Here at PyCon2011, there are quite a few open source rock stars in attendance. Software hackers of various stripes, developers from the corporate and community realms, and…
Open source has achieved a bit of popularity in the tech world, and has even become a bit mainstream . I sadly think this means that many have and will continue to miss the…
One of my favorite regular blog subjects is how to use community-based strategies to build brands. In fact, I'm putting the finishing touches on a new book entitled The Ad…
Open source research often paints the community as a homogeneous landscape. I have collected stories from open source contributors to begin constructing a new narrative of…
In October 1969, when experts at the US Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) connected the first two nodes of what has now become the Internet, they…
A community of practice (CoP) is, according to cognitive anthropologists Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, a group of people who share an interest, a craft, and/or a profession…
There are innovative organizations that most of us find inspiring because on the inside, they're essentially passionate communities. But what do companies like Google, Red Hat…
First of all, thank you. Yup, I was talking to you. People like me tend to get the credit when things go right, and the axe when things don’t, but in the open source world it…
Think of the last time you walked up to a complete stranger, stuck out your hand and said, “Hi, my name is …” Depending on how often you do that, it was probably a scary…
Issue-tracking systems are important for many open source projects, and there are many open source tools that provide this functionality but many projects opt to use GitHub's…
Welcome folks, to my latest Six Degrees column! Now, I wanted to mix it up a little bit for this one. In previous columns, I have written pieces about trends and patterns in…
It's time to begin making plans for the Community Leadership Summit in Portland this summer, just before OSCON. Last year I gave a lightning talk called "What's an adult look…