Community engagement strategy No. 1: Attract and retain idiots.

If you run an open-source project, or a community project of any nature -- where you're seeking to engage a range of people to volunteer in different roles -- you should start your week off with this humorous, yet insightful, piece by the uber-prolific Matt Trout.

Key takeaways are:

If you can attract and retain idiots as community members ... they can already speak fluent idiot and can help the next one.

And the critically important:

"Idiot" is usually just a short form of "person I can't yet communicate with". Which means they probably think you're an idiot, too.

Enjoy.