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Description
Don’t miss out! Join us at our upcoming hybrid event: KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2022 from October 24-28 in Detroit (and online!). Learn more at https://kubecon.io. The conference features presentations from developers and end users of Kubernetes, Prometheus, Envoy, and all of the other CNCF-hosted projects.
You're a Community Manager? But What Do You REALLY Do?! - Nanci Lancaster, VMware & Karen Chu, Microsoft
When it comes to open source software, having a strong, active community that feels supported is imperative to success. Oftentimes, maintainers are tasked with an abundance of responsibilities but are also expected to set aside time to inform and engage with community members such as users, contributors, and others who are interested in the project. This is where community managers can step in to alleviate the burden and provide support.
For those who are trying to understand what this hard-to-define role is, the responsibilities involved, and the value of having a community manager dedicated to your project, join Nanci (community manager for Carvel and Tanzu Community Edition(TCE) Open Source Software projects) and Karen (community manager for Helm and other CNCF projects) for a breakdown of what a community manager role can look like and the value of the role as they cover topics including:
• Maintainer and Contributor experience
• Events
• Social media/communications
• GitHub Repo Health
• Community Meetings
A
Hi
welcome
everyone
to
you're
a
community
manager,
but
what
do
you
really
do?
I'm
nancy
lancaster
senior,
open
source
community
manager
at
vmware,
where
I
manage
two
open
source
projects,
tanzu
community
edition
and
karvel.
Before
this
I
worked
at
cncf,
where
I
worked
with
all
the
projects
on
their
maintainer
track
sessions.
The
co-chairs
program
committee,
all
the
speakers
and
sessions
for
kubecons
and
related
events.
B
Hey
I'm
karen
chu,
I'm
a
senior
community
pm
at
microsoft,
azure
focused
on
the
cloud
native
upstream
team
and
I've
been
in
this
space
since
2015,
and
I've
worked
on
a
number
of
open
source
projects,
including
helm,
brigade,
cresla,
open
service
mesh
and
more
and
beyond
that,
I
am
part
of
the
kubernetes
code
of
contact
committee.
I'm
part
of
the
cncf
tag
focused
on
contributor
strategy
and
I
am
part
of
the
cncf
ambassador
program.
A
B
A
B
A
So,
first,
let's
talk
about
how
the
community
manager
is
involved
in
the
maintainer
and
contributing
contributor
experience
of
an
open
source
project
with
open
source
projects.
Engineers
maintain
the
technical
aspects
of
a
project
and
community
managers
maintain
and
support
the
culture
of
an
open
source
project.
These
are
some
of
the
things
that
are
related
to
how
we
do
just
that
so
code
of
conduct,
contributor
guides
and
docs
member
health
and
contributor
summits.
A
So
having
documentation
that
guides
the
public
on
how
to
contribute
to
a
project
is
important
in
supporting
the
contributor
experience.
So
others
are
aware
on
how
to
contribute
to
that
particular
project
as
well
as
know
how
to
eventually
become
a
maintainer
after
their
their
creation
of
that
documentation.
The
community
manager
will
work
to
review
and
maintain
the
documentation
as
that
project
evolves
and
when
there
isn't
documentation
or
they're
out
of
date,
it's
not
only
frustrating
for
contributors
who
are
trying
to
contribute
to
the
project
as
they
attempt
to
submit
pr's.
B
If
any
of
you
are
interested
in
templates,
cncf
tag
contributor
strategy
has
been
making
templates
available
for
use
by
any
pro
any
projects.
These
aren't
necessarily
specific
to
like
you
being
a
cncf
project,
so,
if
you're
an
open
source
project,
these
are
just
kind
of
general
recommendations
that
we
make
and
real
quick,
a
quick
shout
out
to
tag
contributor
strategy.
B
If
any
of
you
today
are
maintainers.
This
is
a
tag
that
you
should
check
out
it's
a
great
way
for
other
or
for
project
maintainers,
to
connect,
discuss
ideas
and
learn
from
each
other
and,
like
I
said,
the
tag
has
developed
a
bunch
of
really
great
resources,
including
best
practices
guides
templates
and
more,
and
you
can
oh
sorry,
you
can
find
everything
you
need
on
that
link.
A
So,
along
with
documentation,
community
managers
pay
attention
to
maintainer
and
contributor
turnover
and
to
combat
this,
we
as
community
members,
will
support
them
by
showing
appreciation
for
being
involved
with
the
project.
Sometimes
that's
recognizing
them.
Through
social
media,
twitter,
blog
posts,
sometimes
we'll
send
a
contributor
swag
for
their
efforts.
A
Other
times,
we
may
show
appreciation
by
having
a
contributor
of
the
month
program,
to
show
a
little
bit
more
appreciation
for
a
contributor
who
might
be
a
little
bit
more
active
for
that
particular
month,
or
we
might
actually
start
some
sort
of
ambassador-like
program
or
a
champions
program
that
highlights
contributors
that
are
a
little
bit
more
enthusiastic
about
the
project
and
want
to
get
involved
as
much
as
possible,
but
not
necessarily
become
a
maintainer
and
it'll,
be
like
top
recognition.
A
lot
of
benefits.
B
Okay,
so,
as
we
know,
events
are
tangible
way
in
which
we
support
maintainers
and
contributor
experiences
and
as
an
example,
this
can
be
executed
through
contributor
summits,
which
are
events
aimed
at
bringing
together
new
and
old
contributors
to
learn
how
to
interact
with
a
project
so
contributor
summits.
They
can
vary
in
how
they're
executed,
but
sometimes
they
include
workshops,
amas,
social
events,
first
of
a
feather
sessions,
contributor
awards
and
more-
and
this
leads
us
into
a
more
in-depth
conversation
about
events.
B
So
events
are
a
great
way
to
strengthen
community
relationships
and,
by
definition,
bring
people
together.
There
are
different
formats
for
events
and,
given
their
generally
similar
nature,
it
often
makes
sense
for
a
community
manager
to
be
the
person
to
pick
up
the
project
management
aspects
of
executing
them.
B
A
A
big
part
of
community
management,
as
they
relate
to
events,
is
having
your
project
participate
in
relevant
conferences
like
this
little
one
called
kubecon.
If
your
project
is
involved
with
kubernetes
or
other
colored
native
technologies,
as
a
community
manager,
we'll
work
with
the
maintainers
to
submit
cfps
on
time,
keep
track
of
all
the
upcoming
deadlines
and
event
dates.
A
If
their
talk
is
accepted,
we'll
work
to
promote
that
talk,
if
there's
an
opportunity
for
the
project
to
have
a
presence
at
a
sponsor
booth,
we'll
work
at
all
the
logistics
of
what
that
looks
like
for
maintainer
and
community
engagement
and,
lastly,
we'll
send
out
surveys
whenever
possible
and
have
feedback
retros
to
go
over.
What
could
have
been
better?
A
Make
sure
that
the
maintainers
are
where
they're
supposed
to
be
at
the
conference
is
a
lot
like
herding
cats,
and
it
can
be
difficult,
but
the
role
of
the
community
manager
is
to
be
there
to
know
when
and
where
they're
supposed
to
be
guide
them.
Where
they're
supposed
to
be-
and
you
know
just
make
sure,
they're
organizing
the
project's
presence.
B
Cool,
so
next,
we'll
talk
about
meetups
cool
in
our
space.
Meetups
are
a
good
way
to
learn
about
technology
regularly
and
locally,
so
community
managers
can
help,
identify
and
facilitate
speaking
opportunities,
sponsor
food
and
drinks
help
locate
locations
to
host
meetups
and
make
sure
that
speakers
have
swag
to
share
with
their
audience
after
next
are
workshops
and
webinars,
and
these
can
be
in
person
or
oftentimes.
These
days
are
online,
but
the
purpose
of
them
is
to
educate
community
members
in
an
interactive
setting.
B
So
with
the
pulse
on
their
projects,
community
managers
can
often
identify
and
manage
when
they're
necessary.
So
this
can
be
when
you
have
an
upcoming
feature,
that's
worth
highlighting
deprecations
when
there's
a
need
to
highlight
like
how
to
get
started
content.
If
you
have
an
influx
of
new
users,
things
like
that,
and
since
these
kinds
of
events
tend
to
be
cyclical,
it
is
a
good
idea
to
fine-tune
your
project
management
skills
and
kind
of
continuously
gather
feedback
and
input.
Because
again,
these
are
often
things
that
you
may
want
to
continue
doing
again.
A
So
another
favorite
responsibility
of
mine
is
coming
up
with
unique
swag
that
are
related
to
the
events
that
we're
participating
in
the
real.
The
role
of
a
community
manager
needs
to
identify
when
creating
new,
unique
swag
is
necessary.
So,
for
example,
if
your
project
is
participating
in
an
event
like
gophercon,
how
can
you
tie
in
the
gopher
to
the
logo
of
your
project
and
create
a
unique
item
out
of
that
to
pass
out
at
the
event?
B
So
one-way
communication
is
often
used
for
making
announcements
and
requires
a
different
mentality
from
two-way
communication,
which
nancy
will
talk
about
next.
But
community
managers
can
work
with
a
variety
of
channels
such
as
twitter,
blog
posts,
videos,
etc
and,
depending
on
the
content,
manage
the
necessary
workflow
to
get
things
out.
They're,
not
necessarily
always
the
ones
putting
out
the
content,
but
they
can
be
there
to
help
facilitate
that,
whether
it's
working
with
maintainers,
to
write
blog
posts,
make
videos,
demos,
etc.
A
So
one
of
the
responsibilities,
I
think
that
most
people
think
of
when
it
comes
to
community
management,
is
like
monitoring
discussions
as
they
happen
on
github
and
slack
and
google
groups,
and
these
are
considered
two-way
communications
in
which
discussion
back
and
forth
is
encouraged.
So
as
a
community
manager,
your
role
is
to
monitor
for
any
violations
of
code
of
conduct.
Maybe
look
for
any
questions
that
go
on
unanswered,
pay
attention
to
questions
and
conversations
that
are
happening
in
the
internal
slack
channel
that
your
maintainers
are
in
and
saying
hey.
A
This
needs
to
be
put
into
the
public
space,
so
we
can
be
transparent
about
what
we're
doing
and
then
also
pay
attention
to
any
new
community
members
that
may
join
those
channels
you
can
reach
out
to
them.
Introduce
yourself
welcome
them
to
the
community
and
then
give
them
information
about
how
to
get
more
involved,
as
well
as
how
to
attend
community
meetings.
A
So
our
last
topic
covers
the
community
manager.
Role
as
it
relates
to
the
project's
health
and
keeping
track
of
the
project's
health
is
vitally
important.
The
some
key
components
that
may
affect
your
project's
health
overall
intel,
documentation,
maintenance,
community
meetings,
user
diversity
and
other
metrics.
That
will
outline
next.
A
So
health
metrics
are
unique
to
how
community
managers
operate
at
vmware.
We've
created
a
guideline
and
set
of
metrics
to
pay
attention
to
for
evaluating
a
project's
health,
and
these
metrics
include
things
like
documentation,
quality,
maintainer
attentiveness
and
community
involvement
in
the
project.
We
evaluate
these
all
of
our
projects
twice
a
year
and
we
do
not
keep
track
of
any
vanity
metrics.
A
So
videometrics,
like
your
twitter
followers,
your
github
stars,
your
slack
members,
like
none
of
that
matters
to
us,
because
you
know
at
the
end
of
the
day,
you
can
just
pay
for
that,
so
it
doesn't
really
matter
as
a
community
manager.
What
what
I'm
most
responsible
for
is
to
highlight
where
improvements
can
be
made
after
we've
done
these
evaluations,
as
well
as
keep
attention
in
between
these
evaluations
and
make
corrections
as
the
project
evolves.
B
Okay,
so
documentation
maintenance,
as
we
all
know,
it's
natural
and
necessary
for
projects
to
evolve
over
time.
And
when
that
happens,
you
want
to
make
sure
that
your
documentation
reflects
that
and
given
that
community
managers
generally
have
a
bird's
eye
view
of
what's
going
on
in
a
project,
they
can
help
make
sure
that
docs
stay
up
to
date.
And
this
also
this
doesn't
only
apply
to
like
literally
documentation.
A
A
A
So
in
conclusion,
community
managers
all
have
very
similar
responsibilities
to
support
their
open
source
project,
but
do
not
think
what
we've
said
any
here
today
is
comprehensive.
This
can
all
be
based
on
individual
skill
set.
Some
community
managers
a
little
bit
more
technical
than
others
karen,
and
I
aren't
aren't
that
technical.
So
it's
not
a
requirement
if
you're
considering
this
path
of
community
management,
there's
no
concrete
way
to
do
it.
Hence
the
need
for
this
talk.
B
B
What
we
know
and
what
we
do
for
one
project
can
often
be
applied
to
other
projects
and
then
also
when
people
see
that
your
project
has
a
community
manager.
It
provides
legitimacy
to
the
project
because
it
shows
that
there's
genuine
investment
in
the
project
beyond.
Just
like
the
technical
investments.
A
A
So,
thank
you
all
for
attending
today,
both
in
person
and
virtually.
I
also
want
to
say
thank
you
to
my
co-speaker
karen
chu.
It's
been
so
fun
working
with
you,
here's
where
to
reach
us.
If
you
want
to
contact
us
and
also
some
additional
information
that
we
recommend
so
there's
a
book
called
working
in
public
the
making
and
maintenance
of
open
source
software.
A
It
kind
of
gives
you
like
a
really
holistic
view
of
all
the
different
people
that
would
be
tied
into
an
open
source
project
all
of
their
experiences
and
it
kind
of
helps.
You
become,
I
think,
a
better
community
manager
when
you
know
how
other
people
are
in
interacting
with
projects
there's
also
a
link
to
the
project,
health
guidelines
and
metrics
that
I
mentioned
in
my
talk
earlier.
Vmware
is
hiring
for
community
manager.
A
So,
if
you're
interested
in
the
role
please
come
find
me
I'll,
give
you
a
little
bit
more
details
about
that
and
cncf
project
templates
are
up
there
and
be
sure
to
leave
us
feedback
on
sketch.com
and
then
one
final
thing.
I
want
to
say
final
point
that
I
want
to
drive
home
is
karen
and
I
manage
projects
that
are
seen
as
in
competition
with
each
other,
so
home
and
carvel,
but
the
truth
is
open.
Source
is
all
the
same
team
with
a
lot
of
similar
software
and
it's
open
to
all
on
how
they
use
it.
A
A
C
Hi
there
I'm
hannah,
I'm
the
community
manager
at
nginx,
and
I'm
doing
some
of
what
y'all
talked
about
and
seeing
just
the
like
breadth
of
responsibilities
feels
a
little
intimidating
right.
Now,
I'm
really
impressed
that
you're
managing
multiple
at
once,
and
I'm
wondering
like.
Do
you
automate
a
lot
of
your
work?
Do
you
have
templates
like
how
do
you
actually
organize
doing
that?
Much
work
on
that
many
projects.
B
Yeah
so
like
for
me
like
for
a
conference
like
this,
I
a
lot
of
my
projects
are
in
the
cncf
like
ecosystem,
so
I
have
like.
I
have
like
three
projects
that
are
part
of
the
project
pavilion
so
like
I
often
use
asana
to
just
do
project
management
for
events,
so
I
have
like
a
template.
That's
just
for
like
conferences.
B
I
also
have
a
template
that
I
use
for
meetups,
like
sponsorships
of
smaller
conferences
and
like
especially
for
things
that
are
repeated
right
like
for
coupon,
like
the
ask,
for
things
are
often
the
same
every
year,
so
that's
kind
of
what
I
use
for
templates
and
then.
Similarly,
when
we
have
like
new
projects
that
gets
announced,
I
have
like
a
project
checklist
that
I
do
and
then
yeah
like
and
then,
if
there
are
colleagues
or
other
teams
that
are
launching
new
stuff,
because
I
am
just
stretched
pretty
thin.
B
A
I
don't
automate
a
lot
of
things,
but
I
also
I
do
use
asana
it's
it's
a
lifesaver
in
a
lot
of
ways
not
sponsored
by
asana,
but
I
the
probably
the
only
thing
I
automate
is
meeting
reminders,
so
in
slack
I'll
set
up
reminders
for
that
to
make
sure
the
community
knows
when
they're
happening
but
other
than
that
yeah.
I
don't
think
I
automate.
B
I
also
use
like
tweetdeck
to
automate
social
media
posts
for
my
multiple
projects-
that's
another
one,
but
I'm
sure
there's
lots
of
things
you
could
automate
right,
because
that
was
one
of
the
things
we
talked
about.
It's
just
like
a
lot
of
this
is
consist
like
relatively
consistent
when
you
work
with
multiple
projects.
D
E
Hi,
it's
voydek
from
acuity.
I
come
from
a
little
different
angle.
My
question
would
be
in
smaller
companies
that
run
their
business
on
open
source
projects.
It's
often
the
marketing
slash
technical
writer,
slash
community
manager,
slash
doc,
maintainer,
slash
events,
organizer
person
and
it's
hard
to
do
all
the
stuff
at
once.
E
But
from
your
point
of
view,
what
would
be
the
most
important
thing
when
it
comes
to
handling
community,
for
example,
in
a
project
that
basically
has
several
hundred
of
community
members
a
couple
of
companies
contributing
and
from
from
a
perspective
of
a
person
who
is
one
of
these
companies
has
some
community
interactions,
but
also
is
doing
marketing,
etc.
So
what
would
be
the
first
thing
that
comes
to
your
mind
when
a
marketer
or
a
technical
writer
should
pursue
to
do
in
terms
of
supporting
the
community.
A
B
G
A
Yeah,
that's
a
big
one,
so
I'm
I'm
kind
of
an
interesting
community
manager
in
that
regard,
because
carvel
does
not
really
have
much
marketing
involvement.
I
am
all
of
the
things
for
carville,
but
for
tons
of
community
edition
because
it
carries
the
tanzu
brand.
It
has
all
of
the
marketing
and
everything
regarding
that,
but
I
have
to
constantly
guide
them
on
how
to
communicate
in
an
open
source
way.
You
know
try
to
get
them
out
of
the
the
old
ways
of
how
to
market
to
like
in
a
corporate
way.
A
So
it's
a
matter
of
of
teaching
and
it's
a
very
like
teachable
moments,
because
interacting
with
open
source
cultures
is
vastly
different
and
old
school
ways
of
marketing.
They
just
don't
understand
that
so
with
carville.
I'm
very
fortunate
that
I
I
can
have
be
the
voice
of
carville
on
twitter
on
anything
I
want.
A
You
know
help
with
blog
posts
all
sorts
of
stuff,
but
when
it
comes
to
tanzania
community
edition,
that's
that's
when
I'm
more
so
just
guiding
like,
and
I
have
one-on-ones
and
I'm
I'm
in
the
marketing
meetings
for
for
that
project,
making
sure
that
the
voice
of
open
source
is
still
recognized.
Does
that
help.
H
G
H
I'm
wondering
if
you
can
talk
a
little
bit
about
the
role
of
a
community
manager
in
the
broader
cncf
ecosystem
participating
in
things
like
say,
the
kubernetes
release,
team
or
sigs
or
tags
like.
Where
can
a
community
manager
contribute
to
things
beyond
their
specific
project
but
fit
their
project
and
their
community
management
in.
B
If
I
ever
have
something
helping
in
helm.
I
have
a
better
understanding
of
that
now,
because
helen
doesn't
have
a
code
of
conduct
committee
as
of
right
now,
but
because
the
larger
community
has
all
these
learning
opportunities,
I
can
kind
of
step
in
and
yeah
and
then
like
with,
like
the
cncf
tag
contributor
strategy,
I
work
on
like
different
templates
for
projects
and
again
my
projects
can
use
them,
which
is
helpful
for
me,
but
also
yeah,
like
I
guess.
A
I
would
say
from
those
health
metrics
that
I
brought
up
earlier.
One
of
the
things
that
we
have
in
there
is
how
are
the
maintainers
and
the
community
manager
involved
in
projects
in
open
source
culture
outside
of
their
projects,
because
we
don't
want
them
being
siloed
and
only
focused
on
their
project.
So
are
they
contr?
Are
they
participating
in
sigs?
A
F
Okay,
maybe
so,
if
I
become
a
community
manager,
can
you
maybe
outline
from
a
perspective
of
a
career
like
what
like?
If
I
work
for
a
couple
of
years
as
a
community
manager,
I
enjoy
it
really
much,
but
then
what
comes
next
like
do?
I
become
a
senior
community
manager
or
like
what
are
some
roles
where
community
management
experience
can
really
help
me
further
down
the
road.
A
B
B
I
have
also
seen
some
people
go
up
through
like
the
osbo
ladder
like
the
office
of
open
source
programs
office.
Sorry
yeah,
so
that's
also
another
route.
Again,
it
kind
of
depends
on
what
the
company
like
org
structure,
offers,
but
that's
a
route
right
and
then,
like
I
said,
marketing
or
devrel.
So
it's
hard
to
say
and
a
lot
of
that
it's
just
kind
of
like
how
you
carve
out
and
like
define
your
role
within
your
company,
so
yeah.
D
Firstly,
thanks
for
the
talk
really
great,
I'm
natalie
from
wayfair
from
the
ospo,
so
great
segway,
we
have
a,
we
have
a
project
in
the
cncf
ecosystem
and
I'm
struggling
right
now
with
figuring
out
what
the
breaking
point
is
to
having
the
team
look
after
their
own
community
management,
our
tremor
team
and
myself,
and
my
team
versus
hiring
a
specific
community
manager.
So
when
is
the
time
that
you
think
a
dedicated
community
manager
for
a
project
needs
to
come
in.
B
B
Is
that
marketing
aspect
right
to
a
certain
degree?
And
so
it's
just
like
you
can
build
all
the
work,
but
unless
that
work
is
being
put
out
there
by
a
community
manager,
you
know
people
aren't
gonna
find
out
about
it
right
so
like
it
is
an
inflection
point
in
order
to
grow
your
project,
so
I
would
do
it
earlier
than
later.
B
A
Thank
you
yeah.
I
would
I
just
echo
that
as
well
having
a
community
manager
as
soon
as
possible
makes
more
sense.
I
think,
than
waiting
too
long,
because
because
that
way,
the
community
manager
gets
to
know
some
of
those
early
contributors
and
and
fosters
that
growth
and
the
community
and
those
relationships
early
to
find
the
culture
yeah.
I
I
I
use
also
to
work
in
a
big
company
in
the
hospital,
so
what
I
found
is
that
a
lot
of
learnings
that
applies
to
the
big
company
doesn't
applies
when
you
want
to
build
a
community
from
scratch
right
when
you
don't
have
any
social
network
of
a
software,
you
want
to
expand
your
social
network
and
sometimes
it's
just
the
lessons
that
we
learn
from
the
big
companies
doesn't
apply
to
the
small
company.
I
would
like
to
ask
if
you
can
give
some
advice.
You
know
for
startup.
I
Well,
you
know,
because
right
now
we
have
more
and
more
commercial
open
source
software,
and
do
you
have
any
suggestions,
suggestions
for
them?
You
know
com,
you
know
what
for
what
you
have
present
like,
which
which
part
is
appliable
to
small
startup
and
which
part
is
probably
you
know
you
want
to
delay
it
a
little
bit,
because
this
only
makes
sense
when
you
have
a
well-established
software
or
when
you
have
a
well-established
community
yeah.
B
I
can
go
first
yeah,
okay,
so
I
I
have
been
at
microsoft
for
five
years,
but
helm
started
when
we
were
at
a
startup,
so
I
did
like
we
did
kind
of
start
some
stuff
from
the
ground,
but
I
would
say
I
know
like
coming
to
conferences
like
this.
It's
really
expensive
to
like
have
a
booth
and
things
like
that.
B
That
is
kind
of
the
big
thing
I
think
yeah.
I
think
those
are
great
ways
to
get
started
locally
and
yeah.
Just
intimate
settings
don't
forget
that
they
exist
like
they're
still
valuable.
You
may
not
reach
as
many
people
at
once,
but
you
will
get
a
deeper
relationship
from
those
conversations
yeah.
I
I.