Day Two Cloud 118: Growing Your Open-Source Community

The public cloud relies heavily on open-source software and on companies that build products out of open-source projects. But how do they get off the ground? How do they build awareness in the broader community, communicate the problems they solve, attract contributors, and develop a user base? Guest Emily Omier is a positioning consultant who works with companies that are building a project around open source project to help them communicate the value, what’s being built, and why you should care. The trick is to raise awareness without committing the typical tech marketing sins leaves a bad taste in most engineers’ mouths. We discuss: * The differences between positioning and marketing * How to communicate value by helping people * Attracting contributors * Which communications platforms make sense for an open-source project * The role of content and social media * More Takeaways: Think about what problem you’re solving from the user’s POV. Think about your true believers and what they use it for. One clear sentence that describes your product. Make sure you’re aware of not only features, but why they matter to your users. Sponsor: Aviatrix Check out Aviatrix’s Flight Training to learn about multi-cloud networking and security. It’s worth your time if you’re defining your company’s multi-cloud strategy or want to nail down your Aviatrix Certified Engineer certification. Get details and register at aviatrix.com/flight-training. Show Links: Emily Omier’s Blog Emily Omier on LinkedIn @emilyomier – Emily Omier on Twitter Cloud Native Startup Podcast Transcript [00:00:00.260] – Ethan [AD] Check out sponsor Aviatrix is flight training to learn about multicloud networking and security from the Aviatrix perspective, Aviatrix dot com slash flight training. Worth your time if you’re defining your company’s multicloud strategy or want to nail down your Aviatrix certified engineer Cert Aviatrix dot com slash flight Training. [00:00:25.170] – Ethan Welcome to Day Two Cloud. And today we’re going to have a marketing discussion. Well, we’re kind of going to have a marketing discussion. We’re chatting with Emily Omier. She is a positioning consultant, and she works with open source communities about how to get the word out to the world about this open source project, what it is, what’s being built, why you should care about that? [00:00:47.560] – Ethan Because, Ned, if we’re honest here people that are engineering like us doing things that are marketing related and talking about ourselves and the things that we we’re not good at that, are we? [00:00:58.030] – Ned I feel dirty saying the word marketing. Oh, there it goes. It’s like saying sales. If you want to clear a room and that’s how you do it. But the thing is, if you want people to know about your awesome projects, you got to let them know. And that’s not necessarily marketing. That’s helping out people who might have a problem. So that’s one of the things that we focus on in this episode with Emily. [00:01:19.740] – Ethan So enjoy the show with Emily Omier of Emily Omier Consulting. She is a positioning consultant,