Speaking with my personal hat, not as Developer Evangelist at GitLab.

I've joined my first OSS project in 2009 (left in 2020), and I have to admit - communication can be challenging. There are many best practices, little are documented, and projects and companies differ in their workflows.

Here are few things I would encourage to do, or ensure to have in the very beginning:

- Be transparent in all your decisions. Discuss in the open, record meetings for the public, share the meeting notes with everyone. If the project reaches a level where everything is discussed behind closed doors, and the only community updates are marketing blog posts and AMA threads ... that's a warning signal to lose your community.

- Provide a handbook or documentation for all workflows. How to contribute, which direction/roadmap (in text form, not as a Git* issue board). Avoid so-called "product conferences" where you announce your roadmap. Instead, be open and have milestones to follow and discuss.

- Community members should _never_ be treated as "you can submit a patch, but don't bug me further". Assume positive intent, and get feedback from problem reports.

- Do not moderate or manage a community. Help seed the knowledge, and share trust with creating a governance structure (core team, community advisors, etc.). _Never_ silently remove granted permissions, losing trust. (that happened to me in 2020, I then made the decision to leave the OSS project Icinga after 11 years)

- Establish a sense of belonging, share praise and encourage to contribute. Handle code of conduct violations with care, ensuring everyone feels safe.

- Transfer knowledge in issue description, debug stories, reviews and encourage contributors to learn and follow. Coach and mentor fellow and future contributors. Take the time to thank everyone for their contributions.

- Evaluate roles. A founder or backend developer as community builder may work in the beginning. Plan to hire additional resources who can lead the conversation, and involve teams when necessary. Encourage to learn new technologies and stay in the loop.

- Document everything on the way, lessons learned, changes, what worked, what did not. Do retrospectives when announcements did not work the way you intended. Verify the defined actions.

- Find evangelists/advocates in your company and community, give them visibility and push them in all collaborations. Ask friends who love social media, get the technical content writer champion, and give everyone a chance to learn and grow. Don't expect to hire experts. Instead, focus on existing DevRel communities and exchange knowledge and experiences within the community.

- When you grow, do not hide as a leader. Be approachable with your team, and engage with your community. Coffee chats, meetups, etc. - follow the thought: Everyone can contribute.

There's more to that, I've only shared a few quick thoughts now. Happy to chat more :)

If you want to dive into the topic even more - I've shared my 10 years in OSS community story and all things learned in a talk at the Open Source at Siemens event in 2021.

Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1HnciJEQ8dDiHMaq1APg5...

Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yT63olXdS-I