Fueling innovative software
July 15-18, 2019
Portland, OR

Marketing your open source project

Deirdré Straughan (Amazon Web Services)
4:15pm4:55pm Wednesday, July 17, 2019
Open Source
Location: E145/146
Secondary topics:  Open Source
Average rating: ****.
(4.14, 7 ratings)

Who is this presentation for?

  • Anyone involved in open source

Level

Non-technical

Description

Your open source project competes with millions of others for users, contributors, and perhaps financial support. To stand out from the crowd, you need marketing. If that term makes you shudder (or if you simply think you don’t know how), don’t worry. Deirdré Straughan takes you through what you need to know about open source marketing.

Deirdré details what marketing is (and isn’t), explains why and how you need to do it, and provides practical examples and case studies. Join in to get an overview of marketing tools, and when each is useful, and a guide to the time and resources you’ll need. Along the way, Deirdré explains the importance of overall customer experience (a.k.a. community) and what that implies for your project. You’ll come away knowing why marketing matters, even when you’re not trying to sell something—along with some helpful tips and shortcuts.

What you'll learn

  • Discover what marketing (really) is and why your open source project needs it
  • Understand marketing strategies and related activities that can help a project and community grow and thrive
  • Learn useful tips and shortcuts for developing content and other marketing materials
  • Get a primer on the importance of a healthy community in attracting users and contributors to a project
Photo of Deirdré Straughan

Deirdré Straughan

Amazon Web Services

Deirdré Straughan is the open source content lead at Amazon Web Services, where she helps technologies grow and thrive through marketing and community. Her product experience spans consumer apps and devices, cloud services and technologies, operating systems and kernel features. Her toolkit includes words, websites, blogs, communities, events, video, social, marketing, and more. She has written and edited technical books and blog posts, filmed and produced videos, and organized meetups, conferences, and conference talks. You can learn more about her at Beginningwithi.com.