Apache Cassandra® Catalyst Program

Cassandra Catalysts are individuals who invest in the growth of the Apache Cassandra® community by enthusiastically sharing their expertise, encouraging participation, and creating a welcoming environment. Catalysts are trustworthy, expert contributors with a passion for connecting and empowering others with Cassandra knowledge.

Cassandra Catalysts must be able to demonstrate strong knowledge of Cassandra such as production deployments, educational material, conference talks or other ways.

The ways that Catalysts can get involved in the community and be recognized for their work can be broadly grouped into two areas: Contribution and Promotion. Everyone is applicable including existing committers.

Contribution is engaging with the Cassandra project and community:

Promotion is telling others about Cassandra, both online and offline:

Cassandra community spaces include the Cassandra mailing lists (dev@, user@), Cassandra channels in the ASF Slack, questions tagged with ‘Cassandra’ on Stack Overflow and DBA Stack Exchange.

Anyone can nominate an individual to become a Catalyst or apply themselves.

Cassandra users ask questions in community spaces every day. Catalysts who engage in this activity will be on hand to respond to people as their questions arise. This could mean providing the answer they are seeking, or it could be connecting them with someone else in the community who can provide an answer.

As new people join Cassandra community spaces, Catalysts can help out by creating a clear sense of belonging. This can involve sending newcomers a message to introduce themselves, engaging with them in some discussion about how they use Cassandra, and generally making them feel welcome in the community. Documentation on best practices and how to do this effectively will be co-created by Catalysts, including templates for predefined messages.

JIRA is the primary platform for discussion about Cassandra development. Engagement on JIRA means providing meaningful input on tickets and submitted code that moves the work forward and helps to improve the Cassandra user experience.

As an open source project, Cassandra relies on contributions from the community in many areas - code, documentation, design, marketing, and others. Getting involved in these areas is a great way to have a real impact on the project and community. Catalyst recognition is awarded to committers and contributors alike. Contributors recognised as a Catalyst, because of their contribution work, are likely already being considered to be invited as committer. The Catalyst program is never used as a substitute for official committership. Becoming a committer is by invite only, and can happen before or after any Catalyst award.

Consistent promotion on social channels and within other communities is a great way to grow the Cassandra project. Catalysts can promote the project in this way, provided it is intentional and significant.

Creating content about Cassandra is a great way to contribute to the ongoing growth of the community and project, and it is one of the primary ways that people find out more about how Cassandra can be used and implemented. This can include any kind of text, video, or audio content. Blogs and use cases are published on the Apache Cassandra website and syndicated on Planet Cassandra.

Events are a vital part of community engagement and growth. As such, speaking at them is a great way to spread the word about Cassandra. These events can be in-person or virtual and could be organized by the Cassandra community (e.g. monthly Town Halls) or external events that are relevant to the interests of the Cassandra project.

In addition to speaking at events, Catalysts can also organize Cassandra events. This could be a meetup group that is fully focused on Cassandra, or it could be an event within another community that is relevant to the Cassandra project. Catalysts may also host or assist with Cassandra Town Halls or Contributor Meetings (open to all community members).

All Catalysts will be formally recognized as a ‘Cassandra Catalyst’. This comes with the following benefits:

Catalysts will be recognized for their ongoing work to foster a more collaborative and robust Cassandra community. New Catalysts will be announced as they are confirmed and Catalyst status will be reviewed every 12 months.