Docs, Demos, and Mentors: Growing Open Source
Session Abstract
„Why aren’t more people contributing?“
Contributors are the lifeblood of open source, yet many projects struggle to grow beyond a small core team.
In this workshop, you will learn simple, hands-on techniques to get more people contributing to open source projects.
Session Description
Why do promising open source projects struggle to attract and keep contributors?
After training 2,000+ developers across Africa and Europe and leading community engagement for 10,000+ API users at Paga, I’ve seen the answer firsthand: contributors vanish when documentation is dense, demos are missing, or mentorship is nonexistent.
This talk transforms those gaps into growth engines.
I’ll break down three pillars to turn your project into a self-sustaining contributor magnet:
A. Docs as Onboarding Engines
i – Transform static guides into interactive pathways that welcome newcomers and accelerate their first PR.
B. Demos as Trust Builders
i – Use lightweight, reproducible examples (e.g., GitHub Codespaces) to prove your project’s value in seconds—not hours.
C. Mentors as Multipliers
i – Design scalable mentorship models that pair newcomers with experienced contributors without burning out maintainers.
You’ll walk away with:
1 – A playbook to make docs actionable, demos irresistible, and mentorship sustainable.
2 – Metrics that matter: time-to-first-PR, repeat contribution rates, and retention benchmarks.
3 -Anti-burnout strategies to operationalize growth while protecting maintainer energy.
Drawing from global projects (like Kubernetes) and local communities I’ve supported), this session answers the questions every maintainer asks:
„Why aren’t more people contributing?“
„How do we scale without adding more maintainers?“
If you’re tired of answering the same beginner questions or watching contributors slip away—this is your roadmap to resilient growth.
