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RailsConf 2017: It's Dangerous to go Alone: Building Teams like an Organizer by Colin Fleming Leading an open source or community project means dealing with people challenges in addition to technical challenges -- how do we take a scattering of interested people and build a team with them? Turns out, we can adapt a bunch of practices we already use! Using a collaboration between a nonprofit and a civic group as a case study, we'll talk about ways to apply best practices from community organizers to our work. In particular, we'll talk about similarities between contemporary organizing and agile models, ways to build relationships with other team members, and making our work more sustainable.
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In his talk "It's Dangerous to go Alone: Building Teams like an Organizer" at RailsConf 2017, Colin Fleming explores the idea of treating teamwork and community engagement in tech projects through the lens of community organization. Fleming emphasizes the challenges faced when leading open-source and community projects, particularly in cultivating relationships among team members to ensure sustainability and prevent burnout. **Key Points:** - **Importance of Community:** The dependency on community contributions for successful project execution is highlighted, urging leaders to build a supportive ecosystem. - **Personal Relationships:** Building individual relationships is foundational. Engagement with contributors is crucial for sustained involvement—people remain engaged not just because of the work, but also because of interpersonal connections. - **Case Studies:** - *Voter Contact Program (2012):* Fleming shares his experience in organizing a voter outreach program, where he successfully mobilized volunteers by leveraging their existing connections to the campaign, illustrating the effectiveness of community building. - *DC Abortion Fund (2016):* He discusses transforming an inefficient case management system through collaborative technical efforts, demonstrating how shared goals can unify diverse contributions. - **Organizational Framework:** Fleming introduces a playbook for organizing which emphasizes clarity of goals, relationship-building, and structured collaboration. He insists that these practices align closely with Agile methodologies already familiar to software developers. - **Burnout Prevention:** By encouraging teamwork and distributing tasks among a community, individual risk of burnout can be mitigated. He promotes accessible entry points for contributors to reduce anxiety and encourage participation. - **Leadership Role:** Leaders should facilitate interactions, reduce barriers to entry for new members, and promote progressively challenging tasks to foster competence and confidence within teams. **Conclusions:** Fleming advocates for a community-first approach where interpersonal relationships and shared goals are prioritized. Reflecting on his experiences, he stresses that community building is as vital as the technical work itself, suggesting that by implementing these organizing principles, teams can overcome challenges more effectively and create a more sustainable ecosystem for their projects.
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