Community Leadership as Core Open Source Competency
Oct 30th, 2007 by Jon Stahl
David Eaves thinks that community leadership is the core, make-or-break competency of an open-source software project. I agree.
He shares a story that illustrates a pattern I’ve rarely seen in the Plone community, and hope to continue not seeing. 
One of the key ideas I’m interested in pushing is how “open� open source communities are - and how they can make themselves easier to join. I actually had an interesting experience while at FSOSS that highlighted how subtle this challenge can be. During one of the lunch breaks Mark Surman and I ran a Birds of a Feather session on Community Management as the Core Competency of Open Source Communities. In the lead up to the session, a leader of a prominent open source community (I knew this because it said so on his name tag) walked up to me and asked: “Are you running this BoF?� (Birds of a Feather) Not being hip to the lingo I replied… “What’s a BoF? I’m not super techie so I don’t know all the terms.� To which he replied “Evidently.� and walked away. And thus ended my first contact with this particular open source community. With its titular leader nonetheless. Needless to say, it didn’t leave a positive impression.
The lesson:
At some point everyone has to have a first contact with a community - that first impression may be a strong determinant about where they volunteer their time and contribute their free labour. Any good open-source community will probably want to get it right.
