Sessions at Open Source Bridge 2009 about Community on Wednesday 17th June

The idea for Code-n-Splode grew out of the Women in Open Source BOF at OSCON 2007. Leading a women-friendly tech group continues to be an exciting ride, and I'm going to share it with you! The talk will be a "case study"-type format, featuring the following:
- why I felt a woman-focused group was necessary
- how the name came about, if it's not completely obvious
- what belonging to the group has done (or in some cases, not done) for its members
- touchy subjects, such as issues we encountered with having men in the group
- how my reasons for continuing the group have changed over time

There will be a BOF-type get-together to go with this talk for an even less-formal discussion period/recruiting session. (Free toaster!*)

*joke

You have a really cool open source project and everyone should see it, try it, and use it. But ... they don't seem to know about it. How can you make sure your project gets the press coverage it deserves? More importantly, how can you do it without compromising your open source community relationships and principles?

Josh Berkus will go over the methods he's used for the last 7 years to publicize both the OpenOffice.org and the PostgreSQL projects. He'll also show you how you can use OSS methods and tools not just to get PR done, but to get it done *better* than proprietary methods.

Slides will be up at http://www.pgexperts.com/present... by the end of the conference.

The strength of your community is the best predictor of your project's long-term viability. What happens when your community is gradually infiltrated by assholes, who infect everyone else with their constant negativity and personal attacks? Although one person may be a valuable technical contributor, that one person will never contribute as much to the project as the many people who are scared away and demotivated.

How can you defuse these time bombs and prevent your project's destruction? The level of closeness of personal connections between members of your community has a huge impact on the likelihood a conversation will descend into the kinds of personal attacks that send people running from your project. Another key realization is that technical ability and social ability are orthogonal concepts, and both are a requirement for a competent contributor. You can't just have one or the other, and more of one never balances out less of the other.

This talk will teach you about the dramatic impact assholes are having on your organization today and will show you how you can begin to repair it.