Break the contribution wall

Raimund will explore tips and other practices his team have taken in their open source project to increase their active contributors.

Picking up someone else’s project can be hard. Contributing can be even harder. When a project is large and active, the process can feel intimidating. However, with the right tools and practices, the contributor experience can be transformed, making it easier for people to understand a project, become familiar with its tools and processes, and, most importantly, start contributing.

In this interactive session, the speaker will explore practical tips and approaches used within an open source project to increase the number of active contributors. These same practices can be applied to InnerSource projects. Understanding an existing community, its motivations, and what contributors are looking to achieve is fundamental to enabling meaningful participation.

The session will explore how a proof-of-concept project evolved into a platform that enables contributors to track their contributions across a wide range of platforms while also gamifying the experience. The project now reaches hundreds of users every week.

At its heart, InnerSource is about taking processes and practices from the open source world and applying them to internal software development. Attendees will leave with a practical toolkit of ideas for creating contributor-friendly development environments, developing recognition and gamification systems, and establishing clear onboarding paths.

These approaches can help reduce friction, encourage participation, and build more vibrant and engaged InnerSource communities.