When we launched the M2M Industry Working Group in 2011, we came up with the proposition of delivering all the enablers allowing the development of an end-to-end M2M solution, from the development of embedded applications to the communication with web infrastructures. It was clear from day one that in order to fulfill this promise, we would need to not only deliver actual working technology, but also to work early on building a community of early adopters, industrial users, and contributors. This talk is an opportunity for you to get an insight of the Dos and Don'ts we learnt from our experience of kickstarting the M2M initiative at Eclipse. We will share with you very simple and concrete advice that we think will be useful to anyone looking at making an open-source project successful: building a clear vision, being transparent, producing deliverables that make the entrance barrier as low as possible (ready-to-use IDE, developer kit, …), encouraging adoption by the industry (collaboration with standards organizations, ...) etc.