11-05, 14:35–15:05 (US/Central), ROOM 2
Maintaining an open source project is hard work, and maintainer burnout is common. It can be hard for overworked maintainers to balance the work that keeps the project running while investing in activity to increase future sustainability. The CNCF has resources, guides, and templates available to make it easier for you to build a contributor strategy that leads to becoming a sustainable CNCF project. This talk will help you apply those resources in your project.
This talk will include: 1) Discussion about the factors that impact project sustainability. 2) Developing and executing on a contributor growth strategy, including governance, contributor onboarding, and mentoring. 3) Using ladders to promote contributors into leaders to share the workload and reduce maintainer burnout. 4) Metrics for measuring project sustainability.
The audience will walk away with a better understanding of how to grow their contributor base and build a sustainable community around their CNCF project.
Dawn is co-chair of CNCF TAG Contributor Strategy and an OpenUK board member. She works as the data science lead for the CHAOSS project where she is also co-chair of the governing board and a maintainer. She has 20+ years of experience at companies like VMware and Intel with expertise in community building, strategy, open source, governance, metrics, and more. She has spoken at over 100 industry events and has a PhD, MBA, and BS in comp sci. In her spare time she enjoys reading sci-fi, running, and traveling.