Community Advocacy Strategy: Small, Recurring Co-Working Gathering to Improve Engagement/Sustainability

[Honyii]

From my research, Union AI/Flyte has built strong visibility through conferences and large events, which is great for awareness. However, there may be a noticeable gap in post-event engagement and long-term conversion.

This issue proposes a shift (or addition) to the events/ advocacy strategy by building smaller, recurring, community-led co-working gathering that prioritize connection, contribution, and retention within the Flyte open source ecosystem.

Problem

While events bring people in:

• Engagement often drops after the event
• Attendees don’t always build a lasting connection to Flyte
• Conversion to contributors or long-term users is relatively low
• Flyte may not remain top-of-mind after initial exposure

In short:

We are reaching people, but may not consistently retaining or activating them within the community/ open source in general.

Proposal: Community Co-Working Gathering (Working Name)

Introduce small, recurring, community-led gatherings with focus on; Collaboration over presentation, Participation over passive attendance, Building real familiarity with Flyte.

These are intentionally not “meetups” in the traditional sense (deliberately not using the word meetup/event 😄) because one of the goal is not having a swag-driven attendance but towards consistent, human-centered engagement with the project.

What Makes This Different

• Minimal or no formal talks
• Hands-on, collaborative sessions
• Focused on contributing, learning, and building together
• Lower pressure, more welcoming for first-time contributors/users

Think:

A co-working space where people actively engage with Flyte together!

Structure

• Organized locally by Community Representatives (Reps)
• Held across multiple global locations
• Occurs 4–6 (up to 8) times yearly per location
• Creates a consistent monthly/bi-monthly rhythm of engagement across the community

Role of Community Representatives

Community reps would:

• Organize and host sessions locally.
• Support onboarding for new contributors/users
• Guide participants through using and contributing to Flyte
• Act as a bridge between the Flyte team and the broader community

This also creates:

Ownership opportunities, Recognition pathways for active contributors (after creating a clear contributor pathway), A more sustainable and distributed community model.

Suggested Session Activities (Pls add suggestions)

These should be low-barrier and engaging (not high-pressure like hackathons):

• Build small projects with Flyte and demo / build with Flyte
• Work on open issues in the Flyte GitHub repo
• Pair up to make first contributions
• “How to contribute to Flyte” walkthroughs
• Open discussions, troubleshooting, and co-learning

Vibe:

Collaborative, relaxed, and welcoming—not intimidating or overly structured.

How Union / Flyte Can Support

To make this sustainable, Flyte/Union can support in lightweight but impactful ways:

1. Financial Support (Capped)

• Up to $1000/year (note, for the "up to 8 on-site sessions) per community gathering.
  Covering:
• Co-working space bookings
• Light refreshments/snacks

Long-term goal:

• Encourage reps to identify free or community-supported spaces to reduce dependency on funding.
• Merchandising (Optional, Not Core).
• Provide limited, one-off merchandise
• Not swag-heavy—just enough to:
  • Create identity
  • Recognize participation
• Amplification
  • Promote sessions and outcomes on:
    • Flyte/Union social media
    • Community channels

Next Steps / Open Questions

Naming: What should we call these gathering? (“Co-working gathering” is a placeholder)

• How do we identify and onboard Community Representatives?
• What lightweight structure or toolkit do reps need to get started?
• How do we track success? (contributors, PRs, retention, etc.)

Closing

Thoughts? - This isn’t about replacing conferences, it’s about strengthening what happens after.

When people discover Flyte, this gives them a place to land, engage, and grow within the open source community.

[welcome]

Thank you for opening your first issue here! 🛠

[runllm]

It could be possible that Flyte’s current community structure already supports the formation of smaller, recurring, community-led groups, as the governance model allows for Working Groups (WGs) and Special Interest Groups (SIGs) that are open to any community member and can be organized around specific goals or interests. WGs are designed to be temporary, focused on collaboration and deliverables, and can be started by submitting a charter and getting approval from the Technical Steering Committee. This structure may align well with your proposal for co-working gatherings, especially if the charter emphasizes hands-on collaboration and onboarding new contributors, rather than formal presentations or events. However, there is no explicit mention in the data sources of Flyte currently running small, recurring, co-working-style gatherings as described in your proposal, nor of a formalized “Community Representative” role or capped financial support for local gatherings as a standard practice.

Though I'm not entirely certain, it might be that your proposal could fit within or extend the existing community group framework, especially if you define clear goals, roles, and a lightweight structure for these gatherings. You may want to submit a charter for such a group, propose the Community Rep role, and suggest lightweight support mechanisms to the Flyte community via their established channels (Slack, GitHub Discussions, or during community syncs). For more on how to start and operate a WG or SIG, see the Flyte community groups RFC. Would you like a step-by-step breakdown of how to propose and operationalize this within Flyte’s current governance and community engagement processes?

Sources:

• Flyte community groups RFC

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[kumare3]

I would love small meetups and flyte 2 is honestly pretty amazing for small meetups, small teams and even individuals working locally

[Honyii]

@kumare3 Would you like to move forward with getting real data from community members? Maybe having a form to collect responses that could drive next steps effectively? Or is there an open community working meeting/office hours (couldn't find any) where this conversation could be added as an agenda for next steps?
I am happy to contribute/lead this process if possible.

[kumare3]

Cc @sagecodes

[sagecodes]

We have a monthly contributor sync, usually on the 3rd Thursday of the month at 11am Pacific time
https://luma.com/unionai?tag=flyte%20contributor%20sync

But i'm happy to sync up before or at a different time.
With flyte 2 coming out having better onboarding for contributions is something we're excited to do more of!

[Honyii]

@sagecodes thanks for pointing out the monthly contributor sync - I have rsvp'd. I'm also happy to sync up / collaborate asynchronously and from what I am learning from this conversation, having a better onboarding could be the first step and then iterate on it for other needs.
Is it okay to close this issue and reference it in a new issue for only "Better Onboarding for Contributors: Flyte2"? Or does this issue qualify for a "do not close" label so it'd not be closed by automations(if it's opened for a while).