Episode 67: Ryan Sipes and Building Community at Thunderbird

Panelists Richard Littauer Guest Ryan Sipes Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! On the episode today, our special guest is Ryan Sipes, the Community and Business Development Manager for Thunderbird, as well as the Treasurer on Thunderbird’s governing body. We learn all about what Thunderbird is and an interesting story of how Ryan ended up there. We also find out when Thunderbird was spun out of Mozilla, the aftermath Ryan had to deal with assuring people it was not dead, and that there were people still working on it. Even though COVID hit this year, Thunderbird has been super successful in obtaining donations, and Ryan shares how they did this. Also, we learn how Ryan gives back for open source projects that Thunderbird uses and find out what Ryan is most excited about in the future for Thunderbird. Download this episode now to find out much more! [00:00:46] Ryan tells us an interesting story how he ended up at Thunderbird, how he applied for the position, and mentions Foss Jobs as a great resource. [00:03:58] Richard asks Ryan how large the contribution base is, how many people he has as active contributors, and if they are contributing on GitHub. [00:05:56] Ryan explains the governance model, where the council fits in, and how they’ve managed to grow during COVID. [00:08:26] We find out how many people use Thunderbird. [00:09:47] Ryan tells us about getting spun out from Mozilla, which happened before him, and living with the aftermath of that when he was there. [00:12:28] Richard asks Ryan how he would have done things differently if he was Mozilla’s leadership board. [00:13:46] We find out when Ryan was brought on as a Bus Dev, what did he initially start doing and what else did he did to help make sure the project had more money in time. [00:17:27] Richard asks if Ryan sees any differences in the kind of users who use Thunderbird and if he’s trying to cater to them in particular, as opposed to people who just use Gmail for their day to day purposes. [00:22:43] Richard wonders how Ryan asks for