2026-09-12 –, Auditorium
Many activities these days, be it sports, social work, arts or free and open source software, are organized in some sort of community. If backed by a respective organization, this not only helps with setting up a structure, but also puts statutes and rules in place that set forth the values and ideals all contributors should share. Inside these communities, there can be various roles. Some of them are formalized, like the board of directors or the supervisory board, others are within dynamically grown groups that can change frequently. Either of those are ideally composed of experienced and enthusiastic community members who take leadership and responsibility.
Based on my experience from the last two and a half decades, I’d like to point out common problems when working in an international free and open source community, share mistakes I’ve made and tell how you can hopefully avoid them.
Florian has been a free and open source enthusiast since 2004. He works for The Document Foundation, the nonprofit behind LibreOffice and previously volunteered in marketing and infrastructure. As a student, he designed educational computer systems for schools, including software deployment based on free software and was a frequent contributor to a variety of professional magazines worldwide on topics such as free software, open standards and legal matters. A proud uncle, he loves to spend time with the family and occasionally blogs about various topics, including community building, free and open source software and computer networks. Based around Munich, he helped to create the local open source meetings and shaped the tasty idea of open source cooking.