Community Relations

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2. Handbook
3. Marketing
4. Community Relations

Maintained by:

On this page

• Our mission
• Meet the Team
• How to reach us
  • Chat with us
  • Email us
  • File an issue
  • Emergency contact
• How we work
  • Community Team resources
  • Our handbooks
  • Our workflows
    • Team touchpoints
    • Group Conversation
  • Our calendars
  • Community Relations OKRs
    • How we update our OKRs
  • Community Relations KPIs
• Team Budgets
• Community Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging
  • Event organization best practices
  • Other ways we foster diversity, inclusion, and belonging
• Communites who inspire us
• Community Learning Pathway

Our mission

At GitLab, our mission is to make it so that everyone can contribute.

The Community Relations team supports this mission by working with our community to ensure they receive support and recognition for contributing to GitLab. Contributing to GitLab can include blog posts, code, documentation, discussions on forums/social media, meetups, presentations, translations, UX design, and more. We also support educational institutions and open source projects to host their work on GitLab.

Meet the Team

How to reach us

Chat with us

• Community Relations team members use three Slack channels:
  • #community-relations: for all GitLab-related discussion (ex: questions about an issue, announcement of an upcoming event)
  • #community-hangout: for all social discussion and updates shared via the Community Catch bot (ex: plumbing problems, weekend plans)
  • #commnity-relations-private: for discussion of confidential topics that cannot be shared in a channel with people from outside GitLab (ex: discussing a topic that was shared in #company-fyi-private among our team)
• GitLab team members and others with Slack access can reach us by visiting the #community-relations Slack channel, or by tagging the @community-team
• Members of the wider GitLab community can connect with us in the public Gitter room

Email us

• Please use the e-mail address specific to each program

File an issue

• File an issue to work with us: See our project management section to find program-specific workboards where you can file an issue

Emergency contact

• Community relations emergency contacts
• Incident management roles
• Relevant Slack channels for incident/infrastructure: #incident-management, #infrastructure-lounge

How we work

Community Team resources

• Community Relations project management
• Common program resources

Our handbooks

• Community Operations
• Code Contributor Program
• Evangelist Program
• Open Source Program
• Education Program
  • Education Evangelism
• Startups Program
• Developer Evangelism
• Education Evangelism

Our workflows

• Community Operations workflows which include
  • Responses: Code of Conduct violations
  • Tools: Forum, Twitter, Reddit, etc.
• Developer Evangelism Community Response Process

Team touchpoints

Our team has a few weekly events that we use to stay connected and aligned on our work:

• Team meeting on Tuesdays at 1630 GMT
• 1:1 meeting between each team member and their manager
• Three question check-in via Geekbot for each team member on Thursday at 1000 local time with the responses shared in the #community-hangout channel

Group Conversation

We host a Group conversation for the benefit of other team members. When posting to the What's happening at GitLab Slack to announce a Group Conversation, use the following format to create an engaging and entertaining post.

[Intro with emoji]
Please join me on [Day, 202X-XX-XX, time] for the :community: community Relations Group Conversation! 

:flashlight: We plan on highlighting:
- [list of highlights]

:google_slides: Check out the [slides link] to learn what we've been up to. 
:google_docs: Please add questions to the [ agenda doc link] ahead of time so we can jump right in. :ninja_turtle_jumping_yay:

[outro with call to action to join and some more emojis]
See you then! 

Our calendars

We use team-wide calendars for collective notification and to manage team logistics and events. Additionally, specific teams within Community Relations may maintain calendars specific to their programs (such as the Developer Evangelism calendar).

• Community Relations Team
• Community Events

Community Relations OKRs

Every quarter, we work on team Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) that align with company OKRs.

OKRs we seek to align with:

• CEO OKRs
• Marketing OKRs
• Corporate Marketing OKRs

How we update our OKRs

To update our list of current OKRs:

1. New Epic. In order to facilitate collaboration between the community relations team and the rest of the GitLab teams, OKRs are placed in the gitlab-com project. The naming convention we use for OKRs is: FY-Year-Quarter OKR: Description of OKR
2. Program label. Tag the new epic with a program-specific label (e.g. open source program education program etc).
3. Group label. Tag the epic with the community relations label.
4. OKR label. Add the red OKR label.

Issue Health: We use issue health indicators to help people understand an OKRs status at a glance. These status indicators are:

• on track
• needs attention
• at risk

Community Relations KPIs

The Community Relations team monitors several Key Performance Indicators and related Performance Indicators.

1. Meetups per month 🐔
2. Wider Community merged MRs per release 📊
3. Developer Evangelism Monthly Impressions 🐔
4. GitLab for Education Quarterly Active Seats 🐔

Team Budgets

Learn more on the Community Operations budget page

Community Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging

In alignment with GitLab's core value of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DIB), the Community Relations team seeks to purposefully design DIB into every facet of its programs and operations. We seek to foster DIB at GitLab and within the wider GitLab community.

This section is meant to document tips and best practices that the Community Relations team, and GitLab team, should keep in mind as they plan events and activities.

Event organization best practices

• Tools: We purposefully think about the tools we are using to engage our audience. For example, some people in the open source world may not be able to use tools that are proprietary software. Also, some people in certain countries may not be able to use certain tools because of country restrictions. Sending a survey beforehand with different tool options could help identify good tools to use for a specific event.
• Time zones: We try to be as inclusive of as many different time zones as possible. It is recommended to have 4 hour segments to spread out participation. Possible times: 16:00 UTC‒20:00 UTC for EMEA and NORAM, and 02:00 UTC‒06:00 UTC for APAC and India.
• Code of Conduct: We make our Code of Conduct a requirement at all GitLab events and actively help our community with friction and conflict.
• Accessibility: We advocate for accessibility in all of our events and materials.
• Captioning and Interpretation: Having both captioners and interpreters for online events is important. There are differences in American English and American Sign Language, for example, so captioning alone is not enough. Having a dial-in relay service would work as a "hack" to captions/interpreter, in the worst case scenario. This depends on if the blind person has a video phone/captioned phone to access these services.
• Share slides beforehand: One week before your online event, share the slides with attendees so that people who use screen readers can follow along.
• Images should have alt text: This is for screen readers for people who are blind or are visually imparied. Be descriptive with the image. Maybe a few sentences about what the most important content is.
• Use proper headings in your editor: Use your editor's headings so that screen readers understand the organization of the page.
• Introduce yourself descriptively when you give a talk: In talk intros, briefly describe what you look like so that people who are blind or visually impaired can create a mental image of what you look like and associate that image with your voice.
• Schedule breaks with the 30:5 rule: Make sure to have a 5 min break after each 30 min section.
• Describe infographics with audio: Describe the most important parts of infographics to help with accessibility.
• Hybrid events: Keep having a virtual even option even when in-person begins again!

Other ways we foster diversity, inclusion, and belonging

• Images: We seek to promote the use of images that represent a diverse group of users, customers, and community members. When we see a lack of diverse representation, we speak up and actively help update those images when possible.
• Speakers: As event organizers and participants, we seek to include a diverse set of speakers in events that GitLab organizes or touches.
• We are open-minded: We actively seek feedback and keep an open mind about our current policies. We are open to change and are willing to make structural changes to ensure that we continue to foster DIB among our team and the wider GitLab community.
• We retain a growth-mindset and keep learning: We read articple, attend workshops, and participate in trainings that help educate us about how to foster DIB in our community and how to be inclusive ourselves.
• We encourage a diverse set of community members to participate in research: We recognize the product inclusivity is important and that we need to build with our community, not just for them. We encourage a divers set of community members to participate in our First Look product research program.
• We promote the GitLab Diversity Scholarship program: This scholarship supports Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging-focused events financially.

Communites who inspire us

We take inspiration from the great work being done by other communities. Some of the communities who we take inspiration from:

• Linux Foundation - A large, engaged community that act as custodians for important open source technology.
• CNCF - A large, engaged community that act as custodians for important open source technology.
• FINOS - A large, engaged community that act as custodians for important open source technology.
• Debian - A large, engaged community that act as custodians for important open source technology.
• GNOME - A large, engaged community that act as custodians for important open source technology.
• KDE - A large, engaged community that act as custodians for important open source technology.
• Fedora - A large, engaged community that act as custodians for important open source technology.
• Drupal - A large, engaged community that act as custodians for important open source technology.
• Wikimedia Foundation - This community is a champion for free information with a large, engaged community.
• Kubernetes - This community consists of a large network of user groups and champions that serve to help each other grow and better utilize Kubernetes.
• AWS - This community consists of a large network of user groups and champions that serve to help each other grow and better utilize AWS.
• Dev.to - This community creates a welcoming place for the tech community, particularly newcomers, to learn and share content.
• Hacker News - This community is known for its engaging discussion of the latest tech news and trends.
• Google Summer of Code - This community inspires us through their work to make the tech community more diverse and inclusive and create new opportunities for people new to tech.
• Outreachy - This community inspires us through their work to make the tech community more diverse and inclusive and create new opportunities for people new to tech.
• Grace Hopper Community / Systers - This community inspires us through their work to make the tech community more diverse and inclusive.
• Lesbians Who Tech - This community inspires us through their work to make the tech community more diverse and inclusive.
• Techqueria - This community inspires us through their work to make the tech community more diverse and inclusive.
• Latinas in Tech - This community inspires us through their work to make the tech community more diverse and inclusive.
• Women in Tech - This community inspires us through their work to make the tech community more diverse and inclusive.
• Women Who Code - This community inspires us through their work to make the tech community more diverse and inclusive.
• Rails Girls - This community inspires us through their work to make the tech community more diverse and inclusive.

Community Learning Pathway

The Community Learning Pathway is a course built to educate the community on how the Community Relations team works, the different community programs and how to contribute the GitLab. Members of the Community and GitLab team members who complete the course will earn a badge.