---
title: The proper care and feeding of communities and carnivorous plants
osem_url: https://osem.seagl.org/conferences/seagl2016/program/proposals/172
beginning: '2016-11-12T15:30:00.000-08:00'
end: '2016-11-12T16:30:00.000-08:00'
presenters:
- name: Rikki Endsley
  affiliation: Opensource.com
  osem_url: https://osem.seagl.org/users/337
  gravatar_id: 311221d7a939eabf08de77534a64353c
  biography: 'Rikki Endsley is a community manager and editor for [Opensource.com](https://opensource.com/),
    and a 2016 recipient of an O’Reilly Open Source Award. In the past, she worked
    as a community evangelist on the Open Source and Standards team at Red Hat; freelance
    tech journalist; community manager for the USENIX Association; associate publisher
    of Linux Pro Magazine, ADMIN, and Ubuntu User; and as the managing editor of Sys
    Admin magazine and UnixReview.com. Follow her on Twitter: [@rikkiends](https://twitter.com/rikkiends).'
---

In 2016, I adopted my first carnivorous plant, a Venus Fly Trap, which I named Gordon. I quickly discovered that the health of Gordon was closely connected to the environment I provided as much as to his ability to catch the occasional bug and get energy from the sun. In this talk, I'll pull from more than a decade of experience working with open source communities (and a few months of experience keeping Gordon alive) to explain how caring for a Venus Fly Trap is much like caring for a community. Like carnivorous plants, communities can't be left alone to fend for themselves. They need an energy source, healthy environments, pest control, and occasional maintenance. And if you're charged with caring for either a community or carnivorous plant, you'll need back up--someone who can fill in when you're unavailable.
