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About this talk
This talk will explore how to identify and understand the right open source community and project to participate in as a newer developer. We'll also look at the difference between an individual contributor’s role and a maintainers role as well as little steps you can take to navigating to the maintainer role and some bigger steps you can take when transitioning to a maintainer in open source.
Takeaways
- Why every maintainer or manager in Open source today was once a regular contributor.
- How consistency and dedication towards contributions yield faster results.
- Why every contributor stands a chance to move up the leadership ladder in open source.
Slides
>> Click here to download slides
🌈 Comment below and ask me questions — I might just answer them during my live speaker discussion!
About Anita Ihuman
I am a self taught software developer, technical writer and open source advocate, currently working as a Developer Advocate at Kyverno (Kubernetes policy engine). I developed interest in programming in 2020 and thanks to the pandemic, I had enough time to learn and get a hang of it.
I got to know more about Open Source by June 2020, and just like every first contributor, I was scared and had so many doubts. I started by contributing to random open source projects on GitHub but then I realized that I wanted to do more. I saw how contributors earned titles in their various communities they contributed to and I wanted to make an impact that would earn me one of these titles as well.
I decided to focus my energy on a few open source communities to level up. While I was still making random contributions on GitHub, I began focusing on 3 communities: Gnome, CHAOSS, and Layer5.
After 4 months on consistent contributions, I...
- Became a D&I Badge reviewer at CHAOSS
- Joined the content creators for Gnome Africa
- Earned the MeshMate title in Layer5 and was invited to join the team of community managers
Connect with me!
This on-demand talk is part of CodeLand 2021 — a virtual conference brought to you by CodeNewbie & DEV on September 23 & 24, 2021.
Top comments (11)
Hi! Reminder that if you have any questions for Anita to drop them here! We'll address these questions in the live speaker discussion coming up soon.
I'd love to hear more of your advice on mentoring new contributors! Are you an advocate of doing that on a 1:1 basis in addition to making the README of a project more guided/newbie-friendly?
Also, when a project is not necessarily the best choice for a newer contributor, what is a respectful way for a maintainer to make this clear?
Great talk, open source is amazing.
Woah! Taking the next step is always important and this talk just came in at the right time. Thanks a lot Anita. The talk was great and helpful :)
Would love to hear more :D
I am glad you found this session helpfull.
:D
Thank you! Appreciate your talk and the information and perspective you shared.
Thank you for listening
This is a fantastic roadmap to open source contributions and leadership. Thank you Anita!
Thank you for listening
A lot of great info and tips about contributing to open source - great talk!