href="https://www.facebook.com/redhatopen"&gt;Facebook&lt;/a&gt; and
 &lt;a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/113258037797946990391/113258037797946990391/posts"&gt;Google+&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 </content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <title>Perusing OSAS' Menu of Services</title>
    <link rel="alternate" href="http://community.redhat.com/blog/2018/03/perusing-osas-menu-of-services/"/>
    <id>http://community.redhat.com/blog/2018/03/perusing-osas-menu-of-services/</id>
    <published>2018-03-21T11:05:00+00:00</published>
    <updated>2018-03-21T07:09:11-04:00</updated>
    <author>
      <name>Ruth Suehle</name>
    </author>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;img alt="menu options" width="640" height="357" src="/images/blog/wallmenu.jpg?1528384281" /&gt; As Red Hat's community portfolio grows, the Open Source and Standards (OSAS) team needs to shift our approach to supporting their needs. To accomplish this, the OSAS Community Outreach team will be shifting to a consultancy-style approach.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;The idea for this new approach was formed a couple of years ago, when Brian Proffitt, Jason Brooks, and I were in a &lt;a href="https://viderichocolatefactory.com/"&gt;chocolate store&lt;/a&gt; down the street from the Red Hat corporate headquarters in Raleigh, brainstorming on ways we could expand the OSAS footprint.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;The Community Outreach team, one of three teams within OSAS, will be taking point on many of the consultant projects. Since our portfolio is comprised of specialists (design, content, documentation, education), the idea is to use those specialties to deliver needed services to communities that need them.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;h2 id="who-are-our-customers"&gt;Who Are Our Customers?&lt;/h2&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;We will work with three sets of communities in this new focus.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;h3 id="communities-directly-supported-within-osas"&gt;Communities Directly Supported within OSAS&lt;/h3&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;For the communities that have community managers within the OSAS Community Leads team, we will do an annual audit against the Community Health Checklist. Many of these items are things that won't change, but could be improved, and an annual check-in will give us an opportunity to see where we can best boost these communities. The Health Checklist, which we will highlight in another blog entry, is coordinated with our Services Menu, outlined below.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;At any time, communities are welcome to request our support based on our Services Menu. In some cases, this may mean that we direct them to the best place to receive that help, even if it is not provided directly by a Community Outreach team member.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;h3 id="communities-outside-of-osas"&gt;Communities Outside of OSAS&lt;/h3&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;The many other communities important to Red Hat's success but not directly supported within OSAS are also welcome to request an audit or services in the same way, but audits will not be automatically interviewed annually.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;h3 id="new-communities"&gt;New Communities&lt;/h3&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;When new Red Hat communities arrive, either by creation within Red Hat or acquisition, we will prioritize their health against the Checklist, then subsequently treat them accordingly as above based on their OSAS support level.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;h2 id="services-menu"&gt;Services Menu&lt;/h2&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;So what services are we offering? As a team, all of OSAS got together and determined what we could directly offer, and what we knew could refer projects to if need be.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;h3 id="project-overview-and-basics"&gt;Project Overview and Basics&lt;/h3&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;These tools and topics represent basic needs for a healthy community. Where they are lacking or exist but need improvement, we can provide assistance getting them going.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Project strategy
    &lt;ul&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Define goals for project&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Based on goals, define objectives, and strategies&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Teach communities to build process roadmaps&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;/ul&gt;
  &lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Bug tracking system&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Project definition statement on website&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Contributor-licensing statement or agreement&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Governance model&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Code of conduct&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Legal audit
    &lt;ul&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;An OSI-approved open source license&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;License review of codebase&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;License compatibility&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;/ul&gt;
  &lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Documentation
    &lt;ul&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Content strategy (new or revised)&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Content audit&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Documentation quick-starts&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Sprint organization&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Tool/platform recommendations&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;/ul&gt;
  &lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Metrics
    &lt;ul&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Create central place to track metrics&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Discuss what metrics mean and why (how do you figure out what metrics you need and what questions you are answering)&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Build appropriate metrics questions&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;/ul&gt;
  &lt;/li&gt;
 &lt;/ul&gt;

 &lt;h3 id="marketing"&gt;Marketing&lt;/h3&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Advocacy of any project is key to its success. OSAS can roll out a variety of tools to assist with getting the word out about what your community is doing.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Project branding and identity
    &lt;ul&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Marketing strategy
        &lt;ul&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Market/segment research&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Branding and style guide&lt;/li&gt;
        &lt;/ul&gt;
      &lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Messaging
        &lt;ul&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Define audiences, messages, and channels&lt;/li&gt;
          &lt;li&gt;Messaging strategy&lt;/li&gt;
        &lt;/ul&gt;
      &lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Swag&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;/ul&gt;
  &lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Social media presence
    &lt;ul&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Create name / profile page&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Set up metrics to central feed&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Advise on long-term maintenance&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;/ul&gt;
  &lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Community events strategy
    &lt;ul&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Launch events&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Increase events per month&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Define how/when to have a presence at larger events for optimal ROI&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;/ul&gt;
  &lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Case studies&lt;/li&gt;
 &lt;/ul&gt;

 &lt;h3 id="infrastructure"&gt;Infrastructure&lt;/h3&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;While the OSAS Community Outreach team does not necessarily provide all of these services directly, we can make recommendations as needed.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Project website
    &lt;ul&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Create website&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Website content maintenance plan&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Improve existing website&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Different aspects/skills: design, organization/IA, copy creation&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Define editorial workflow (lifecycle management)&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;/ul&gt;
  &lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Project blog
    &lt;ul&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Launch blog&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Increase number of posts per month&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Decrease shortest interval between blog posts&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;/ul&gt;
  &lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Mailing list
    &lt;ul&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Create mailing list&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Organize existing mailing lists&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Auto-responders&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;/ul&gt;
  &lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;IRC channels/Chat
    &lt;ul&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Implement IRC channels&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Implement other chat platform&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Recommendations for optimizing use of chat platform (e.g., zodbot-type assistant)&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;/ul&gt;
  &lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Surveys
    &lt;ul&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Regular surveys&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;User feedback groups&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Optimize feedback processes&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;/ul&gt;
  &lt;/li&gt;
 &lt;/ul&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;This menu is very comprehensive, though we recognize that is is open to expansion as communities come to us with more needs. Right now, these services are focused on assisting Red Hat-based communities, but we hope this can serve as a model for other organizations to follow when examining their communities' health and figuring out what elements of a project need the most help.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Image courtesy of &lt;a href="http://maxpixel.freegreatpicture.com/Write-Menu-Print-Product-Chair-Wall-Order-Words-2588813"&gt;Max Pixel&lt;/a&gt;, released under &lt;a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/"&gt;CC0 1.0 Public Domain Dedication&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 &lt;hr/&gt;&lt;p&gt;This article originally appeared on
 &lt;a href="http://community.redhat.com/"&gt;community.redhat.com&lt;/a&gt;.
 Follow the community on Twitter at
 &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/redhatopen"&gt;@redhatopen&lt;/a&gt;, and find us on
 &lt;a href="https://www.facebook.com/redhatopen"&gt;Facebook&lt;/a&gt; and
 &lt;a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/113258037797946990391/113258037797946990391/posts"&gt;Google+&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 </content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <title>Welcome to the Neighborhood</title>
    <link rel="alternate" href="http://community.redhat.com/blog/2018/03/welcome-to-the-neighborhood/"/>
    <id>http://community.redhat.com/blog/2018/03/welcome-to-the-neighborhood/</id>
    <published>2018-03-13T15:10:00+00:00</published>
    <updated>2018-03-13T11:30:53-04:00</updated>
    <author>
      <name>Brian Proffitt</name>
    </author>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;img alt="new neighbors" width="240" height="240" src="/images/blog/neighbors.jpg?1528384281" /&gt; It is an easy metaphor to fall into: we compare the communities that surround our free and open source projects to the actual communities in which we reside. For the most part, the metaphor works really well. I myself have used the metaphor to describe things like server and IT infrastructure to streets, water lines, or power grids. Governance of open source communities to the way different neighborhoods, towns, and cities govern themselves.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Making this comparison is not, after all, rocket science.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;But  there is one aspect to the communities-as-communities metaphor that breaks down, because should be no comparison: the way communities enfold newcomers into their midst.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;When someone moves into a new home in a new town, there usually isn't going to be a formal set of rules in place that explain how the community works. For the most part, you move into the community and sort of learn as you go. Where is the nearest grocery store, which is the best hardware store, who are the neighbors who are the most helpful… pieces of knowledge that you just pick up.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;There are exceptions, naturally. If you move into a new country, there are going to be formalities to quickly learn: new laws, new ways of acquiring services. And if you enter a new domestic community, perhaps you have a realtor who can walk you through where to find what.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;For an online community, such entrances are often the case, too. A new user or contributor rolls in and wants to learn all they can about the lay of the project's land. Through watching and asking questions, they will be able to learn what they need to know and—if they have the patience—they will eventually become a "veteran" member of the community. Just like a residential community.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;Except this should not be the way it happens. When you move into a new home the learning curve is probably not very not very high. Plus, you know the questions to ask: where is what, who is who? In an open source project, you might not even know what it is you don't know yet. And in many open source projects, the technology may have a steep learning curve as well as the language itself.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;I had a personal lesson in this yesterday on my way to the airport with my co-workers after a successful weekend at &lt;a href="https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/16x"&gt;SCaLE 16X&lt;/a&gt;. As we were winding our way through LA traffic, I discovered that one of the Red Hatters in the car was, like me, a private pilot. And for a few minutes, we rambled on about flying, planes, and navigation, until we realized that we had inadvertently excluded the other passengers in the car with our jargonism. A minor &lt;em&gt;faux pas&lt;/em&gt; in the grand scheme of things, but it was a reminder that communities can have barriers that you don't even realize are there.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;This is why it is important that open communities make a special effort to build inclusionary practices that help onboard new members. We have an extra responsibility to create explicit paths into a project, because the very nature of our projects creates larger barriers to entry. Onboarding is something that we cannot ignore, not if we want people to continue to move in and reside in our projects.&lt;/p&gt;

 &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Image courtesy of State Farm, released under &lt;a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/"&gt;CC BY 2.0 license&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
 &lt;hr/&gt;&lt;p&gt;This article originally appeared on
 &lt;a href="http://community.redhat.com/"&gt;community.redhat.com&lt;/a&gt;.
 Follow the community on Twitter at
 &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/redhatopen"&gt;@redhatopen&lt;/a&gt;, and find us on
 &lt;a href="https://www.facebook.com/redhatopen"&gt;Facebook&lt;/a&gt; and
 &lt;a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/113258037797946990391/113258037797946990391/posts"&gt;Google+&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
 </content>
  </entry>
 </feed>