Building healthy and vibrant open source communities that are sustained over time can be a struggle, especially when maintainers are already exhausted and overworked with the regular day to day work on the project. It’s not easy, and there is no one size fits all magic solution to building healthy communities. However, there are some strategies you can use to increase your chances of being successful.

This talk has three sections. First, a discussion of the strategies that can be employed to build healthy communities, including performing the work in the open and how good governance, contributor ladders, and roadmaps can help you grow diverse contributor communities. Second, how to take a strategic approach to metrics that help you align your unique goals, and build healthy open source communities. Finally, the talk will include tips and techniques for interpreting what the metrics are telling you in ways that allow you to take action to continuously improve the health of your open source communities.

This talk focuses on how to take a strategic approach to building FOSS communities and how the smart use of metrics can help you continuously measure your progress and improve community health. Whether you are working in an open source project on behalf of a company or as an individual, you will walk away from this talk with strategies, techniques, and metrics for building healthy communities around your open source projects.