5 tips for promoting your open source project - Related to now, what?, slow, dawn, is

5 tips for promoting your open source project

After months or years of hard work, you’ve just pushed your open source project to GitHub and made it public. Now it’s time to tell the world about it.

Chances are you’d rather spend time writing code than getting the word out about your project. Maybe your project will go viral and you won’t have to spend much time on marketing. But chances are you’re going to need to do some work to build awareness, at least in the early days. Fortunately, there are plenty of people who have been down this path and are willing to help. In this article, experienced maintainers offer their advice on sharing open source projects with the world.

Start with the obvious. Post to social media about your project. Submit it to Hacker News, Reddit, Product Hunt, and similar sites. Then keep an eye peeled for people who have the problem that you’re trying to solve. Respond to their posts and let them know you have a potential solution. Reach out to podcasts and YouTube channels. Submit talks to conferences. Offer to speak at meetups.

Keep promoting your work as you improve the project. Remember that people want to hear about helpful tools that solve real problems, as long as you’re genuinely trying to help, and not just spamming your followers. You might not be comfortable with self promotion, but you need to promote your work to get it out there. “You shouldn’t feel icky about it,” Sidecar maintainer Aaron Francis told us in a Q&A. “You put a lot of time into making something helpful.”.

Focus on the problem your project solves.

What should you say when you’re promoting your work? First and foremost, you need to know what problem your project solves and be able to communicate that to potential customers as simply as possible. “One of the biggest mistakes I see is the use of too much technical terminology,” says Chakra UI maintainer Segun Adebayo. It might be tempting to talk about the technologies you’ve built your solution upon, or the latest buzzwords you think customers might be interested in. Open source customers are, after all, often your fellow developers and technical people. But it’s easy to go overboard and obscure the value of the project.

For example, your project might make clever use of decentralized computing principles, points out Tasha Drew, co-chair for Kubernetes’ Working Group for Multi-tenancy, but what people really care about is why they should use it. “What’s the message you want people to take away from your webpage or your README? It’s probably not related to the theory behind the code,” she says.

Use that core message everywhere: Social media posts and profiles, blog posts, tutorials, etc.

Getting someone’s attention is only one part of the battle. If you want people to actually use, share, and contribute to your project, you need clear, up-to-date documentation. “Write as much as you can stand to write,” Francis says. Not only will it make your user experience superior, it might even improve your code. “If you find it’s hard to document a particular feature, that’s probably a sign that it’s too complicated and you need to simplify it,” he explains.

Think beyond just documenting the code. You should provide things like quick starts, tutorials, and screencasts. “Video is really helpful for a lot of people,” Adebayo says. “People learn in different ways so it’s crucial to provide different types of content.”.

No matter how good your documentation is, people are still going to have questions—and, if you’re lucky, pull requests. It’s essential to be responsive, especially when you’re just starting out. “Time is finite, we only get one life, so value those people who are willing to spend some of their precious resources on you,” Francis says. “That applies not just to people sending pull requests, but to people pointing out problems or making suggestions on social media as well.”.

That doesn’t mean you have to be on call 24/7 to provide an immediate reply to every single question and comment. But it does mean you shouldn’t let pull requests, issues, and comments sit for too long without a response. You have to let people know your project is active, and that you value their input. “It might be intimidating at first to interact with people you don’t know, but you have to do it if you want to grow,” says Adebayo. “This is a sure way to meet new people and make new friends that might be helpful to you in the future.”.

You need to document both how to use your project, and how to contribute to it. Create [website] and [website] files with your contribution guidelines and code of conduct. These let potential contributors know that you’re open to contributions and that you’ve put some thought into working with others. It’s especially helpful to provide a list of what you would, and would not, like potential contributors to help with.

Remember that non-code contributions, like documentation, support, and graphic design, are a big part of any successful project. While these aren’t necessarily non-technical, you shouldn’t assume too much technical knowledge. “You want to make your language and project easy to understand so that people of various technical skill levels will be interested,” Drew says.

Also be sure to take advantage of the “Help wanted” and “Good first issue” labels. These can help people who are looking for ways to contribute find your project.

Get started contributing to open source now.

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My Blogging Dawn

It’s been a long time since the idea of blogging has been lingering in my mind. This thought, however, was unable to materialize until now because I wasn’t sure about what to write. I kept thinking: What could I write that someone else might enjoy or find useful?

This idea has been simmering for a while, and I’m finally ready to give it a shot. I’ll be focusing part of my efforts on documenting what I’m up to, sharing my interests, and outlining the next steps I’m planning to take.

A little about myself: I’m a software development student from Latin America, and in April, I’ll be starting my 5th semester.

In the short term, my goal is to design and deploy a handful of websites that family members need. I’ll also be designing my own personal blog. I’ll be diving into Python too, as I’m eager to start exploring machine learning. I believe that at my current job, machine learning could add significant value, and it could help me eventually transition into a more IT-related role (currently, I work in operational management).

I hope I’ll be writing again sooner rather than later.

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Slow Is Officially the New Down. So Now What?

Slow is officially the new down. That’s a major finding of Catchpoint’s SRE study 2025, with 53% of study respondents agreeing with this expression, and 44% stating “performance should be tracked against a service-level objective.”.

In the context of the SRE findings, the research was ostensibly talking about web performance and the need to deliver fast, personalized and seamless digital experiences. The findings goes on to say, “poor [app] performance is as bad as complete downtime or unavailability,” and that IT should measure performance against experience-based objectives ([website], ensure 95% of our clients can check out on our site in under 5 seconds).

This got me thinking. How can you litmus test the importance of performance for yourself without all this jargon? (Think of this advice: “Before you marry a person, you should first make them use a computer with slow internet to see who they really are.”).

Getting to the more essential, serious question, what can organizations do to account for this new paradigm?

First, for funsies, here are some personal litmus tests to gauge your own view on the importance of performance.

The next time you go through a drive-through window and the entity on the other side asks, “May I take your order?” do not respond. Instead, start counting slowly: “One Mississippi … two Mississippi …” I’d venture to guess they might again ask, “May I take your order?” before you get to three or four Mississippis. Note, if you order ahead on an app, instead of ordering at the drive-through, then slow is already the new down for you!

2. The Hourglass Should Really Be a “Seconds Glass”! (Get It???).

The next time you go to place an online order and you get any form of an hourglass ([website], the hourglass icon, a “please do not refresh this page or go back” message, etc.), be mindful of how long you wait before you start thrashing your cursor or checking your phone for the latest notifications or social media updates. It probably will only be a few seconds.

The next time you start watching a ”how-to” video, take note of how long you watch before you start thinking, “Just show me how to do it already.” Chances are, it won’t be too long before you go back and look for another video with a shorter duration.

Now that we’ve warmed up a little bit, let’s get serious. Faster websites and apps mean faster money for your organization. There is no shortage of data on the positive impact of “fast” sites versus the negative impact of “slow” sites (which really means fast vs. slow user experience).

With that in mind, let’s look at five actions to help you address the “slow is officially the new down” problem.

It’s crucial to align the perceptions of reliability practices across different managerial levels. Our research highlights a stark contrast in how various levels of managerial responsibility perceive reliability practices. If IT and business teams can’t agree on what’s broken, it becomes nearly impossible to prioritize web performance initiatives. To address this, acknowledge the gap between IT and business perspectives and work towards bridging it.

Ensure there is a clear, shared understanding of the current state by comparing “work as imagined” versus “work as actually done.” Additionally, understand how IT efforts to improve web performance can positively influence business revenue and other critical KPIs.

2. Track Performance Against Experience-Level Objectives.

Tracking performance against experience-level objectives is essential. Most IT organizations focus solely on good or “green” internal IT metrics, but this doesn’t necessarily mean the individuals’ digital experience is also good.

Monitoring and measuring internal metrics alone won’t guarantee a good user experience. Therefore, it’s crucial to add outward-in, experience-based indicators, such as the number of people who complete a checkout on your site, and track them against experience-based objectives. Visualize whether you are on track to meet or miss these objectives using a burndown chart to provide a clear picture of your progress.

3. Get Answers Faster With AI and Analytics.

Leveraging AI and analytics can help you get to the answers faster. In addition to tracking experience-level objectives, use AI and analytical capabilities to look beyond simple averages. Central-tendency averages can be misleading and don’t reveal the percentage of clients having different types of experiences ([website], fast or slow).

It’s essential to identify the long tails (the less frequent values), as they may represent significant revenue findings. Use advanced analytics to present full distributions of performance data and break down data by essential business dimensions, such as which markets generate the most revenue. Employ AI to find trend shifts and correlations within your datasets.

4. Apply a Performance Mindset to Every Stack Component.

Measuring the performance of your application solely at its source, such as from the same cloud where it’s hosted, provides no insight into what impacts the user experience. This is why you must apply a performance mindset to all stack components between a user and your sites or applications. Since experience-level objectives are crucial, having visibility into what affects that experience will help you address performance issues as they arise ([website], did performance regress after this last enhancement?).

Therefore, in addition to measuring performance at the source, measure the performance of the user’s experience — where it actually occurs — to gain a comprehensive understanding.

5. Maintain Continual Performance Improvement and Optimization.

Lastly, lead with a culture of continual performance improvement and optimization. Performance is not a one-time effort; it requires ongoing work to improve and optimize both the frontend and backend. As clients’ expectations continue to rise, their demand for faster and faster experiences will also continue to rise.

To meet these expectations, consider these 4C’s. Establish a culture of communication and collaboration, catalyzed by an evergreen performance mindset. This will help ensure that your organization remains focused on delivering optimal performance.

To learn more about this research, download the SRE findings 2025 or read it online (no registration required).

Register for the TNS webinar Performance Under Pressure: Why Internet Performance Monitoring Is Non-Negotiable for Today’s Websites and Apps in partnership with Catchpoint. March 25, 2025, 1 [website] ET | 11 [website] PT.

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