Turn Contributors into Maintainers with TAG Contributor Strategy
Talkat KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2021 · on Thursday, 2021-10-14· at 11:00· Room 402 AB + Online·
summary
Provides ready-to-use templates and a measurable process to turn contributors into maintainers: a contributor ladder template (six levels in the repo, typical projects use 3–4), governance templates (used by KubeVirt’s maintainer council), and contributor-growth guides on contribute.cncf.io. Recommends tooling such as community CRM and automation for thank‑you tweets/messages, and concrete recognition programs (Linkerd’s monthly hero recognition with three categories). Claims these reduce friction, clarify promotion criteria, and are already adopted by several new and incubating projects.
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chapters (24)
- 0:00Intro
- 1:12Agenda
- 1:39What is TAG
- 2:27TAG products
- 4:58Initial motivation
- 5:35Level of effort required
- 7:43Ease of contribution
- 8:28Automation
- 8:40Small things
- 10:54Recognition
- 12:41Maintainers
- 13:38Contributor Ladders
- 15:18Great Authority Responsibility
- 16:19Template for contributor ladder
- 17:28Maintaining State
- 17:51Membership
- 19:47Summary
- 20:24TAG Resources
- 21:09Questions ready
- 22:05Question
- 27:30How to Join the TAG
- 28:44How to Get Involved
- 29:22Which Projects Have Adopted
- 30:21Wrap Up
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