Building the Metadeck, a Fresh Take on Managing OSS Communities using Pokemon-style Personas

Speaker: Edward Cable

Room: HC 204

Time: Sat 10:30 am – 11:00 am

Format: Lecture (30 Min + Q&A)

Difficulty: Introductory / Some experience required / Expert

Track: Licensing & Governance

Additional Tags: Sustainability & Funding

Presenter Location: In-person

Experience: several-th time speaking / umpteenth time speaking

At: anywhere, at lfnw

Description:

Managing the dynamics of an open source community is a challenging but fulfilling undertaking that requires balancing personalities, skill levels, cultural backgrounds, and motivations. As AI reshapes the tech sector, interpersonal skills—trust, empathy, relationship‑building—are more critical than ever for sustaining healthy OSS communities.

The Mifos community sits at the intersection of open source, fintech, and financial inclusion, bringing together a diverse mix of contributors: technical developers, non‑technical enterprise users, junior and senior contributors, and globally distributed participants. This blend creates a unique dynamic that, when orchestrated well, yields powerful innovation and long‑term contribution.

This talk offers a fresh take on OSS community personas through the lens of Pokemon‑style characters, each representing different contributor “species” with their own strengths, weaknesses, and motivations. Attendees will learn how “Trainers” (community managers and leaders) can build a metadeck of contributors who thrive together.

Drawing on decades of experience guiding the cross‑cultural Mifos community—which has enabled hundreds of contributors across sectors to deliver financial services to millions—the session covers:

Building trusted relationships and loyal community bonds

Managing conflict and dealing with difficult personalities

Designing strong internship and mentoring programs

Unlocking long‑lasting volunteer contribution

Encouraging upstream commercial participation

Identifying and mitigating burnout

Motivating and incentivizing contributors

Balancing egos and uniting technical + non‑technical contributors

This session is valuable both for community managers seeking to cultivate meaningful contribution and for open source contributors wanting to maximize their impact.

Target Audience:

OSS Community Managers

Open source contributors

Anyone seeking to improve community health and contributor engagement