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Workshop: Motivating Open Source Contributors and Building Communities

DATE: Wednesday, February 8, 2006

TIME: 2:00pm - 5:30pm

ROOM: Willow

HIGHLIGHTS

• Learn how open source communities work
• Learn about the best ways to organise communities
• Learn about what motivates open source contributors

DESCRIPTION

Open source communities are curious beasts. These communities are incredibly powerful when things work right, they can be frustrating and even hostile when things do not go well.

One of the keys is understanding the way community members' motivations effect the best ways to organise communities. The workshop will also help those new to open source understand why open source communities work the way they do.

This workshop will discuss the full lifecycle of open source projects: establishing a platform for collaboration, explosive creativity, release squeezes, forking for maintenance vs creativity, the 2.0 re-factoring trap, and 'clean' wind-downs.

Participants will learn why project management can kill open source projects, why bug-reports should never be marked duplicates, why road-maps can be demotivating (and what to do about it), and why annoying and easy bugs should sometimes be left publicly unresolved.

Bring your successes and difficulties with the human side of open source projects and balancing enterprise needs with community knowledge.

PREREQUISITES

An open mind and interest in FOSS contribution from India.

INSTRUCTOR

James Howison
James is a doctoral student at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies in New York, on walkabout from Australia. He has been researching free and open source software development for the past four years, as part of the http://floss.syr.edu project, funded by the US National Science Foundation. He has explored social networks, coordination and his dissertation research explores best practices for collaborating with sometimes unreliable partners, including distributed volunteers.

COST

Online Price: Rs 599
Walk-In Price: Rs 899

Registration includes lunch as well as access to keynotes, technology sessions for February 8, 2006.

Please Note: Workshop content is subject to change without notice.

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