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The Critical Mass: A Guide to Building a Strong Community

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The Critical Mass: A Guide to Building a Strong Community
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9
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CC Attribution 3.0 Unported:
You are free to use, adapt and copy, distribute and transmit the work or content in adapted or unchanged form for any legal purpose as long as the work is attributed to the author in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
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The community is the heart of every open-source project. Without a proper functioning community, the project is bound to have a heart attack, which could be the end: Think of unsatisfied users, project forks, maintainer burnouts, or very annoying arguments. Building a community can be a daunting task but it doesn't have to be. All it takes is a critical mass of people who have a long-term interest in growing the community. Be it companies or individuals. As it turns out, this group can systematically foster the community by building a framework for community interaction: writing down guidelines, helping users, onboarding new contributors, etc. The next step is to break out of the daily business through organizing conferences, meetups, or regular face-to-face meetings. Ultimately, the community is held together by relationships which are best strengthened via face time. In the past years, I've seen two different communities grow: Apache Flink and Apache Beam. Both have found a way to grow their community. I'd like to present and analyze the paths they chose to build the strong communities they have today.