Do you wish that your project team was more productive? Do you struggle with communication and project quality? Are you missing opportunities to make a bigger impact because of ineffective communication? Are you unsure why there is turnover among your most effective contributors? Do you see the benefits that collaboration brings to other projects, but are unsure how it could apply to you & your project team? This session will present a set of specific examples & stories from our direct experience of the benefits of open collaboration to enable more productive & effective open source development. We believe that the desire to assist each other & to collaborate is often present but unrealized. Many projects have established systems & styles of communication that limit opportunities for creative interaction, reduce flexibility, & ultimately restrict effective community engagement and results. The session will include several hands-on exercises for participants to learn-by-doing. Do you wish that your project team was more productive? Do you struggle with communication and project quality? Are you missing opportunities to make a bigger impact because of ineffective communication? Are you unsure why there is turnover among your most effective contributors? Do you see the benefits that collaboration brings to other projects, but are unsure how it could apply to you & your project team? This session will present a set of specific examples & stories from our direct experience of the benefits of open collaboration to enable more productive & effective open source development. We believe that the desire to assist each other & to collaborate is often present but unrealized. Many projects have established systems & styles of communication that limit opportunities for creative interaction, reduce flexibility, & ultimately restrict effective community engagement and results. The session will include several hands-on exercises for participants to learn-by-doing. Our focus is on 3 key themes: collaboration is more effective than siloed work - reducing barriers between collaborators and communities; open source & open collaboration represent success stories of more interaction creating better technology AND better business results; collaboration is inclusion - when more voices are heard, both results & culture are improved. Benefits to the Ecosystem The power of open source projects & associated cross-company, cross-disciplinary collaboration are much discussed & highly valued. In order to achieve the true benefits of open source tech & open ecosystems, invest in adjustments to your approaches & processes. You might need to make cultural changes in addition to technical changes. The examples we discuss are applicable to individual contributors, as well as leaders & managers/maintainers.