Author: Ben Cotton

Ben formerly led open source messaging at Docker and was the Fedora Program Manager. He is the author of Program Management for Open Source Projects. Ben is an Open Organization Ambassador and frequent conference speaker. His personal website is Funnel Fiasco.

2022-10-19

There is no good time for a meeting, only the time you pick

Scheduling a meeting is the most difficult task placed before a program manager. Here’s how you can find a time when all the times are bad.

Posts

2022-10-12

Why Are There So Many Competing Open Source Projects?

Why do you have so many choices? Explore the reasons, drawbacks, and benefits of competing open source projects.

Posts

2022-10-07

Oh no! The community is growing! (InvenioRDM meeting)

The InvenioRDM community invited me to speak at their 2022 Partner Meeting. Abstract: A growing open source community is a blessing and a curse. When your user base grows, you need to grow your contributor community to keep up. How do you grow your contributors in a sustainable way? Part of it requires building up processes to make the work...

Talks

2022-09-14

Adding accountability in open source

When everyone is responsible, no one is. That’s why even democratic projects need to make someone accountable for important tasks.

Posts

2022-09-07

Three ways to assign people in Taskjuggler

How can you assign someone to a task in a Taskjuggler project? There are three different approaches that you can choose from.

Posts

2022-09-01

Who are you excluding with your default language?

Picking a single language gives you that common basis for communicating. But who do you exclude when you pick that language?

Posts

2022-08-08

Using WhenIsGood to schedule meetings

I don’t want to call these “best practices”, but these are my practices for using WhenIsGood to schedule a meeting.

Resources

2022-08-04

Why program management matters in open source

In my latest article for Opensource.com, I explain how program managers help combat the exponential increase in communication channels.

Posts

2022-07-29

Your open source community needs a program manager

My latest article for The Pragmatic Programmers explains why your community needs a program manager and how to find one.

Posts

2022-07-28

Exploring our bugs, part 2! (Nest With Fedora)

At Nest With Fedora, I took an updated look at stats from years of Fedora Linux bug reports. Abstract: This talk picks up where last year’s “Exploring our bugs” talk left off. It updates stats to include F33 and F34 bugs. But it also adds new dimensions to talk about process changes: how have our blocker and freeze exception bugs...

Talks