Areas of Expertise
Governance
We have 15+ years experience contributing to, building, and leading open source communities. We've worked with every kind of technology organization: startups, tiny non-profits, ad hoc groups, and well-established projects with corporate backing. We know good governance. And we know it's not a one size fits all situation: Every community is unique and needs an approach to governance tailored for it according to its mission, history, demographics, and more.
Whether you're part of a fledgling open source community or a long-established project, we can help you realize the governance that help you reach your goals with an effective use of resources.
Sustainability
Our work with free and open source software projects over the years has taught us that sustainability has become a major concern. Nearly all project leaders want a plan for making projects sustainable in the long-term and most of them struggle to develop and implement an appropriate one. We're here to help.
Funding is a big factor in sustainability, but not the only one. Governance and participation, our other two areas of expertise are also vitally important.
We apply our broad experience working with free and open source software projects to help project leads develop long-term sustainability plans for their communities, including business model development when appropriate.
Participation
Because we've spent over a decade contributing to and leading open source communities, we know they thrive on participation and we know how to build for that participation.
We have an award-winning approach to building diverse and inclusive communities. We co-authored the Citizen Code of Conduct, which is now used by many events and projects. We've built hyper-local participatory communities with Stumptown Syndicate as well as global ones with Mozilla, Zulip, and NumFOCUS.
Whether you're wanting to attract your first contributors, revitalize a long-standing project, or make your project more welcoming and inclusive, we can help.
Questions? Comments?
We love hearing from you!
Services
Event Design
We have years of experience designing and producing fun, community-oriented events, including the annual Open Source Bridge conference and BarCamp Portland.
Whether you want to build community, engage customers, develop new products creatively, or energize stakeholders, produce an awesome event with our event design concierge service. Or, build-up your in-house event expertise with our event planning workshop series.
Want to get an idea of what you'll learn in one of our workshops? Get a free copy of our event planning guide.
Research & Consulting
Whether you want to focus specifically on sustainability, governance, and/or participation, we help you develop new ways of understanding and overcoming the challenges your project is confronting. Not sure which of those areas you need to focus on? We can help you figure that out. Trying to come up with a business plan or a long-term organizational home for your project? We can help with that.
Topics we love to help with: Short- and long-term sustainability plans; selecting a business entity and governance structure; developing a leadership pipeline and succession plan; designing highly participatory, community focused in-person events; improving the contributor pipeline; crisis management.
Facilitation
Deepen your practice around sustainability, governance, and participation through our fun, participatory workshops and other facilitated gatherings.
Based on our knowledge and experience with facilitation methods ranging from Open Space Technology to Future Search, we work with your stakeholders to custom-tailor and run in-person gatherings for your organization/community.
What can you accomplish with these types of meetings? The possibilities are many, including: Solve a particular problem; build consensus and do long-term strategic planning; increase fundraising, leadership, governance or community building capacity within your team.