Originally published in Open Source Business Resource January 2010

“…success comes entirely from people and the system within which they work. Results are not the point. Developing the people and the system so that together they are capable of achieving successful results is the point.”

Leading Lean Software Development

Recently, that quote stirred some controversy among my peers. The part about “results are not the point” was hard for some people to understand and come to grips with. Aren’t results always the point? Well, as with most things, “It depends”. The people and community that evolve around an open source software project will ultimately determine its success. Even if the core team launches the project with spectacular productivity and results, this phase of evolution will be fleeting if the necessary processes and community to make the project a long lasting success are not put into place.

This article presents some of the actions open source community leaders can take to ensure not only results, but a system that encourages productivity and longevity.

The Law of Attraction

One of the fundamental principles of nature is that objects tend to attract other like objects. The term homophily refers to the tendency of individuals to associate and bond with others of a similar bent. This same principle of attraction is what pulls communities together and keeps them together. People are attracted to others that have similar interests or problems to overcome. It is that commonality that creates the link, the attraction, that holds communities together.

Unfortunately, many projects and businesses forget this basic principle. They instead believe that communities form around products, brands or buzzwords. They forget that people want to belong to groups that they share some interest with. Providing a shared interest doesn’t necessarily translate into building a vibrant, action oriented community. In order for a community organizer to stimulate results in a community, the following ingredients are needed:

• a mission that will attract others that are passionate because …

• passionate users create excitement for a cause and …

• excitement elicits action and results from the community

The goal is not simply to build software but to attract users that share a passion for a particular subject. It is this belief in the cause that will ultimately determine whether or not a community is successful.

Leadership

Leaders are people who see the world from a different and new perspective. Leaders dream of a future that is different from today. A leader’s vision of tomorrow is inspiring and solves real problems for real people. But leadership goes beyond this by introducing others to a future that they can embrace as their own. The ability to make the vision their own is what draws people to an open source project and moves them to action.

How does a leader craft a message that resonates with the community? Listening is the key that unlocks not only the problems of the users but also their perspective. Leaders must understand where the pain points are and what motivates users. A leader’s goal is to provide just enough of a blueprint for tomorrow so that users are able to finish crafting the story for themselves. This gives them ownership and enthusiasm to solve the problem.

This quote from the French writer and aviator, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, is especially important for community managers as it relates to creating a vision of the future that people believe in and want to become a part of: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

The other aspect of leadership that is often overlooked is the art of coalition building. As the message begins to resonate within a community and adapts to each user’s needs, leaders need to manage the alternate messages that form within the community. Leaders have to continually revise the vision to include any new or divisive stories that develop. New leaders will emerge within the community that could have agendas that differ significantly from the original vision. These leaders may eventually harm the community if their ideas are not embraced early on and elements of their story are incorporated. Embracing and incorporating input builds a stronger community and additional leaders to help within the project. The community will be stronger with them than without them.

In Community We Trust

Trust influences nearly every interaction we have during any given day. Every communication, every action, every conversation is shaped in some way by the trust and reputation inferred on the interacting party. Trust is the currency that communities, both online and offline, trade in. Without trust, lasting relationships can not be built or maintained. Part of a community leader’s job is to build reputation and trust for the people associated with a community.

Trust is not something you can ask for as it is earned through actions and competence. It defines relationships between people, governments, communities, and businesses. The text book definition of trust is “…reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or entity”. You can rely on someone or something when you have a history of past experiences by which you can infer future experiences. Without these past experiences, people have no way to place you within their trust metric. They resort to lumping you in with “the rest” or basing their trust on any reputation you may have.

As a community leader, you must build trust in you and your project. People trust people who get things done. If you say you’re going to do something and never quite get around to it, your reputation will suffer and hence the community’s trust in you. Remember, actions always speak louder than words.

Any Fool Can Criticize

Benjamin Franklin once said that “Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain, and most fools do”. One of the things that keeps people from getting involved in open communities is a fear of criticism. Criticism that they’ll ask the wrong questions and criticism that they’ll do something wrong. There are probably dozens of reasons people are afraid to participate and they almost always relate to being afraid of something. It is a leader’s job to see that the community is a hospitable place for new people to participate.

Many project veterans may not have the patience to allow foolish questions to pepper the project’s mailing lists or forums. They think that everyone should put in the same due diligence they did to understand the project and its code. But, if you want the community to grow, you will need to set the example of always having a cool temperament, even with newcomers who may not have done their homework before asking a question. This is not to suggest that you coddle newcomers, but that you need to ensure that responses to questions are civil.

Recognition

Mary Kay noted that “There are two things that people want more than money and sex…recognition and praise”. Especially early on, you’ll need to work hard to ensure that every little contribution to the project is warmly welcomed. This may mean that you have to work with contributors to rewrite a patch or help them fill out a bug report. The name of the game is getting people to open up and get involved. This typically involves coaxing and lots of encouragement.

Don’t be afraid to recognize new participants and draw attention to their accomplishments. If you are constantly praising your community users and helping them feel good about the work they are doing, you will find that members have a greater sense of responsibility towards your community efforts. Greater responsibility equals more action which results in a productive community. Communities run on recognition. This doesn’t mean that you need a user rating system or a User of the Month classification. You simply need to express honest gratitude publicly for what community members are doing. Try it and you’ll notice a remarkable difference in how the community starts behaving.

Simplify, Simplify

Henry David Thoreau once said, “Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify”. He was expressing a concern with the complexity of life while encouraging people to strip away the unnecessary and to focus on the important. Communities sometimes forget that they have to present themselves in pure and simple terms in order to grow. The message must be simple. The ability to communicate should be simple. The tools must be simple. This is not because people can’t understand complexity, it is because they don’t have the time to. In order to grow a community, concentrate on the most important elements that have an impact. Simplify as many things as possible to get to what truly makes your community unique and beneficial.

An example of where projects sometimes fail in this area is by creating too many options for member communication. Don’t implement every communication technology you can find as that will only make it harder for your members to find and participate in conversations. Communication tools should help your members to communicate, not distract them with choices. You should ask a single question when analyzing your community’s tool choices: “Will this technology facilitate human interactions?”. Always remember that communities are about people, not technology, and that simpler communication strategies are usually better.

Blog, Baby, Blog

With the move to social networking sites like Facebook.com and Twitter.com, the buzz around maintaining a blog has diminished. However, blogging is still one of the easiest and best ways to reach an audience with a message. Twitter and Facebook are important tools to help connect your project with a larger audience, but blogging is still the best way to create thought leadership around a project’s mission and vision of the future. When blogging, show your passion for your subject.

Blogging about what you are doing is only the first step as you still have to attract people to the blog. Fortunately, blogs rank high in Google’s PageRank algorithm. The key with Google is not to go after the first page of results for a generic term like “collaboration” or even “collaboration software”, but to find a search term that still gets a decent amount of traction. In the case of collaboration software, it is far easier to reach the first page of Google results for “collaboration community of practice” or “collaboration success” than for just “collaboration”. When you title your blog, use the search terms you want to be found under, such as “Creating Communities of Practice Through Collaboration”.

Don’t just focus your outbound marketing on Google. Start investing in Twitter and Facebook to grow an audience for your message. These tools may not be the best for articulating your project’s value proposition and mission, but they are great for helping you find pockets of users who share your passion. Make sure that you are following and joining groups that have users who are attracted to the same problems and passions as your project and make sure you let these groups know when you’ve posted something on your blog. The key to using social networks is that you have to add value to your network by helping them solve their problems without becoming a marketing drone for your project.

Work With Other Projects

Being an active and productive citizen of other projects is a great way to introduce users to your project or solution. If you have a reputation for helping others and contributing to projects, people will be happy to lend a hand when you need it. You may even already have some followers if you are actively participating in other communities. I recently heard the founders of GitHub.com talk about their startup experiences at the Open Source Bridge conference. They specifically mentioned their involvement with the Ruby on Rails community as one of the reasons GitHub had a successful beginning. If that’s not a testament to playing well in the sandbox, nothing is.

Wrap Up

Building a community of passionate users is no small task. If you manage to do it, you will have worked harder than you ever have in your life because community building is a process that never stops. That is why it is so important to tap into a passion–not only the passion of a large set of users, but also your passion. The work is long and hard and often doesn’t seem fruitful, but if you stick with it and let your passion for the project and the problem you are solving shine through, you’ll do just fine.

The same holds true for communities, especially now with so many companies trying to engage with their customers.  Just a couple of years ago communities were never discussed… ever (unless you were talking about open source).  Now I’ll wager a bet that nearly ever marketing meeting has some component of community discussed, dissected, and regurgitated (is that what a Purple Cow would do?) on a daily basis.  Community has gone from the unknown servant to the Belle of the Ball, a true Cinderella story , in only a few short years.  But are companies really distinguishing themselves with their community efforts?  Are they creating Purple Communities or just another Facebook Fan page?

Purple Communities are communities that embrace their customers and make them part of the decision making process for their company and brand.  Imagine how much more valuable your company’s offerings would be if product management, sales, marketing, engineering, and support where all interacting with your company’s users on a daily basis in an ongoing dialog.  Customers would be more passionate, products would be better designed, and user’s needs would be more adequately addressed.

The benefits of embracing community and pushing it into all parts of your organization are many, but to do it effectively requires a good deal of work.  There is no Silver Community Bullet.  I recently posted some community building tips that describe at a high level what you should be focused on when designing your community strategy, but in this post I hope to give some actionable advice for creating a truly Purple Community.

What’s Your Community’s Niceness Factor?

I wish there was a way to measure and publish a Niceness Factor for communities.  You wouldn’t have to wonder if your community was helpful and friendly.  Unfortunately there is no such thing so you need to constantly look for ways to be more welcoming and friendly.  Some communities  (you know who you are) can be downright inhospitable places for newcomers.  Usually these communities are filled with members who have vast amounts of knowledge… and know it.  They want newcomers to learn the ropes and come up through the ranks “the old fashioned” way.  There is little time for newcomers because the work at hand is just too important.  They can’t possibility take time out of their busy day to help get people off to a running start. If you want your community to grow you’ll need to lighten up on the harshness and sprinkle some friendliness in your interactions.  You know the old saying “you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”.

Sure I’ll Check it Out

Another thing that many well intentioned communities do is establish a TODO list for easy to perform tasks that community newcomers can perform.  Some even have veterans that sign up as mentors for certain tasks in order to help newcomers come up to speed.  I applaud communities who go to the trouble of establishing a process that identifies tasks like this, but unfortunately TODO lists are just too daunting   in most cases.  The typical exchange goes something like this….

newcomer:	“Hey, I love your community (product, project, etc) and would like to help out in some way.  What kinds of things do you need work done on?”.
community veteran:	“Welcome, glad you like our community (product, project, etc.).  We’ve created a TODO list that has lots of easy tasks for beginners.  Go check it out.”
newcomer:	“Okay, thanks.  I will”

The newcomer then browses the list but because they’re not familiar with the project or community they’ll often become confused and lose interest.  This is the worst kind of loss, the one that got away, however unlike fishing stories you don’t want to tell many of these.

The fix for these kinds of misses is simple.  Instead of pointing a user to a long list of tasks, you engage with the user and discover what it is they like and dislike.  What are they good at?  And above all, what do they want to do?  Armed with this info you can help get the user started on the RIGHT task that gets them involved.

The simple act of opening a dialog with someone helps tremendously with whether or not you actually get them involved.  When you’ve taken the time to really discuss with someone how they can help and give them personal attention you’re helping create a sense of responsibility for accomplishing a task.

Never a Dull Thread (aka. how to get rid of the toe dippers?)

One of the easiest ways to NOT be “Purple” and to rid yourself of all those pesky Community Lurkers, is to let their questions go unanswered (BTW, I hope that came across as a joke:).  Most community members are lurkers.  They watch and listen without participating in any of your community conversations.  This is usually because of fear of criticism (see the Inhospitable Place above).  Fear of criticism drives much of your community’s behavior, especially for newcomers.

People tend to lurk and not get involved because they’re afraid of criticism. Criticism that they’ve asked the wrong question. Criticism that their question sounds stupid.  There are probably dozens of reasons people are afraid to participate and they almost all relate to being afraid of something.

When they finally do get up the nerve to ask a question in your forum and they are either A) abused in some way for not “getting it” or B) the question goes unanswered, you have just made sure that your lurker will always be just that, a lurker.  If its your job to support a community, make sure that there is never a thread that goes unanswered.  Get in there and open a dialog.  If you don’t know the answer, find someone who does and pull them into the discussion.  Whatever you do make sure someone is answering your lurker’s questions in a friendly manner.

Recognize and promote

I’ve talked about the need to recognize and promote users before but this one can really make a difference in creating a Purple Community.  This is the opposite to the fear of criticism your newcomers have.  If you are constantly praising your community users and helping them feel good about the work they are doing you’ll find your members will have a greater sense of responsibility towards your community efforts.  Great responsibility = Greater action = More productive community.  If gas is the stuff cars run on, recognition is the stuff that communities run on.

This doesn’t mean you need a user rating system or a User of the Month classification.  Don’t get me wrong, these are great and valuable systems, you just don’t NEED them in order to give recognition.  You simply need to express your honest gratitude publicly for what your community members are doing.  Try it and see.  You’ll notice a remarkable difference in how your community starts behaving.

The Purple Community

I don’t know if you noticed the trend while reading this article but it’s pretty simple… ENGAGE.  If you want to build a community that stands out and gets users excited, it all starts with conversation.  Having a conversation (aka. LISTEN FIRST then talk) with your users is the single most effective way to build a Purple Community.

Related Posts

1.  Leadership and Vision

I recently wrote a post about leadership and its significance to open source projects.  Leadership may be the single most important factor in your community’s success simply due to the fact that people want to belong and believe in something.  In essence people want to follow an inspiring message.  Some want to lead, but most want to be led towards a vision of the future that they believe in.  Well functioning communities lead their members towards an objective that solves real problems and is well defined.  Open source projects need well defined objectives like “enabling productive meetings” or “facilitating project communication”.  These are well defined goals that developers AND users can understand.  There is a poignant quote I recently read from Moving Mountains by Henry Boettinger that sums this up …

“confusion of objectives is the most frequent cause of failure to convince others of a good idea.” –Henry Boettinger

Remember this simple set of rules when defining your community …

• Solving important well defined problems leads to passionate users
• Passion users create excitement for your movement
• Excitement elicits action from your community

2.  Trusted Conversations

If leadership is the most important component of success, trusted conversations is a strong second.  If you think about what communities are and what forms their nucleus, it’s conversation.  The reasons are simple.  The interaction between any two individuals is a conversation, an exchange of information, values, and beliefs.  Get lots of individuals together and there must be conversations at their boundaries in order for them to communicate and share information.

The other necessary component in these conversations is trust.  Communication must be authentic or else trust cannot form between parties.  For instance, if your community’s leaders always talk but rarely listen and are not particularly interested in community concerns, you’ll quickly lose the trust of your users.  Users will notice that your communication is not a conversation but a one-way flow of messages and that their needs are not being considered.  Communication in your community must flow both ways with the leadership of the project careful to listen to criticism and advice from the community and allow the community to help shape project decisions.  Once you begin to communicate with your community in a truly open fashion you’ll begin to see the benefit of an open and honest dialogue and feel it’s impact on your product’s roadmap and community’s growth.

3.  Infrastructure

Just like physical communities need infrastructure to thrive so to does virtual communities.  Physical communities have the town hall, soccer fields, sidewalks, and porches that allow neighbors to meet and converse.  Virtual communities rely primarily on technology to help their members communicate.  Ensuring that the communication infrastructure for your community provides necessary and appropriate tools for communication is critical to its growth.

Make sure you’ve developed an infrastructure strategy that “makes sense”.  Don’t implement every communication technology you can find, that will only make it harder for your members to find and participate in conversations.  Communication tools should help your members to communicate not distract them with choices.  You should ask a single question when analyzing your community’s tool choices…  Will this technology facilitate human interactions?  Always remember communities are about people not technology.

While we’re on the subject of human interactions let’s not forget that your community needs more than just electronic interactions.   If you’re managing a community make sure you don’t overlook the necessity of meeting someone in the real world.  Meeting someone face-to-face creates a different type of relationship with that person, a more human one.  Be sure your humanizing your community.

4. Simplicity

“Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler” –Albert Einstein

If leadership is the most important factor in your project’s success, simplicity may be the hardest to achieve.  As odd as that sounds it’s true.  Henry David Thoreau once said, “Our life is frittered away by detail. simplify, simplify”.  He wasn’t talking about online communities but he was expressing a concern with the complexity of modern life (at the time) and encouraging people to strip away the unnecessary and to focus on the important.  His concern is one I share.  Communities sometimes forget that they have to present themselves in pure and simple terms in order to grow.  The message must be simple.  The ability to communicate should be simple.  The tools must be simple.  This is not because humans can’t grok (understand) complexity.  It’s that they don’t have time to.  In order to grow your community you must concentrate on the most important elements that have an impact.  This means simplifying as many things as possible to get to what truly makes your community unique and beneficial.

Related Posts

Making Corporate FOSS Successful
What They Don’t Teach Community Managers
What Did the Open Source Product Manager Say to the Traditional Product Manager
How to Attract and Keep Users

Some folks in the corporate world have a distorted view of how open source projects work. A lot of the corporate types hear about open source and think that sprinkling magic “open source” dust on their product will suddenly make it successful. They’ll have contributors pile on and massive marketshare will follow. Soon they’ll have a “best of breed” product and do very little actual work since the community will be writing the software, testing it, providing support, etc. Admittedly, I’m exaggerating to some degree, but only slightly.

Read the entire article @ Linux.com

Unaware User -> Awareness -> Interested Potential User

Once you think you’ve got a handle on describing the nature of the problems you solve its time for some outreach.  This requires a Press Kit to be effective.  What’s in a Press Kit you ask?  You should have a simple document that describes your solution and provides information anyone could use to get “their feet wet” with your project.  Make sure it is simple and describes your solution in terms of the problem it addresses and not the technology it uses.  You also want to make sure you have links to more detailed information, and also contact information for a couple of people skilled in answering questions.  Why more than one contact?  I’ve found that usually the press have very short deadlines for filing their stories and what if you’re not around?Once upon a time there was an Unaware User who had an unmet need of some kind.  In this stage the user has a problem (need) that is unsatisfied and is unaware of your solution.  This is our first hurdle.  We must make the Unaware User “aware” of our project or solution.  This is where marketing and viral effects come in (aka. all the social things that most techies don’t like).

Solve a Real Problem

What does your user have at this point?  A need and the desire to solve it, that’s it.  So make sure that the information you provide to the user is as clear as possible on what it is you do and what problems you are trying to solve.  This means making sure your message is targeted at real problems and that you aren’t just talking about technology when you reach out to a user.

Press Kit

Once you think you’ve got a handle on describing the nature of the problems you solve its time for some outreach.  This requires a Press Kit to be effective.  A Press Kit is a simple document describing your solution and provides information anyone could use to get “their feet wet” with your project.  Again, make sure this is described in terms of the user and not the technologist.  You also want to make sure you have links to more detailed information, and also contact information for someone in your project who could answer questions.

Once you have a press kit, read everything related to your niche or industry and find out who the writers are that cover that area.  This will give you a list of people to send your information to.  You can also create a section on your project’s website and ask your users to submit any bloggers or journalist that cover your space.  Once you’ve accumulated your list send a personalized note to each one on the list with a brief summary of your project and why you think it is newsworthy and don’t forget to include a link to your Press Kit.

Work with Other Projects

Of course there are other ways to get the word out.  Being an active and productive citizen of other projects is a great way to introduce users to your project or solution.  Reputation is an awesome thing.  If you have a reputation for helping others and contributing to projects, people will be happy to lend a hand when you need it.  You may even already have some followers if you are actively participating in other communities.  I recently heard the founders of GitHub talk about their startup experiences at the Open Source Bridge conference.  They specifically mentioned their involvement with Rails as one of the reasons they thought GitHub had been successful in the beginning.  If that’s not a testament to playing well in the sandbox nothing is.

Find Your Sneezers

Another important ingredient for creating initial awareness for your project is the “sneezer” effect (aka. finding users that spread the word for you).  A good way to do this is to focus on a specific set of users and focus on helping them be successful with your project.  This is an excellent way to find and attract your initial Sneezer group.  The more niche your segment the better.  Show some group of users a little attention and they may repay the kindness by adopting and spreading the word about your project.

Interested Potential User -> Usage -> First-time User

So now you’ve cleared one hurdle and you’ve created awareness for your project or solution and have an Interested Potential User.   This means you’ve reached your second hurdle which is Usage.  Usage means different things to different software projects.  It could simply mean visiting a page and getting a user to register for your service or it could mean installation and configuration of your software.  If your project is similar to Kablink or iFolder, projects I’m involved in, Usage implies getting users to download and install it on a server.   No matter what the process is your job is get the Interested Potential User using your software.

Make Getting Your Software Easy

So what are some suggestions.  One, create as many ways for interested users to get your software as possible.  Make sure they don’t have to search for the “Download” button or fill out a form to get your software.  Also, its a good idea to get them as close to using your software as you can without them having to do anything.   One way to let people get their feet wet without any commitment is to have an online demo (works in some cases), or a LiveCD, maybe setup a SuseStudio project that people can use, or a VMware image.  The point is to ease the burden of getting involved with your project to a ridiculous level.  If its so easy you think your Grandmother could get started using your stuff then you’re in the ballpark:-).

Install should be a “No-Brainer”

But even if they’ve been able to “test-drive” your software they still may need to install it at some point, so again the rule is “MAKE IT EASY”.  If your newly found user has trouble with the install and configuration you’ve likely lost them forever.  Users poking around looking for a solution to their problems don’t like to drop to command lines or use MySQL clients to install a schema.  They want to have everything done for them and feel like a million bucks when they tell their friends how they installed it without any help.

First-Time User -> Understanding -> Regular User

Okay, let’s say we’ve kept our Interested User this long and she is using our software.  First, congratulations, you’ve made it a long way.  Second, now’s where it gets hard .  Our First-time User now has to have the “Ah hah” moment where they “get” what it is we are doing for them.  I call this hurdle Understanding.  Even with all the messaging we’ve done about solving their problem we still need them to understand and appreciate the way in which we solved the problem.  Our new user must have a clear understanding for what it is we do and how we do it.  This means complexity is a killer.  I don’t know about you but I never read the Help document or peruse the User Guide unless I absolutely have to and that’s usually a very bad thing.  If a user has to resort to Help and Tutorials chances are you’ve lost a good chunk of the initial momentum you had.  Let’s put it this way.  You’d better have some really, really, really good help and gets them back on track quickly.

The Easier the Better

Basically, the goal for overcoming the Understanding hurdle is to let your solution to the user’s problem shine through while not leaving the user scratching their head.  Think about some of your most used applications.  They are very utilitarian and easy to use:  email, Twitter, and the browser come to mind.  These all have common characteristics, they are easy to understand and solve real user problems.   If users are left wondering where they are in your application or don’t understand the solution you’ve provided you’ve likely went through a tremendous effort to get them this far only to loose them because your application simply didn’t make sense to them.  “Made sense to them” is key here.  Maybe you solved the right problem but perhaps you did it in a way that was just not intuitive to your target audience.  The best you can hope for here is to provide some way that users can provide you with feedback before they leave.  If you’ve got some great tips for getting over this hump I’d love to know about them.

Know Your User Through Testing

This is the one that gets most of us.  We solve a problem the way we’d like to see it solved.  Right??  Well, that’s great if you’re the only one who will ever use your software.  If for some reason you’d like to see others use it then … you probably want to do a couple of things.  One, release often.  Yes, this is the new mantra of web enabled software so I won’t dwell on it.  Two, take the time to find a user you think matches your target profile and do some basic testing of your ideas.  I recently found a cool program called Balsamiq Mockup that’s free for open source projects and allows you to bang out a quick UI prototype of what your thinking, but even paper prototyping would work, just make sure that you are using real users to test your concepts.

Use Common Paradigms

For all you creative types out there … don’t even think about it.  Yes I know you think you’ve built the most intuitive new interface to hit the market in years but you haven’t unless the only person using your software is you .  Users get accustomed to doing stuff in a certain way and NOONE LIKES TO CHANGE.  I shouted that so I hope you heard me.  That new navigation widget you created that is a combination of a Sitemap and Breadcrumbs is NOT a great idea.  Why?  because it’s new.  Users want things they understand and if you’ve strayed to far from the norm they will be confused and confusion is death.

Regular User -> Utility -> Passionate User

At this point you’ve got a Regular User because your solution indeed does solve a valuable problem and fulfills some user need.  The next hurdle is converting this Regular User to a Passionate User.  Your dreams should be filled with thoughts of Passionate Users everywhere using your software.  Why? because Passionate Users are like gold, they provide an endless supply of riches for your project.  Passionate Users tell others about your project which helps you overcome the Awareness hurdle.  Passionate Users help refine your product.  Passionate Users give you access to highly motivated test subjects who endure great hardship in an effort to improve your project. But mostly Passionate Users are your bread and butter when push comes to shove and you need help with your marketing efforts, testing, or adding just about anything.  These users are what every software project, or company for that matter, wants and needs to have widespread adoption.

So how is a Passionate User created.  Good question, I wish I knew.  I’d be filthy rich on a beach somewhere with a Corona in my hand:).  What I believe to be the key (and correct me if you think I’m wrong) is that Passionate Users are created through a combination of great Utility in your software and supportive users in your community.  That combination is a powerful one.  If your software is easy to use, solves real problems, and provides and increasing amount of Utility as users become more adept at using it, I’d say your project has a great chance of creating Passionate Users.  However, if you combine great software with a community of users willing to lend a hand to get someone started and make them productive in a friendly welcoming way, I’d say you are well on your way to creating the next big thing .

Passionate User -> Developer Support -> Contributor

In most cases you will probably be thrilled to have an abundance of Passionate Users (I would), but we’re talking about open source here and open source needs contribution from the community.  So how do we get our Passionate Users over the next hurdle and get an OSS Contributor?  Well I believe the requisite step involves making sure the tools are available that allow people to solve their own pressing needs.  Like most software usually some customization is needed to make it fulfill your user’s needs exactly.  Projects that provide an architecture that is easy to understand and extend, documentation describing that architecture, and tools that make getting started in development easy (aka.  SVN, forums, mailing lists, IRC, code examples, etc) have a very good chance of converting passion to contribution.  Think about Wordpress.  Simple concept, easy to understand, great utility, easy to extend, and guess what?  almost 6000 plugins.  Wow!

Not only are tools required but you also needs someone to help explain all the subtle nuisances of your architectures and process for contributing.  This is where it helps to have a welcoming and helpful community behind your project.  The easier it is for new or experienced users to work with your community the more willing they are to help out and try to fix their own or someone else’s problem.  This means starting out you may not have many outside users that can help with this.  If that’s the case, you’d better make sure that everyone that’s involved in your project participates in your community and acts like you’d want new Passionate Users to act.  This means lots of helpful advice, no snippy comments, and plenty of discussion about what problems you are trying to solve and why you’re solving them the way you are.  The best quote I’ve heard recently that describes this is … “He who outteaches, wins”.

Good Luck

So, I know this has been a long post but I hope it was worth it.  I also would love to hear some of your ideas for clearing hurdles.  Leave a comment and let me know your thoughts.  I’d better get started implementing some of this