2024-06-13 –, D0207 (capacity 90)
As community architects, we try to make design decisions that will lead to the type of community we're trying to create. We tend to think about this is the same way that we would construct a building (often we call ourselves architects!), but humans are not bricks, and don't always react in rational ways.
In this talk, we'll look at some of the problems we have to confront when designing communities, including:
- How can we get people to contribute to specific tasks/efforts
- How do we motivate & recognise contribution
- How do we encourage the right behaviour and norms, and deal with those who break the rules
- How do we integrate newcomers with our existing members
Drawing on evidence from the literature of psychology, sociology, and economics, we can learn more about how to design around these questions. Many of the results are known from experience to community managers and architects, but other results are not so obvious, and some are completely counter-intuitive. We'll go into detail on a handful, and provide some further reading material for those who want to further.
This talk is aimed at new and existing community managers/architects, and hopes to leave them better informed about some of the choices and pitfalls in front of them when working in their own communities
Greg Sutcliffe has been participating in open source communities for almost two decades, and is currently a Community Architect for Ansible. He's interested in the structure of communities, how people interact, and how communities achieve their aims. He's also interested in community data, and how we can use that to understand communities through a different view. He also wishes people wouldn't take averages of things they shouldn't.