 Thank you for coming to the talk. This is Finding Your Path. I am James Richardson, and hopefully everybody's having some fun at Nest so far. Just a quick run through of the agenda tonight. Just a quick intro, let you know who I am and why I'm speaking with you. The purpose of the talk is not to be sort of here's the way you should contribute as a beginner from beginning to end. It's very much sort of a coaching session with a hopefully a good discussion at the end. We are going to go through how to contribute as a beginner some of the things of the lessons learned from being the intern for a long time and sort of new to the team as as an engineer. And then, like I said, hopefully a discussion at the end. So some people that might be brand new some people that might be taking their first look at fedora and what that means. Maybe some other people that have kind of poked around IRC and don't really know kind of what the first step is in the path. So who am I in my professional background. I started in US Navy a long time ago, went to be a carpenter, then went into the brewing industry and of course it's just the natural transition to become a software engineer of course from there where did you go. So in 2017 I made the change to leave the brewing industry and go back to school and get my degree in computer forensics and security, which I absolutely hated, but I fell in love with software development and joined red hat as the CPE intern in January of 2020 and then just recently a couple of months ago accepted a full time position as a software engineer in June after I finished up with school. Personal, originally from the northeast of the United States, kind of in the Connecticut and Boston area if anybody knows where that kind of is. And then my wife is actually Irish so we moved here in 2013 with the kids and just some interest, huge into home brewing. Love playing the guitar and mandolin love anything to do with Tolkien Star Wars the Grateful Dead hiking running and yeah of course home brewing anybody that is on CPE is probably sick and tired of the home brewing stuff. The purpose of this talk. So being new at anything is tough being starting off with anything is going to be uncomfortable. You're going to feel like I have a lot of enthusiasm hopefully, but I'm not sure how to use that enthusiasm the right way. Obviously, if you're here at nest, and you started using Fedora, you're obviously have an interest in this. So, if you've gone to the extent of coming to this conference this this virtual chat, you've obviously got an interest and you are here for a reason this is something that was told to me. When I first started, and I continually tell myself, I'm here for a reason. The, if you want to call it the imposter syndrome, or the feeling of God, you know, I'm not sure if I'm smart enough or capable enough for anything like that, you are here for a reason. So always kind of hold that close that look, if I am interested enough, I'll be able to find something within this world that I really like. As you can see from the professional background, I've had a lot of first starts. I kind of consider myself to be a professional beginner. I'll give you some tips as the top goes on. And everybody, no matter if they are one year in or 20 years in, everybody has started fresh. And the great thing about this community is everybody's willing to help. It is an amazing and a rare thing that we have with this community, whether it's with the specific team that I work on at Red Hat, or when we're doing normally on a Thursday evening on IRC or Fedora weekly catch ups, everybody's here to help. Everybody has been in the beginner shoes before. So hopefully with this chat, we'll kind of explore some areas of where that path starts, but it's definitely up to you to find out where you want to take it. And the most important thing is, and I can't stress this enough, and this is for anything in life, do not give up. If you're here and you're interested, and you're still not sure, and you want to start working on something, but you're not sure how, or you do start working on something, and maybe it's not going as well as you had hoped. The worst thing that you can do is just leave it. Giving up is never the right course of action. Okay, contributing to something like Fedora is a daunting prospect when you're brand new. You can look at, you can start using the operating system and understand maybe some of the tools, the applications that are being used, the operating system, maybe you like front end, maybe you like database management. It's very daunting to sit at the beginning and wonder, okay, well, I kind of like front end design, but how do I begin helping out. So one of the first things is if again, if you're here and you've explored Fedora, and you're going around Fedora docs. This is probably one of the first places you're going to land is getting started with Fedora. Finding out who this document is for, how to walk through this getting started sheet that's been made specifically for the beginner and reading through everything and figuring out how to begin is going to be your first step. So reading that I'm going to highlight in the next few slides or where your first step is where your first step should be. We do a lot of how to docs professionally we call them SOPs or standard operating procedures, but there are some very gifted people that have been with the team for a long time that know how to contribute know how to know all the ins and outs of Fedora and they're incredible people and they're they're an incredible wealth of information for me. But for all of us other sort of layman out there, we need to walk through things and figure out from somebody else who's already done it. These are the steps you should go through. This is the procedure and this is one of them this how to doc. Okay, so you want to contribute. Brilliant. We're thrilled to have you here's who that here's how you go through it. This is the audience for the doc. One of the things you should know before you join. There's all the kind of prerequisites that you should probably have done if you're already here, like simple stuff creating a profile on Fedora project org. So, specifically, what you're going to find when you do first kind of look at contributing is Fedora infrastructure. Even after being an intern for about 18 months. It wasn't until recently that I really understood what it meant to join the weekly meetings. What the Fedora infrastructure versus the, say, sentos infrastructure or relange, what all of these things, how these how these infrastructures work and how they work together, how to figure out what needs to be worked on. But this is the getting started page. Again, all of these are there something that actually I just kind of want to take a tangent for a second because something that Matt talked about at State of Fedora this morning makes a lot of sense and it's something that I saw initially and so when I was making this slide deck is it seems like there's a lot of areas that are kind of saying the same thing, a lot of docs, or a lot of pages that you might find that are kind of saying the same thing or maybe in a different way. And these are the three that I've highlighted because it's what I used when I first wanted to get started on this. Something that I've had in the back of my mind is these really should be sort of condensed into one single landing page. I completely agree with it and hopefully we'll get started on it. But for infrastructure, this is where you should go. I'll link all of these in the end at the end of this doc so anybody that's interested can go and visit these links. And as you can see on the purple, that's obviously for me going through this doc and going okay yeah what's the first step along with this and I didn't highlight it here but it's sort of once you've landed here, and you've you've you've started to go through this particular doc. The next step is something called Fedora infrastructure apprentice program. That's something that if you're already here and you're already comfortable and you're already on IRC and you're starting to get the lay of the land and starting to have chats with people. That's that sort of evolution to all this. So that brings us handily to IRC what's IRC. It's basically just chats just basically chat room. We use what's called libero dot chat now we used to use something else and we've migrated to this. The guide that I'm showing you here and again I'll show you this link at the end. Just goes through how to set up IRC. It's, it's very easy. You find a client I use hex chat because when I first started my mentor Stephen Cody said use hex chat. Great. But there's many of them out there better or worse you'll always get a good argument going about which IRC client is is everybody's favorites. You create a nickname and you pop on to IRC there's a good few channels that I'll talk about in a second where all of us meet and especially that Thursday weekly Fedora catch up is probably the most important for new people. So that prereq checklist just again to make sure that you're doing all the right things from the start is reading through all those guides make sure that if there's any questions or after reading through it you're still not sure this is the next kind of few things is ask questions. Yeah, of course create a profile and for our project at or you know that's that's kind of a no brainer. And stall and configure that IRC client make sure that you choose a good nickname and get that registered. And then one of the first things you're going to do once all of that stuff is done is during our Thursday meetings. I think the first thing once the meeting starts is do we have any new people. It's very relaxed. It's very comfortable. You come on. Tell us who you are. What you're into what you'd like to do. Maybe even ask you know hey listen I've started working on this and I'm not really sure how to even push a PR or anything like that that's totally fine. I think one of the main takeaways from being a new person for so long on this team and in this community is if you are a new new person that's got enough enthusiasm and enough drive to start working on things. Everybody else on the team will meet you halfway and and will definitely help you out to to move it along whatever you wanted to work on. And just do that you introduce yourself to the community say hi say why you're here all that kind of good stuff. And then you're you're pretty much nearly there. It's up to you though. Once you've done all those things to find out what it is that you want to work on. Yeah, thanks Homer that's brilliant. So tips for professional beginner this is kind of the coaching session. Definitely take your time. There's no rush there's no expectations there's no once you say hello okay here are the you know dozen things that we're going to expect you to complete by Tuesday. It's not that way at all. It's very much a great we're thrilled to have you here. What would you like to work on do you have any experience with anything that might be handy in working on any projects whether it's in fedora or anything else. This is something I think Marie said again from the the the first session this morning was doesn't necessarily need to be technical either. I can tell you by being older and not having been in the world of computing and only recently kind of getting into that industry. My skills would not necessarily be the best technically and it's something that I'm continuously working on but that doesn't mean that you can't contribute so take your time. There's absolutely no rush. Again, find something that you like doing within this world within this industry within fedora community. There are so many avenues to go down there are so many different aspects to this. This world that hopefully if you've again gotten to the point where you're here and you're attending and you're listening to this chat and you've read through those guides that hopefully you've you've already determined that there is something that you like. But there's no point in working away on something that you're not going to enjoy or that you're not totally into. What's the point. This is a big one and this is something that I had on heart struggle with a lot seek help. If you get to a point where you've sort of reached the end of what you think you can do or reach the end of a project and you're not really sure where to take it or you're looking at a part of code that you have no clue what the hell is going on. There is no point in sitting there staying stuck. I have trouble with this myself because I like to figure things out for myself. I figure I found that that's the way that I learned best. And sometimes that's good. Sometimes hammering through that wall and finding out why you don't know something or why you're stuck will lead to future success because you'll always be able to fall back on that and go oh yeah I did this and it would be easier and I have to do this and whatever. But if you're really stuck, don't stay stuck. There are plenty of people on a daily basis on IRC or on any of the other chats that are willing to help and are brilliant and they're very friendly and very welcoming. So if you do decide to join and become into the or join into the Fedora infrastructure apprentice program, you're not really allowed to make any mistakes. There's no big red button that you can press and completely destroy anything. The community is very much a meritocracy. So the more that you work on things and the more trust people have for you that you're you start knowing what you're doing. That's the only way that you're going to start getting permissions and getting access to to work on more things. So when you first start out, you can hunt around, you have read access to everything, but you don't have writer especially execute access to anything so you can find out what's going on with the infrastructure, you can start looking at tickets you can start looking at issues you can start kind of figuring out from some of the more experienced people. What's going on and what they're doing. There's there's no problem in shadowing or peer programming. I think we should do a little bit more of that, if I can be honest for a second. I think some of the ways that I've learned best, especially in the last couple of months are working with some very experienced programmers and it takes the mystery out of it. That's very much in the beginning, it's little by little. So you keep working on things, you build up your expertise, you build up your trust, people understand who you are they've seen your name before senior IRC, and you start kind of building up your ability to do more and more things. This is something that shouldn't need to be said but it is being kind. You know, that's, that's a huge thing in this community is being welcoming being kind. I am very much an introvert. I don't enjoy sitting and talking to people face to face. It's something that I kind of struggle with. But that doesn't mean that people aren't helpful and want to help. Sometimes it means making the first step, but we treat each other with respect in this community. The fact that people come and help and want to contribute to this is an amazing thing. And it gets lost sometimes when people are busy and working on working towards a deadline, but we're all part of the team. We're all part of the same team, and that's what makes us better. So that can't be ignored. So that's kind of the end of my presentation. But so first thanks for listening to my little spiel. I hope you hope you all go out and enjoy the rest of nest. There's links at the end of the page here and my contact details if anybody wants to get in contact with me, but Yeah, so hopefully now if there's any discussions if there's any questions if anybody is even worse off in terms of kind of what to do now, then let me know and we can have a chat. You got it. I'm happy to deliver it and again if anybody has questions or is none the wiser after that or just wants the links or wants the slide deck or anything like that. I'll throw it into chat. It is. So if nothing else, I guess I will leave everybody go and enjoy the really cool eight bit adventure, adventure work thing. That's pretty fun. Bye everybody. Cheers. Thanks for thanks for watching.