Apache Pulsar community

1. Self intro
Yu Liu
HP
Technical writer
Apache Trafodion Committer (HTAP database)
StreamNative
Content strategist
Apache Pulsar Contributor

2. How to build a
welcoming community
4Continue from Jennifer’s talk - Apache Pulsar Events

3. Rapid growth from 2019/04

4. ü Stand in users’ shoes
ü Discover users’ real needs
ü Make users feel valued
ü Grow up with users

5. ü Stand in users’ shoes
q Make it easy-to-use
• Document everything
• You are what you write
q Fast responsive

6. Developer - get started easily

7. Developer - build development environment quickly

8. Technical writer - contribute doc conveniently

9. Translator - start translation simply

10. ü Stand in users’ shoes
q Make it easy-to-use
q Fast responsive

11. Real-time discussion
Slack
WeChat

12. Real-time discussion
Mailing list
GitHub PR/Issue

13. ü Stand in users’ shoes
ü Discover users’ real needs
ü Make users feel valued
ü Grow up with users

14. Tangible – measured with computer
• Pull requests
• Issues
• Tests
• Questions posted/answered
• ...

15. Does survey cheat?

17. Intangible – associated with humans
Hard to measure
• Motivation
• Engagement
• Respect
• Satisfaction
• ...

18. Intangible – observe body language
How satisfied users are at a meetup:
• How many users sit close to the front?
• How many users are on their laptops while watching talks?
• How many hands go up for questions?
• How many eye contacts between speakers and users?
• How many users are tweeting out to the hashtag while watching talks?
• ...

19. What users needs are at meetup
• Case studies attract the most
• Eager to talk with PMC/committer
• 30min speech + 10min Q&A
• Half day

20. ü Stand in users’ shoes
ü Discover users’ real needs
ü Make users feel valued
ü Grow up with users

21. Motivate users with incentives
Users are rewarded with extrinsic rewards
• T-shirt
• Bag
• Sticker
• Gadget
• Conference tickets
• ...
2019/06 Apache Pulsar Meetup | Shenzhen
Users got Pulsar T-shirts as rewards

22. Motivate users with incentives
Apache Dubbo

23. Motivate users with incentives
Users are rewarded with intrinsic rewards
• Increased responsibilities
• Reputation
• Kudos
• ...
2019/08 Apache Pulsar Meetup | Beijing
PMC/committers are invited to give speeches and share experiences

24. ü Stand in users’ shoes
ü Discover users’ real needs
ü Make users feel valued
ü Grow up with users

25. Pulsar roadmap
• Iterate fast
• Release often
2.2.0
2018/10
2.2.1
2019/01
2.3.0
2019/02
2.3.1
2019/04
2.3.2
2019/05
2.4.0
2019/06
2.4.1
2019/08
2.4.2
2019/11

26. Virtuous circle between Pulsar & users
• Positive feedback loop
• Continuous process of improvement
Needs
Develop
features
Contribute
back
Pulsar

27. Pulsar major user - Zhaopin.com
• First domestic company uses
Pulsar in production
Scenario
• Messaging system
Pains
• RabbitMQ + Kafka: high cost, data inconsistency, etc.
Replace
• 2018/08: replace RabbitMQ with Pulsar in production
• Reason: scale up, disaster recovery, message rewinding, etc.
Contribute
• 2018/08: contribute back to Pulsar
• Reason: deal letter topic, message tracing, etc.

28. Core features contributed by Zhaopin.com
• Dead letter topic
• Key_shared subscription
• Client Interceptors
• Time partitioned un-ack
message tracker
• Key based message batcher
• Service URL provider
• Schema improvements
Pulsar 2.5.0
• Bulk writing interface of
messages
• HDFS offloader
• System topic
• Sticky consumer
• SQL improvements

29. Core features contributed Tencent
Scenario
• Billing system
Pains
• Read cached messages in bulk mode slows down message
consumption
• Way of reading LAC for bookie is incorrect
• Cluster does not support read/write splitting
Develop
• Synchronous replication across cities
• Read only broker
Contribute
• Contribute back to Pulsar in 2019/12

30. Features contributed by StreamNative
Pains
• Pulsar Dashboard: simply collects and displays info
and lacks the ability to manage Pulsar (cluster, tenant,
namespace, topic, etc.)
• Pulsar: incomplete ecosystem
Needs
• A management console
• Comprehensive ecosystem
Develop
• Pulsar Manager: a simple and easy-to-use GUI
management tool with multiple features (support
dynamic configurations of multiple environments)
Contribute
• StreamNative open sourced and contribute Pulsar
Manager to community in 2019/09
Apache Pulsar Manager

31. Challenges in community
5

32. Challenge
Too many questions in WeChat group and Slack
q Technical support eats up much time
q Duplicated questions are answered many times
but not well collected, categorized, and documented

33. Solution
Expertise
Interactive
Anytime
Anywhere
Live
streaming

34. Advantage
User
• Live interactive experience
• Get real-time on-demand contents (AMA)
• Learn expertise shared by core engineers directly
Pulsar
• Learning Pulsar becomes more accessible (diverse learner base) and
impactful that never seen before
• Reuse lectures
• Cost-effectiveness
Instructor
• Metric available
• Collaborative environment and sharing possibilities
Writer/Translator
• Convert knowledge to documents

35. Q & A
Thank you