CHAOSScast

Episode 96: What's new with GrimoireLab, the open-source community analytics platform

Oct 31, 2024

Courtney Robertson, a seasoned WordPress contributor and Developer Advocate at GoDaddy, joins Santiago Dueñas, the GrimoireLab project leader and CTO of Bitergia, to discuss community analytics. They explore GrimoireLab's evolution from university research to a key tool for tracking community health. Courtney shares how WordPress leverages the platform for contributor recognition, while Santi delves into technical enhancements like transitioning to OpenSearch. They also touch on the importance of user feedback and automation in tracking community contributions.

33:58

Creator website

Episode guests

Santiago Dueñas

Courtney Robertson

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Episode notes

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

GrimoireLab has evolved from a NoSQL database to OpenSearch, enabling better integration and analysis of community health metrics across multiple tools.

The platform addresses the shortcomings in measuring volunteer contributions, helping projects like WordPress recognize unsponsored contributors and improve engagement.

Deep dives

The Evolution of GrimoireLab

GrimoireLab is an innovative platform that evolved from the Metrics Grimoire tools developed at LibreSoft, focusing on analyzing software projects from both code and process perspectives. It initially utilized a NoSQL database, Elastic, but has transitioned to OpenSearch due to licensing changes. The platform integrates various tools to streamline the collection, enrichment, and visualization of data from multiple sources, catering to the growing complexity of open-source projects. This integration enables users to interact with a cohesive dataset rather than juggling several isolated tools, which enhances the user experience and insight generation.

Intro

3min

The Evolution of GrimoireLab

14min

Enhancing GrimoireLab for Open-Source Analytics

12min

Community Engagement and Personal Reflections

4min

Embracing Physical Media in a Digital World

2min

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

CHAOSScast – Episode 96

In this episode, host Georg Link is joined by guests Courtney Robertson and Santiago (Santi) Dueñas to discuss the latest updates and future directions of GrimoireLab, an open-source tool designed to analyze community health metrics. They dive into how GrimoireLab originated, its current usage, and how organizations like WordPress and Bitergia are utilizing it for community contribution tracking. They explore the challenges of scaling the tool and the needs for further automation and data source integration. Courtney shares insights on how WordPress uses GrimoireLab to track contributors, improve sustainability, and automate reporting, while Santi explains the technical evolution of GrimoireLab, including moving to OpenSearch and improving database performance. Hit download now to hear more!

[00:00:57] Courtney shares her background in Word Press and contributions to the community since 2005.

[00:02:07] Santi introduces himself and talks about the origins of GrimoireLab as a spinoff from Bitergia.

[00:03:34] Georg explains his role as co-founder of the CHAOSS project and its connection to GrimoireLab.

[00:05:04] Santi discusses the history and name origins of GrimoireLab.

[00:09:21] Courtney talks about her journey using GrimoireLab for WordPress metrics and how it helps improve contributor recognition and shares a story how she met Georg for the first time at a CHAOSScon.

[00:16:38] Courtney shares her “Wish list” for WordPress community data tracking, including new data sources and scaling challenges.

[00:25:04] Santi explains the current focus on improving GrimoireLab’s scalability and performance.

[00:27:55] Georg shares final thoughts on future developments.

[00:29:47] Find out where you can follow Courtney and Santi online.

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