Dan Franc

Complex Adaptive Systems are everywhere in nature, but they can also guide us to build large contributor groups. Learn how to apply their 6 key strategies to create a global self-sustaining community, which were successfully used in evolution of the Google Developer Groups to a global movement.

Ever wondered if your project has a potential to engage a large, global contributor community? Well, likely it has. You just have to follow the nature! So consider ant nests, Amazon rainforests or financial markets… what do have these in common with global developer communities? All share the same key principles enabling their relatively limited individual members to interact, create emergent projects and co-evolve these ecosystems to massive scale in a distributed, boss-less way. When building developer communities, we can learn a lot from natural systems about how to create a similar self-sustained ecosystem of people, contributing to a larger cause. The key principles have been well described by the complex adaptive theory, but let’s be very practical today. On the example of building Google Developer Groups from few contributors 9 years ago to today’s massive global volunteer movement running one meetup event approximately every hour, we’ll show how you can apply the very same principles to your community or volunteer based project and grow your ecosystem big, yet still actionable.