I’ve been working on trying to figure out ways to determine what kind of contributors are best for your project and then finding those contributors. In design thinking we have these things called personas. Personas are these things that we use in product and service design where we create an imaginary “persona” that we think fits our average user, give them a name, hobbies, etc. When we create new features or modify whatever we are working on, we can imagine how it might impact this persona.
I was thinking that this kind of process might be useful in recruiting the most useful types of contributors. If used properly, it can help your community be more inclusive as well. After a day of googling and reading, I came across a step-by-step guide on creating personas and pathways for community contributors. It’s out of the awesome Mozilla Science Lab which is a really awesome group doing good work.
They have a ton of other useful guides and such as well which I suggest checking out if you’re trying to find new ways to help structure your community development a bit more.