
Show HN: GitMeet – Attract and Retain GitHub Project Contributors - JamesPetullo
https://www.gitmeet.net/
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fundamental
Who is the target market for this site? The repeated use of the term 'jobs'
implies some sort of payment or longer term collaboration, but the interface
seems to look like an idea in the vein of up-for-grabs issues within FLOSS
projects.

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JamesPetullo
The target audience for GitMeet includes any developer who is working on an
open source project and needs other contributors to fix bugs or work on
subprojects within the repository. GitMeet provides popup tips to encourage
users to contribute to projects they have joined and enables project creators
to award "developer reputation" to developers who have provided helpful
contributions to the project. Currently there are no payments involved with
GitMeet, however, the main goal of the site is to encourage long term
collaboration on a project.

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fundamental
So looking at the site, it seems like the main intended differentiators are
the reputation system and the recommendation system (from users to projects).
Both of these sorts of ideas require you to get a critical mass of users &
projects.

Do you have any plans for getting an active userbase?

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JamesPetullo
Currently, I am trying to start small by providing ways to enable current
users to alert others to their projects and jobs via built-in twitter
notifications. Also, I plan to post actively on GitMeet's blog about topics
surrounding use of the platform, opensource software in general, and how
developers on GitMeet can best utilize the developer recommendation system. Do
you think the plan mentioned is a sensible one? Also, are there any other
methods of gaining an active user base that would be more effective?

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fundamental
I think the plan is sensible, but not that realistic in terms of being able to
reach a critical mass. If I was in your position I would integrate much more
closely with external services (github/twitter/etc) to hopefully make it
feasible to have stuff like recommendations work effectively with a much
smaller user base.

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JamesPetullo
Thank you for your feedback. As I add design/add additional features to
GitMeet, how can I also be attracting users to reach critical mass? While the
ideas that I originally outlined are certainly sensible, is there anything in
particular that I am missing in my approach? Are there other ways of spreading
the word about GitMeet? Thank you for your thoughts and time!

