Open Source Project Growth: The Non-Technical Needs for Driving Project Growth
03-17, 17:10–17:40 (Europe/Paris), Arena

Founders and maintainers of open source projects have a good idea of what is needed from a technology standpoint to grow their project and provide technology value. But there are many other things to consider such as how to talk about the business value, advocacy and marketing activities, and community building that gives the project the needed boost that accelerates the time to project success.

In this talk, I will bring my experience and insights on best practices for marketing, advocacy, and community building for open source projects that you can use to help you grow your project. I will outline steps you can take and specific things you can do to improve your success with your project and taking your project through Foundation maturity levels.


Founders and maintainers of open source projects have a good idea of what is needed from a technology standpoint to grow their project and provide technology value. In this talk, I will cover the non-technical things that are important and just down-right critical to project success.
* Messaging and outlining the business value of the project and why someone should care.
* The go-to-market plan for the open source project. How you will communicate about the project, how to handle project release launches, effective communications, the content plan, the web plan, events, and partnering with other projects to increase your visibility.
* Community building including digital platforms, engagement, and how to grow members from users to contributors to advocates.

Kim McMahon is well-known in the open source ecosystem as a marketer of open source and growing healthy and productive communities. She is currently a Fractional leader of advocacy and community at several organizations such as The FreeBSD Foundation, Bettering Our Worlds (BOW), and AlmaLinux. Previously, she led the marketing and community activities at several Linux Foundation projects including CNCF and RISC-V, building member participation and end-user ecosystems. She has also worked at organizations large and small such as Cisco and Nirmata leading marketing for open source projects, developer journeys, and community building. She specializes in taking the user and contributor on a journey of awareness, activation, adoption, engagement, and advocacy. Community building, breaking down barriers, and uniting are Kim’s drivers.