From Fun to Business - How Open Source Changed my Life

coala began as a fun project. We never believed there would be anything useful growing out of it - and yet it did. Contributors all over the world came to us and helped creating the community as it is.

But how did all of this happen? What does this mean for the main contributors? How can we make a living of an open source project?

This talk tells our story. What we did - good and bad things - so we can learn from it. From my personal open source contributions over founding an open source project to building a freelance agency and founding a startup.

Participants will learn how they can grow an open source project, automate newcomer processes and gain insights into how they can start making a living of it, possibly founding a company eventually. There is no single recipe for this but we can - and should - exchange the tips and tricks we’ve gained with our ventures. This talk is for entrepreneurs, wanna-be-freelancers and future or past open source project founders.

This talk is completely new and has not been presented at any conference yet although it overlaps with previous talks of mine which have received much positive feedback at previous regional PyCons. It will be tested at a local meetup to ensure proper timing.