
Arrested DevOps · 2024-02-01 · 35 min
Openness plays a significant role in propelling DevOps and organizational processes forward. This is not to imply that everything must be open, but the default should be openness unless a valid reason indicates otherwise. Andrew Zigler, developer advocate at Mattermost, and Matty from Arrested DevOps recently shared insights on this subject. They discussed creating impactful developer advocates, managing community writing programs, and dealing with the challenges of open source communities. The Importance of Open Source in Communities Andrew emphasizes that the loudest and most contributory voices in open source projects are usually the paid internal staff. However, he champions setting up pathways in the community to validate the experience of all contributors and reward them with anything from thought leadership, platforms, or even swag. The key is to influence individuals at all levels of engagement and ensure that they feel they own part of what they are contributing. One of the challenges he identified is over-influencing which often stems from the fact that the paid staff are the ones driving the open source project vehicle.