Meet Sara Ford, New Community Manager at Open Source Network Ohloh

by Lisa Hoover - Dec. 28, 2010Comments (0)

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When open source networking community Ohloh brought Sara Ford, former Program Manager for Microsoft's Codeplex, on board in November of this year, they landed someone with more than 10 years of experience creating developer tools and working within developer communities. As Ohloh's Senior Product and Community Manager, she no doubt has a busy and exciting road ahead of her. We caught up with Ford recently to find out what she has to say about her new job and how she plans to lead the Ohloh user community in the coming months.

OStatic: What will your primary responsibilities be in your new position and what are you most looking forward to?

SF: As the Senior Product Manager for Ohloh, my primary responsibilities will be to manage the design and development of Ohloh and to manage the Ohloh community to provide the most trusted, comprehensive, free site for learning about, searching for, and keeping track of open source software.

I’m looking forward to every aspect of my job! I’ve dreamed for a long, long time about an opportunity to build a highly valuable community that represents all of FOSS -- and Ohloh is it. I’m excited to have the opportunity to go out into the Ohloh and FOSS community, listen to their feedback, and provide support for any issues or concerns. I’m eager to incorporate the community’s feedback into Ohloh’s product designs and feature schedule, and show continuous improvements to Ohloh through Agile methodologies. There’s no greater joy than responding to your users on a consistent and timely basis through site improvements.

Lastly, I’m excited by the prospect of incorporating Black Duck’s Koders.com free code search site and its KnowledgeBase into Ohloh to provide the broadest set of FOSS discovery and tracking tools available. Plus we’ll help developers find the best projects for their needs, whether it’s well-known and popular or one of the more difficult to find ‘long-tail’ projects. Folks who know me know very well I have the energy and focus to dedicate this level of passion to every aspect of my job. My past work with Codeplex.com, where we grew the community from 2,800 projects to over 13,000 when I left, speaks for itself.

OStatic: What appeals to you most about working with Ohloh?

SF: Having spent many years breaking down barriers to open source adoption and development for developers, product managing Ohloh is the opportunity of a lifetime. Our goals with Ohloh are to promote FOSS adoption, to make it easier to use and integrate, and to enable FOSS projects to be used in new, innovative ways by more developers, leading to faster evolution and adoption. More and more developers leverage FOSS rather than re-inventing the wheel. It’s a powerful strategy for development that’s becoming more accepted and formalized – a revolution compared to traditional development – and I’m excited to be part of it. I’m fully committed to Ohloh’s development and service to the FOSS community.

OStatic: How will you put your personal stamp on Ohloh as its new community manager? What goals do you have for yourself?

SF: Community is walking among your users, whether attending user groups or just chatting on Twitter. I want the community to know who I am and to hold me accountable to be responsive to their feedback, to be transparent in my plans, and to show continuous improvements to the site. The goal I have for myself is for the community to be able to say, “Wow, the Ohloh team really cares about the work they do and it shows.” Personally, I hold myself to a very high standard because of the incredible potential a site like Ohloh, combined with Koders.com and the KnowledgeBase, has for the FOSS community.

OStatic: Ohloh hasn't had a community manager before. Does that make it easier or more difficult for you to jump in and get started?

SF: Every community is different, which its own specific needs and reasons for coming together. Even if there were a previous community manager, you still have to be a person to be a part of a community, so my first step will be to jump in and listen. Fortunately, I’ve had tremendous role models in the past, like Jono Bacon, the Ubuntu Community Manager and author of The Art of Community, and Russ Turk, former Community Manager for SourceForge. Both have given me guidance over the years in what makes a community successful. For example, Ross Turk taught me that it is not about me versus you, but rather “It’s about what we can do to make our individual communities as successful as possible.”

I’ve been working in professional online communities for the past seven years, with recent experience building a forge (Codeplex.com), so I’ve done this all before. Even though Ohloh is not a forge, the basic community management concepts still apply. And I can’t make changes until I’ve had a chance to understand the community’s needs, and the community has had a chance to get to know me as a person. Quoting Jono Bacon’s The Art of Community book, “If there is no belonging, there is no community.” At the end of the day, community is all about people knowing they have a place where they belong.

Stay tuned as we re-energize Ohloh and make it the premier FOSS developer community and destination for open source information. I’m looking forward to comments, questions, and collaboration with the Ohloh community.