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Case Study: What to do when your Project outgrows your company

Case Study: What to do when your Project outgrows your company. lars_kurth. Lars Kurth Director, Open Source, Citrix Community Manger, Xen Project. About Me. Was a contributor to various projects Worked in parallel computing, tools, mobile and now virtualization

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Case Study: What to do when your Project outgrows your company

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  1. Case Study:What to do when your Project outgrows your company lars_kurth Lars Kurth Director, Open Source, Citrix Community Manger, Xen Project

  2. About Me Was a contributor to various projects Worked in parallel computing, tools, mobile and now virtualization Long history in change projects Community guy at Symbian FoundationLearned how NOT to do stuff Community guy for the Xen ProjectWorking for CitrixAccountable to Xen Project Advisory Board

  3. Open Source: Then & Now

  4. The # of Projects is growing Projected More than 1 Projects Million Today Source: The 2013 Future of Open Source Survey Results

  5. More Competition

  6. Free Software to Open Source Late 90’s Today Individuals & Hobbyist's Still about Individuals But, a majority are employees Companies have a huge stake

  7. More Responsibility and pressure to succeed

  8. Massively multi-player beauty Contest Features How many users you have How many vendors back you How you are seen in the press … Different Management Disciplines

  9. Success = Standing Out In many areas

  10. Case Study

  11. What is the Xen Project? An Open Source Hypervisor > 10M Users Powering some of the biggest Clouds in ProductionAmazon Web Services, Rackspace Public Cloud, Terremark, … Several sub-projectsXen Hypervisor, XAPI management tools, Mirage OS, Mobile Hypervisor Linux Foundation Collaborative ProjectSponsored by Amazon Web Services, AMD, Bromium, Calxeda, CA Technologies, Cisco, Citrix, Google, Intel, NetApp, Oracle, Samsung and Verizon 10 years old

  12. What we will look at Four Key Issues Fixes that were applied (there may be others) Effect this had Symptoms Consequences for Xen At the end : Reflection & Tools

  13. Symptoms Unwritten RulesUndefined RolesLack of Upfront Collaboration

  14. Impact Hard to join the projectVendors got frustratedHard to work with the project

  15. The Project had to Grow up! Another keyvendor nearly dropped Xen 1st KVMrelease Roadmap& Release Management Canonical dropsXen Growth potentialwas limited early Technical CoordinationTeam RedHat dropsXen in RHEL6 XenGovernance Xen becomesLF Collaborative Project

  16. Outcome: Increased Diversity

  17. Inwards focus Not working with upstreams(branched kernel and QEMU) Not working with distros(users are not “our” problem) Created “pain for distros” Intercommunity Friction Introvert Community Image Problem Symptoms and Impact

  18. The Community had to Open Up Upstream QEMUcomplete Linux Hostsupport for Xen Linux Guestsupport for Xen IBM, VMware, Red Hat and CitrixAgree on PVOPS in Linux kernel Activelyworkingwithdistros

  19. Outcome Improved Relationships & Trust Xen Developers Care about Users Xen becoming easier to use Improved Image in the media and FOSS community

  20. Little Communication! Empty Promises Change of Guard Focus on events for the existing community only Enough PapersEnough Talks Enough Communication By enough vendors Blog 1 Person Competing Projects Excelled at Communication Xen Books

  21. View of the project In 2011 Project became an “invisible man”Belief that Xen is not open sourceSlowed the growth of the user base Perception: the project is “dead” Constant stories in the press that the project is dyingFirst: Defiance – this is all “Fud”Then: Project started to believe this too

  22. Communicationv2 Community spokespeople Events v2 Community Blog Confidence Building

  23. Impact Project perception has changedNeutral to positiveNo more “Xen is not OSS / Xen is Dead”New influx of people to the project Talks / Events / Orgs

  24. People Value Community Companies

  25. A Few Lessons! Governance Matters Projects don’t exist in isolation Poor Marketing and Communication can kill you Good project sponsors can make a difference A project needs to constantly evolve

  26. How do you solve a problem like Community? Multi-discipline Complexity

  27. The “Community Funnel ” Model

  28. Think of the funnel boundary as apermeable membrane, not a fixedborder It can take >2 years for changes at the top of the funnel to make a difference at the bottom The Funnel has feedback loops:what happens at the top can affectthe bottom

  29. Project Scope E.g. Xen on ARM, Mirage OS Increase the width and thus the potential market for the project Activities Attributes Events Control the permeability and shape of the funnel Some items are in your control Others - such as what the competition does - are not! How can we influence how theCommunity Funnel works?

  30. On-boarding Documentation Ease of Use Training Example: Factors influencing earlystages of open source software adoption

  31. Bad Press Funnelbecomes narrower Example: Negative feedback loop Negative Feedback:vendors maystop contributing

  32. Some Key Points The Community Funnel is an excellent internal sales toolReason: Sales and Business people understand funnels It helps you understand what is happening It helps prioritize what to focus onCovers the time dimension : some issues take longer to fix than others Forces you to consider the “Big Picture”

  33. The Funnel I used

  34. Extend Project Scope Press Social Media Brand Event Presence Communication WebSite Documentation Getting Started Ease of Use Training Distros Support Volunteer Programs 2011 Community Programs Platforms for Self Promotion Collaboration Values Diversity Governance Neutrality Business Opportunities

  35. ARM + Mirage OS Brand Press Social Media Event Presence Event Presence Communication Communication WebSite Documentation Getting Started Distros Ease of Use Volunteer Programs NOW Community Programs Collaboration Values Diversity Governance Neutrality Business Opportunities

  36. Today FOSS is more competitive than ever To succeed, a wide range of “community” and“management” tools need to be applied continuously

  37. Thank You! Please rate the talk!

  38. Xen Project: www.xenproject.org wiki.xenproject.orglists.xenproject.orgxenbits.xenproject.org @xen_org ##xen Funnel: talesfromthecommunity.wordpress.com Credits and Resources Flickr: “Messy Apartment” by Ryo Chijiiwa “The Ivory Tower” by Daniel Parks “Desert Road 9” by LabyrinthX Other Images: By Lars Kurth Acquired from Shutterstock

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