The team at Riak knows that our community is more than any one product or one person; it’s a collection of people who share a passion for our mission to simplify distributed systems. As a mature community with thousands of participants, it’s important to take the time to thank those who continue to contribute to our collective success.

We call this group Taishi: Riak’s community recognition program.

Members of Taishi will be based on past contribution, current commitment and upholding our code of conduct (which has a TL;DR of be kind to each other). We will thank people through membership, some fun giveaways, and exclusive opportunities. Nominations are throughout the year, with memberships occurring from RICON.

Nominations are always welcome at http://bit.ly/taishi-nomination

Current Members

Our first team of Taishi were accepted in 2015 and their status will be maintained through RICON 2016. Learn more about the Taishi at riak.com/community

FAQ

Why did Riak make the Taishi Program?

It’s a great question. We have a ton of Riak users and a great deal of passionate members in the overall community. What we’re missing is an easy way to give external contributors greater access to what we know inside Riak.

What do Taishi get?

The program will evolve based on the goals of our membership. Here are some ideas we’ve thought up:

Unique opportunities to engage with Riak Engineers, such as:
Private events at conferences like OSCON and StrangeLoop
Sneak peaks of enterprise products and roadmap
Video Q&A sessions with Customer Service Engineers
Further opportunity as a trusted member of our community, like:
Increased privileges on GitHub
Opportunity to run a local Riak Meetup w/support by Riak
Public acknowledgement in the form of highlights of your work with Riak
Invitation to RICON 2015 and prioritization as speakers
And some fun other stuff, like:
Custom Schwag
A listening ear at all times from Developer Advocacy at Riak

What makes someone eligible?

Anyone who gives back to the community surrounding Riak and Riak is eligible for Taishi. No single set of behaviors guarantees membership.

Here are some of the types of activities Taishi take on:
Spend time answering questions on the riak-user mailing lists or #riak IRC channel
Provide helpful comments in GitHub repositories
Volunteer as Maintainers for Riak Labs projects
Speak openly and honestly about Riak at events and in their blog

It’s more than what someone does, it’s how they do it. Here are some behaviors that we appreciate in a Taishi member:

They are considerate of others
They are respectful of differing opinions and offer their own
They are collaborative, willing to both lead at times and follow at others
They are pragmatic, always willing to make progress toward a shared goal
They foster an open, honest and friendly community culture

But you’re open source, why do you need further recognition?

Riak and the tools around it are open source. This public strategy, however, shares a destiny with Riak Enterprise. We would like to invite enthusiastic members, external to Riak, to see a little more in a way that’s built on trust and mutual appreciation. These are the reasons we designed Taishi.

Is membership forever?

Membership to Taishi is for a year, measured by our conference, RICON. From RICON to RICON, members have all the exclusive access and privileges provided through the program.

Are Riak employees eligible?

Given that you have access to any and everything internally, the answer is no. This program, however, does not succeed without internal support. If you are passionate about participating in this program, volunteer to help out by opening a new issue.

I want to be Taishi and I’m not sure how to help. Where do I look?

You can and should start by joining the riak-users mailing list! That is home to our regular conversation. If you want a more substantial project, check out the GitHub issues on our Community repository. There are many labeled community requests that will give you a project to work on and increase your contribution to the community.