 In this video, we will be talking about how to get involved with Hyperledger. My name is David Boswell, and with me is Ray Jones, and we will be going through the following information. We will talk about why you would want to get involved in an open source project, how to get involved in open source and in Hyperledger, how to participate in different contribution opportunities that are available, and how to become a leader in the community. So we're putting this video together because we want you to get involved. As an open source project, Hyperledger exists because people are interested in the mission of the project and want to get involved and contribute. So Hyperledger is led by a diverse group of technical contributors from all over the world creating open source blockchain technologies, and we hope you are interested in getting involved. But first, I want to speak about why you might want to get involved in an open source project. There are a number of reasons, and I'll go through a few of those. One, you can shape the direction of the project to fit your needs and use cases. As open source, everything is freely available to use, but you can also modify and change it and evolve the project to fit your needs. And working in a global collaborative environment, you can decrease the time to market and accelerate the work of the project, get what you want sooner, compared to trying to do all the work on your own. There's also a saying called Linus's law that says with enough eyes, all bugs are shallow. This really says that you can leverage a global community to adjust challenges that you are facing. You know, everybody in the community has unique skills and perspectives, and if there is a problem that you are running into, it's really likely that somebody else in the community can see a solution to that. And if you collaborate, you can work together to solve common problems. Getting involved in an open source community is also a learning opportunity. You can learn a lot from interacting with other community members and benefiting from their own knowledge and skills. And getting involved in an open source project looks great on your resume. You'll get great experience and you can point to your contributions and show a perspective of employers that you know how to get involved and contribute to real world software projects. And you can tap into a worldwide group of people who are interested in the work that you are also interested in doing and want to help. So if you want to get involved in an open source project, how can you participate? Here are some tips based on our experience with getting involved in the Hyperledger project and other open source projects. One, please feel free to lurk. And by lurking, I mean you can go to a meeting, you can go to a mailing, you can sign up to a mailing list, you can join the chat channel and just listen, you're under no obligation to take part. And if you just join and listen in, that is a great place to get started understanding what sort of conversations are happening, what sort of topics are coming up, and this helps you learn more. And once you've lurked for a while, you may then understand, hey, I have something to offer and then you can join and take part in the community discussions. But feel free to lurk as a great starting point. And when you are ready to get involved, don't wait for an invitation. Everything in the community, from the meetings to discussions on the mailing list and the chat channels are open. You don't need to have an invitation to join any of those. You can just add yourself to a call and speak up and introduce yourself or do the same on a mailing list or chat channel. So no invitation is needed. And if you do get involved, please be aware that we have a code of conduct that we take very seriously and we do this to enforce high standards of professional practice. It's very important for the Linux Foundation that any community that is hosted by us is welcoming and a comfortable and safe place for people to contribute. And if you are curious, you can go to the Hyperledger Wiki and read the details of our code of conduct. And as I said before, you don't need an invitation, but we will be happy to give you one. We do want you to get involved, so consider this your invitation. Everything that we will be talking about from here on out is open for you to get involved with and we encourage you to do so. And if you do want any more details, here are some links to some existing guides for how to get involved in open source. These aren't specific to Hyperledger. They are just good general purpose guides about open source in general. So with that, we did want to talk about some Hyperledger-specific contribution opportunities and I will start by talking about Meetups. Meetups are a great way to start interacting and collaborating with community members. We have over 170 Meetup groups in 80 countries around the world. So currently, we are doing virtual Meetups, but hopefully in the future we will again start doing in-person Meetups. So please feel free to connect with a Meetup in your local area and while we're doing virtual Meetups, you can dial into any meeting anywhere that you would be interested in doing. And again, this will allow you to learn about the topics that are being discussed in the community. You'll be able to start meeting with community members and if you ever do want to present the work that you're doing, you're open to do that as well. So as I said, you're welcome to attend a Meetup, speak at a Meetup. If you're interested in supporting a Meetup, we're always happy to have that as well. When we have in-person Meetups, we often have organizations that provide space for those Meetups to meet and that is also a great way to support the community and meet community members in your area. And if there isn't a Meetup in your area, you can organize a Meetup. It's a very easy process and we're here to support you. So if you're interested in doing any of these things, feel free to email us at Meetupathyperledger.org. So with that, Rai is going to talk to you about the rest of the information about how to get involved. Hi, I'm Rai Jones and I'm one of the community architects for Hyperledger. We have a number of tools that we use to keep in touch with our community and to allow our community to engage more fully and openly. You can take a look here. Once you have your LFID set up, you can join us in chat or the Wiki or GitHub. Really, whatever your preferred method of communication is and collaboration, we're here for you. We have some steps for contributing code and documentation. The first thing to do would be to take a look at the guide for a particular repo of interest. If you're interested in fabric or Bezu, take a look at their contributing guide, get a copy of the repo, fix an issue, make your changes, and get it merged in. Go through, it's a standard process across all of the projects. You could also start a new Hyperledger lab much in the same way as you would start any other project. You would fork the repo, fill out the template, commit your changes, and submit a pull request, and this would allow you to lead your own lab and take a leadership position in a project that you have passion for. You can also help us by bringing Hyperledger projects to more people in their native languages. It is really important that people are able to engage in our documentation in their native language, and this is somewhere where we've had quite a bit of success. We would be interested in helping you bring our documentation to your native language. You can also join a special interest group or a working group. We have quite a few special interest groups. You can choose one that's of interest to you, hang out, read the archives, and join a meeting and jump in. We have a number of working groups as well. If you have a particular passion around identity or learning materials, we have working groups for that. We have very active diversity, civility, and inclusion working group as well. There are several leadership roles that you can take, a little bit more public facing. One would be by becoming a maintainer of a project. This is your ability to steer the technical direction of a specific project through contributing code or contributing documentation. There is documentation for each project on how to become a maintainer. And next slide. The TSC membership is another way to take on a leadership role. The main governing body is the TSC. It is composed of active community members. Once a year, there is an election. Anyone in the technical community that contributes code, documentation, or other artifacts to the code base is eligible to run and vote. And please keep an eye on the mailing list and regular calls to learn about the nomination and voting process. We have other community leadership roles. You can get involved with a SIG or a working group and lead a project there and run for a chair of that position. You can organize your own local or regional meetup. And you can become a thought leader by sharing your views, writing on the hyperledger blog, taking part in a guest presentation or webinar, and speaking about hyperledger and conferences and events. If you have any questions, please feel free to send us an email. Info at hyperledger.org.