The lack of community engagement is one of the most significant barriers to the survival of open source projects. In Alluxio (alluxio.io) open source community, we experimented with different approaches to nurture the community. In this talk, Bin Fan will share the story and our findings of engaging the Alluxio community over the past six years. For example, rather than simply point-scoring and giving badges, introducing gamification turns very effective to understanding and influencing human behaviors. There is a delicate balance of triggers, ability, and motivation to find the “happy path” for contributors – the perfect amount of challenge and competition to keep them interested while preventing boredom. He will also discuss other pillars of community building (e.g., localization) and how to bring together the different pillars to build an everlasting and vibrant community. With innovative techniques, open source projects can create deeper engagements and turn ordinary community members into super-contributors.

Speakers:

Jasmine Wang: Alluxio, Inc., Community Manager, Jasmine Wang is the community manager at Alluxio. Her responsibilities include community engagement and developer relations for the Alluxio Open Source Project. She has six years of experience working with startups and open source projects.