Growing the Cassandra Community
As the Apache Cassandra® community grows, it is important that we have a place to call home – a place where end users and contributors alike can find the resources they need to be successful with Cassandra. Whether success is enhancing how you use Cassandra to power your business, or contributing the next awesome feature to the project, each of us needs access to information and community support to achieve our goals with Cassandra. End-users should always have the opportunity to learn new ways of using Cassandra, and contributors should have no barriers to getting involved with the project in the areas where they can offer innovation. With that in mind, we have made easy access to guiding resources a top priority for our community.
We’re excited to announce that today we have relaunched a revitalized Planet Cassandra community hub. Planet Cassandra is your central place to keep informed about the Cassandra project and find out how you can use and contribute to it. The platform aggregates content from a variety of online sources and brings documentation and learning resources into one place. The goal is to make it easier for new users to start using Cassandra, existing users to learn more, and contributors to have a greater impact.
We also want to make it easier for all users to connect and collaborate with each other. So, along with relaunching Planet Cassandra, we will also be exploring a few ways that we can do this effectively:
Update & Consolidate Documentation
We can all speak from experience that documentation, whether its technical and end-user docs or community and process docs, has a habit of becoming out- dated with surprising regularity. To work toward the goal of providing alway-current information to the community, public documentation for joining the Cassandra community will be reviewed and updated where necessary with regularly scheduled reviews as we move forward.The documentation will also be updated to consolidate end-user and contributor information in the appropriate locations and ensure a single source of truth rather than disparate pages in different locations.
Audit & Clarify Community Platforms
We want to meet the community where they are – whether it be on Slack, Discord, Mailing Lists, or somewhere else. We will be taking a look at how the community is using each of these platforms, and with what frequency. From there, we will provide public guidance on how to use each platform. As needed, we will bolster support of new channels and move away from channels no longer serving us, to ensure we are able to easily connect with each other.
Host Regular Onboarding Meetings
Along with the clarification of the community platforms, new meetings will be added to the Cassandra community calendar. The purpose of these meetings will be to welcome and onboard new members and help them find their way as they get started. There will be separate meetings for end users and contributors, and they will be open to anyone who wishes to join, including experienced community members looking to renew their engagement.
These are just a few ideas – we want to hear from all of you! Please comment below with what you need to be successful with Cassandra.
