Beyond the Source: Growing Your Community
by Kevin Dangoor
I have just recorded a screencast version of my php|works/PyWorks 2008 opening keynote: Beyond the Source: Growing Your Community. They gave me the option to talk about anything I wanted to, and so I decided to do a talk on marketing of open source projects.
Important stuff. Too many people think that its just the best code that wins. That matters of course, but there is a lot more to get people using your stuff.
thanks for sharing.
Kevin – great video, grand use of webcam-in-screencast too.
I couldn’t agree more about the use of screencasts for open-src promotion (but then, as co-founder of ShowMeDo I would say that). Since ShowMeDo has over 800 screencasts showing open-src projects, we’ve got a great community – if anyone wants help and advice then come join the forums.
For linux screencasting I’d add RecordMyDesktop to the list, many of our users use it for Ubuntu/Debian ‘casts, it seems to work well.
Re. your QuickStart in TurboGears – don’t forget the power of showing the user that *they can be confident*. When I first saw your TG video I’d never written a web-app – yet we went on to write ShowMeDo using TG straight after watching your video. Your video gave us the confidence to dive in without delay. No need to read, consider, mull and debate – we just Got On With It and now we serve 100k users a month
For any budding screencasters – I’m a professional screencaster (http://procasts.co.uk/examples.html), I’d be happy to give you feedback and helpful critique on open-src screencasts. I might even be persuaded to produce a demo for you – get in touch.
Cheers,
Ian.
Could you please provide a download for this screencast? My flash player doesn’t like the embedded video…
@Gregory and Ian: thanks for the positive comments and the tips.
@Mats: I’ve just added a link at the beginning of the post (“screencast version…”) that takes you to the blip.tv page. There, you can change the viewing format to the original Quicktime video. (VLC and mplayer should both be able to play it… it’s an h.264 .mov file.)
Thanks!
I really enjoyed that talk. Especially the emphasis on documentation and website(s).
Nice video! The biggest problem for open source projects is product management…