It’s Not Rocket Science, It’s a Flywheel: Engineering OS Communities with DevEx
A presentation at Community Over Code NA 2025 in in Minneapolis, MN, USA by Jeremy Meiss
It’s Not Rocket Science, It’s a Flywheel Engineering OS Communities with DevEx Community over Code NA 2025
The Maintainer’s Dilemma “I want to grow my open source project/community, but that’s going to require a lot of time and effort that I don’t have… So I guess I’ll just wait and hope for the best.” Community over xkcd Code NA 2025 source:
Hope is Not a Strategy Community over Code NA 2025
Jeremy Meiss Director, DevEx & DevRel OneStream Software DevOpsDays KC Organizer Community over Code NA 2025
What is a “flywheel?” “a mechanical device that uses the conservation of angular momentum to store rotational energy; a form of kinetic energy that is proportional to the product of its moment of inertia and the square of its rotational speed. A flywheel is a heavy wheel attached to a rotating shaft to smooth the transfer of power from an engine to a machine.” – The Engineering Choice Community over Code NA 2025
What is a “flywheel?” For the Physicists in the room… 1 2 Iw 2
w = angular velocity, I = moment of inertia
Community over Code NA 2025
What is a “flywheel?” Metaphorically in Community a self-reinforcing loop or cycle that, once set in motion, gains momentum and drives continuous growth and improvement Community over Code NA 2025
Developer Experience (DevEx) _”…the journey of developers as they learn and deploy technology, which if successful, focuses on eliminating obstacles that hinder a developer or practitioner from achieving success in their endeavors.” – Jessica West, Director of Education & Customer Experience (Chronosphere) Community over Code NA 2025
DevEx isn’t new REF: F. Fagerholm and J. Münch, “Developer experience: Concept and definition,” 2012 International Conference on Software and System Process (ICSSP), Zurich, Switzerland, 2012. Community over Code NA 2025
DevEx isn’t new “New ways of working such as globally distributed development or the integration of self-motivated external developers into software ecosystems will require a better and more comprehensive understanding of developers’ feelings, perceptions, motivations and identification with their tasks in their respective project environments.” REF: F. Fagerholm and J. Münch, “Developer experience: Concept and definition. 2012.” Community over Code NA 2025
DevEx isn’t new “…developer experience could be defined as a means for capturing how developers think and feel about their activities within their working environments, with the assumption that an improvement of the developer experience has positive impacts on characteristics such as sustained team and project performance.” REF: F. Fagerholm and J. Münch, “Developer experience: Concept and definition. 2012.” Community over Code NA 2025
Developer Experience (DevEx) The impacts of the experience Negative Positive Time wasted (technical debt, Frictionless onboarding, poor tooling, bad docs, etc.) workflows, docs Losing developers (attrition, Clear standards, guardrails burnout, etc.) Fast feedback loops Lost opportunities (missed deadlines, lost revenue, etc.) Community over Code NA 2025
Developer Experience (DevEx) Core Dimensions 1. Feedback Loops 2. Cognitive Load 3. Flow State Community over Code NA 2025
Developer Experience… …for Open Source projects? Community over Code NA 2025
Back to the flywheel… The FlyWheel Effect Community over Code NA 2025
The DevEx Flywheel Community over Code NA 2025
The DevEx Flywheel Core Components Onboarding & Documentation README.md, CONTRIBUTING.md, Code of Conduct (CNCF Templates) Issue templates & PR templates Good first issues Publish non-code ways to get involved 2012 Andy Lester “14-ways” post Community over Code NA 2025
The DevEx Flywheel Core Components “Time to Joy” & Tooling Hello World Dev Containers (devcontainer.json) Linters & Formatters (Prettier, ESLint, Conventional Commits) Community over Code NA 2025
The DevEx Flywheel Core Components Feedback Loops First Response (ex. GitHub Actions) Code Reviews “Office Hours” Community over Code NA 2025
The DevEx Flywheel Core Components Recognition & Value Celebrate all contributions (All-Contributors Bot, GitHub Action) Publicly thank contributors (release notes, blogs, social) Community over Code NA 2025
The DevEx Flywheel Core Components Leadership Pipeline Mentorship programs Clear paths to maintainership Empower contributors to lead initiatives Foster a culture of inclusivity and collaboration Community over Code NA 2025
The DevEx Flywheel in Action Community over Code NA 2025
Measuring the Spin How many new contributors and who are they? (CHAOSS, OpenSource.com)` Contributor Absence Factor: How reliant is a project on a small number of contributors? (CHAOSS) How long until a first response or close? (CHAOSS First Response, Time to Close) Contributor Activity, Churcn/Retention: Staying for more than one PR? Further Reading View the CHAOSS Metrics Catalog GitHub Repository Insights Community over Code NA 2025
It starts with a single push 1. Follow your own contribution guide. Where do you get stuck? 2. Ask a friend who isn’t familiar with the project to try. Compare notes. 3. Pick the single biggest point of friction and fix it this week. Community over Code NA 2025
Conclusion Stop hoping for community growth and start engineering it. DevEx principles in business can be applied to OSS projects. Focus on Onboarding, Tooling, Feedback, and Recognition. Small, consistent improvements create powerful, sustainable momentum. Community over Code NA 2025
@jerdog.dev /in/jeremymeiss Thank you! @jerdog @jerdog@hachyderm.io jmeiss.me Community over Code NA 2025
END Community over Code NA 2025
It’s no secret that building and sustaining thriving open source communities requires moving beyond sporadic contributions and fostering an ecosystem of engaged members. That process is not simple, and requires a lot of time and effort, which is not often something a maintainer has, which more often than not leads to maintainer burnout or project stagnation.
In this talk, Jeremy will connect the principal of a “flywheel” that we see in everyday life with the principles of Developer Experience, and discuss what a “DevEx Flywheel” should look like. He will explore how things like feedback loops, “time to joy”, onboarding, and documentation all contribute to an experience that can enhance contributions, which in turn improves project health, value, and more.
Stop hoping for community growth; start engineering it through Developer Experience.
Resources
The following resources were mentioned during the presentation or are useful additional information.
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IEEE Developer experience: Concept and definition
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Irc_cBSPr9VMyeu4vCL3iz-BzhL-_X98/view?usp=drive_link
