101 on Getting Your Customers To Contribute

on YouTube ↗42m

" summary

GitLab documents a concrete program called co-create that sends an engineer on site for a week, runs hackathon-style workshops, and pairs teams with product owners; contributions go through CLA checks, CI tests and can reach gitlab.com from master in ~8–12 hours. They run gamified onboarding at contributors.gitlab.com, invited 14 people to a study with 10 completing it, and cite case studies including two developers saved time for 30 million users and ongoing customer teams that now ship regular patches.

AI-written summary · about

" chapters (7)

1. 0:00Introduction
2. 2:49Human behavior in open source
3. 10:10Why customers contribute
4. 13:00Motivations for contributors
5. 15:53Simplifying contributions
6. 21:13GitLab’s co-create program
7. 32:50Q&A

" related talks

• 29mEveryone Can ContributeSteve Challis · CTO Craft Con: The Strategic CTO 2023
• 35mWhy Everyone – including Customers & Resellers – Contributes toRay Paik, Pierre Tardy, James Tharpe, Jean-Baptiste Vasseur · GitLab Commit San Francisco 2020
• 13mSid Sijbrandij, GitLab | | GitLab Commit 2020Sid Sijbrandij · GitLab Commit San Francisco 2020
• 24mOpening Keynote - The Power ofSid Sijbrandji · GitLab Commit San Francisco 2020
• 45mAn Open Source Approach to Driving Developer EfficiencyLee Faus · Open Source in Finance Forum New York 2022
• 37mAsynchronous Work: The Next Phase of Remote WorkRadovan Bacovic · DSC Europe 23
• 21mGitLab: The Asynchronous EnterpriseBrendan O'Leary · GOTO Chicago 2020
• 31mGrowing a Social Coding culture, one seed at a timeMarion Deveaud, Florian Greinacher · FOSS Backstage 2025