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I used to work on a reasonably sized open source project (10k+ stars on GitHub). We held approximately monthly office hours on Zoom. Very few people ever came t

I used to work on a reasonably sized open source project (10k+ stars on GitHub). We held approximately monthly office hours on Zoom. Very few people ever came to them. I think the average was less than one person. And no, I don't think the issue was that no one had any questions. We got plenty of questions via Gitter chat, mailing lists and GitHub issues. We advertised the office hours on the same Gitter chat and mailing lists too. We also tried moving the time around to various times of the day, also with minimal effect on attendance. The only thing we had any success with at all was convincing a few larger users to give short presentations on what they were doing with the project and what their pain points were. When we did this, that user would come, but few other, non-project members would come. I still really like the idea, but I am not sure that the open source community really wants office hours.

simonw 6y ago
Maybe the big difference here is getting people to book slots? Booking slots helps emphasize that this us a one-on-one opportunity for a conversation - not a situation where you might feel awkward that there are several others on the chat who already know each other. It also sets up a small obligation that you'll actually show up, since if you reserved a slot it's rude to cancel at short notice.
- gmac 6y ago
  In the educational setting, this is a massive effect. If I offer students feedback slots they can book, generally a majority will book a slot, and around 90% of those will turn up. If I just offer times they can drop in for feedback, I get maybe 5% dropping in. (The course is behavioural economics and this is a kind of interesting behavioural phenomenon).