Episode 105: GrimoireLab at Thunderbird

8 snips

Mar 6, 2025

Guest

Luis Cañas-Díaz

In this discussion, Heather Ellsworth, a Senior Developer Relations Engineer, Wayne Mery, Thunderbird's Community Manager, and Luis Cañas-Díaz, leader at Bitergia, delve into their collaboration on community metrics. They share insights on leveraging Grimoire Lab to enhance community engagement and the importance of data-driven decisions. Wayne reflects on Thunderbird's evolution from Netscape, while Heather emphasizes actionable metrics for community health. Together, they offer advice for open source projects considering similar approaches and share their future aspirations.

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ANECDOTE

Heather's Thunderbird Discovery

Heather Ellsworth discovered Thunderbird after rejecting Outlook in a corporate setting.
She fell in love with Thunderbird as a superior alternative email client.

INSIGHT

Beyond Code Contributions

Metrics must include all community activity, not just code contributions.
This holistic view helps understand community health and trends better.

INSIGHT

Data Discovery Process

Initial broad questions about community activity drive data collection.
Detailed questions and improvements come after understanding the data trends.

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Thank you to the folks at Sustain for providing the hosting account for CHAOSSCast!

CHAOSScast – Episode 105

In this episode of CHAOSScast, host Alice Sowerby introduces guests Heather Ellsworth, Wayne Mery, and Luis Cañas-Díaz. Today, the conversation focuses on the collaboration between Thunderbird and Bitergia, detailing their journey in using Grimoire Lab to gather community metrics. Key points include the importance of metrics in understanding community dynamics, the various tools monitored for data collection, and the impact of these metrics on community management. The panelists also share advice for other open source projects considering adopting Grimoire Lab and reflect on future plans. Press download now to hear more!

[00:00:31] Alice, Heather, Wayne and Luis introduce themselves and share their backgrounds.

[00:04:08] Wayne explains Thunderbird’s history and evolution from Netscape Navigator and Heather adds her personal experience with Thunderbird as a user and developer.

[00:06:21] Luis elaborates on Bitergia’s role in providing data and metrics for the Thunderbird community.

[00:07:51] Heather discusses the project between Thunderbird and Bitergia, focusing on community health and data analysis and Wayne emphasizes the need for metrics to understand community dynamics better.

[00:10:10] The origin of the collaboration idea is traced back to discussions about community metrics and Heather and Wayne reflect on their discovery and learning process with GrimoireLab and CHAOSS.

[00:12:09] Luis compares the Thunderbird project with other similar projects and discusses the challenges due to diverse tools.

[00:13:47] Heather talks about developing dashboards to monitor various types of contributions within the Thunderbird community.

[00:16:06] Wayne describes refining the data to better suit Thunderbird’s needs.

[00:17:16] Heather mentions how metrics have influenced Thunderbird’s community engagement strategies.

[00:18:13] The accessibility and public sharing of dashboards is discussed.

[00:21:13] The conversation turns to future plans with GrimoireLab, metrics, and Thunderbird are outlined, focusing on understanding community dynamics better.

[00:23:05] Heather speaks about some of the dashboards in more detail.

[00:25:50] Luis talks about new developments on GrimoireLab, including the extension and updating of tools by their team to enhance support for forums, translation, communication, and tracking issues.

[00:27:46] Our guests share advice about adopting GrimoireLab for other open source projects and GrimoireLab’s benefits.

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