 So yeah first thanks to our participants of the app contest what a coincidence we're doing a panel on how to contribute so Yeah, it's also a sort of sort of participation writing an app But there's of course many more and as you might see here first There's a link directly to the contribution page Which many of you probably already know next dot.com slash contribute But also something that we're doing as a bit of an experiment Which is also an experiment in contribution and collaboration you see here the community collective link that was mentioned before You might have seen the some of the some of the QR codes are for the program some of them are for the collective This is the link for the collective odoo.next.com slash r slash UK to Has nothing to do with brexit don't worry, but that's a short link So there you can you can list anything regarding the sessions that you can you can write down notes for this session for example shared with others For any of the other talks Yeah, there's a there's a playground there if you've never used the collectives before you can try out some of the features Some of the things that were presented in the keynote Yeah, it's a and if you if you find something you can give feedback to us, of course Yeah, it's a little bit of a of an experiment. So yeah, I hope you enjoy that So, yeah, welcome to this panel how to contribute Let me first introduce everyone. So first we have my dear colleague, Nimesh Avidyay Who's designer at next lot? Yeah, sorry before and she's also going to give a lightning talk tomorrow about how to contribute to next Lot design so if you want to know more about that beyond this panel listen tomorrow then we have Pedro Silva from Collabra online doing UX and community management there and he's doing a workshop actually about how to contribute to How to contribute design to collaborate To reach documents to which documents also and to next lot of office Everything tomorrow as well. Yeah, so Yeah, and then Raul will also help Sorry, can you repeat? Hopefully Raul will also help I'm sure he will I'm not now. He's now is now everyone knows that he So All right, and then of course we have a great adachi software engineer in the group where team. Yeah Also from next cloud Yeah, and I am young. I'm doing design at next out as you might know from the keynote, maybe all right, so Briefly mentioned before contribution is of course not only code. Yeah, but it's also design You notice that we have put some designers here. Yeah, it's of course also writing documentation It's doing the website. It's doing translations. It's doing community management being at events Yeah, doing so many different things answering questions on the forum asking questions on the forum because someone will maybe look for them Someone else. Yeah, it's so many different things. Yeah testing bug hunting like, you know, there's so many things I can't even mention them all and so so This is sort of a panel to to give you a bit of a start a bit of an idea How you can get involved and also to share some maybe some more personal stories of How we got involved in open source and in next lot specifically and what are some specific tips and tricks? that that we have to share now and Yeah We'll have to look at the time But maybe maybe afterwards you can also ask some questions, but I'm not entirely sure about that But you can also of course ask us in person At the conference now we're here So then the first sort of question would be or the first sort of intro is Yeah, how did you start contributing to open source and how did you get involved in next lot? Let's start maybe with an initial Yeah, sure. So I've been Interested in open source for a pretty long time I was a user of Ubuntu and and I'm from India and over there. It's a little bit like cool and alternative So I was interested in open source for a while, but Because I'm not super great with coding. I felt a little bit intimidated by you know, how Difficult it is to sort of get involved. I think When I got interested in design I came across next year and I saw that there was a dedicated sort of design page and You know, I saw that there were people working on design So I just you know sent an email actually saying hey, can I please get involved and then they were like, yeah Show it I guess and then like I got involved. It was super chill and now I work for next cloud as a designer So this is I guess my first experience Contributing to open source, but I think it was a super fun and smooth one So Pedro Yeah Yeah, I got I think I started to be interested in Open source and Can you hear me? Move your mic a bit closer to the No, the mic is on right? Yeah, but a bit closer to the mouth. Maybe. Okay. Thanks Maybe we can do this during the whole panel discussion. It's okay. Can you hear me? Yes, can you hear me much better Yeah, so I started to get into open source I think on during my pre teens that I was I got to know about these crew mean which was some distribution from Brazil I'm Portuguese by the way, so it just fell I felt at home there and then fast forward and when I was already interested in design and Graphic design and all the things I just came across This motto I still follow which is like follow by example. And so I just I just Remember to meet the the fellows from the manufacturer independent, which I think you know as well, Jan and the cool Cool a collective design collective doing cool stuff with the open source tools and for open source Projects and that's it and I just contributed a Bit here a bit there. Yeah by like you know mock-ups I know for inkscape or doing a little bit translations of the things I use So it's it's a bit all over place and not really organized It's just you know the things that appear the things I could help with that's it Very nice super So for me it was actually because of Linux when I was in high school I was one of the cool kids in school and for me that wasn't kind of entertaining So, yeah, I was using Linux starting from high school and then When I decided to study for computer science and then moved back to the capital of Albania and from Albania I decided to kind of apart from a user to be also a contributor so that this is how I start looking for communities that would do Linux workshops or Wikipedia writing context and then Ending up with the next cloud So for me it was kind of that Briefly, yeah Yeah, so I mean I can also share briefly my my thing like for me was a lot of a lot about actually DIY Like I love the do-it-yourself aspect of open source because like in Windows and macOS and so on You cannot really change a lot unless you start working there and here everyone can start working on This and on open source. So that's what I what I really liked about it It's like a very sort of this punk aspect and do-it-yourself thing is what I really kind of kind of love about it. Yeah cool, so Next sort of a topic or a question would be yeah What helped you initially especially and also what did you see as the biggest barrier with all at the same time? So, yeah, does anyone want to start maybe greater you want to start? Sure, I'm the technical part here. Do you want to start with the technical? Yeah, well, yeah, I'm a technical person, but weirdly enough when I started with Linux Wikipedia and the next cloud. I will saw some Zilla stuff I only did either I organized event for people to participate in these events to kind of advocate for open source or I worked on translation like I have a thing. I really like my language. So I had to make sure that The projects that I was a fan of they have to be in the into the Albanian language. So Yeah, for example, I think that the way how I got involved with Next cloud it was people poking me on Github to translate stuff Into the Albanian language after they Added some new strings or something. I think this is how it was. I think I also remember the project There was some software and draw it if I'm not wrong So, yeah, and then I Think maybe this is one of the barriers that I might Mention here. So as a technical person, I really wanted to contribute in the technical part like a writing code of fixing bugs Or I don't know doing some administration stuff because I Used to know stuff about it But not anymore. I'm a dev now. So yeah, that's best So yeah, for me it was the one of the barriers it was The documentation like for some reason it was overwhelming for me like it happened with Wikipedia Like I know so many people there and I only contributed by writing articles while like I knew how to fix stuff And I didn't because of the first step I would say and then it was kind of the same thing with next cloud Like I used to translate a lot of documents, but not Contributing in any way in a technical level So yeah, like what worked for me and for some people that I know but I don't think it's a general thing It was like meeting in person people that either are very active contributors in a certain project or they are employees so for both project especially for next cloud because when I started I didn't stop and I think I'm kind of I'm very proud but also because Kind of with all the project that I contributed in a way or another I ended up getting hired So I'm very proud of that But this is a thing at next cloud so it's not very special anymore like we hire a lot of community people Which is really great, and I really like that But yeah, like the documentation was over helming like every time I started to read documentation to actually send a PR I just stopped the documentation And then meeting people in person was helpful because there was somebody telling me just do this and Yeah, that's all you need Direction was important exactly documentation is direction But if you don't know where to look sometimes it's overwhelming Yeah, I think it's Like I'm a community manager at Collabra, so like the thing I noticed the most It's maybe sometimes we need to be more patient on on both ends I mean the person who wants to Start to contribute but also the other person on the other side often needs to be a little bit more patient So and sometimes it's it's sad because sometimes if we just wait a bit longer Or we just give a bit more pointers Maybe that new contributor would become a long term contributor So I would say patience Persistence like we really need to persist like and even if we fail which will fail multiple times. We always do. Oh my god I fail every day But I fell, you know, it's really good in a in a good way like with style. So You know, so we kind of learn and then and you know And then we are here for the longer run and and I think this first time contributors Or when we when we try to contribute the first time to a project We want everything to be perfect and we are shy and if something is not right We are we I don't know. We start to stress about it and worry and I'm like, oh my god Maybe I'm dumb. No, it's just you know, it's a new project for you So I think just persistence patience and and to have a nice example to follow be that a good commit an easy hack You know good low hanging fruits that you can pick Because you know if everything is perfect But then you don't have the the the low hanging fruits to work or a easy hack to work Then it's not really good. So so yeah, so one thing we actually have for that Maybe one of you was gonna mention that as well But I'm just gonna do that now is that we have in all the repositories. We usually have good first issues. So that's okay We have a good first good first issues, which are very small issues. We also have good first design issues. Yeah, so Development also combine labels to form whatever you want. So you can really pick your niche over the good first issue Yeah, and so so so these are really like and also for for any person who is a maintainer here It helps people really to like instead of only keeping your personal notes or whatever if it's just a small issue Document what like it's basically it basically means to document it to the extent like that The only thing that's missing is that really someone goes there and does it right? But everything else would be listed. So for example in which file that would have to be done In which line of code maybe even what you would change it to or something, right? So it's really very basic, right? Because also as you I mean as you probably know get is hard Yeah, get up is hard programming is hard. Yeah, design is also hard. I think so, yeah There's a lot of difficulty already involved in contributing so so let's make this this step of like Putting yourself out there as simple as possible Yeah, I think That patience so I mean I started contributing just around what one or two years ago I think just yeah, I think it's been one year or something like that So pretty recent and when I first started contributing I did I mean the problem of patience was not there in the other projects I felt very Sort of overwhelmed and intimidated because things had to be perfect like you said And I think what helped me the most was just striking up a conversation So I think I mentioned that first time I just sent out an email saying with like it's like four or five questions Or something like super detailed questions And I think getting back a positive answer really helped me and even when I first started contributing I think I we have a weekly design call on Tuesdays at 2 p.m. If everyone is interested for where we review apps and I used to Sit in on that whenever I could and I think I used to stay in touch I think that really helped me a lot and I think generally positive feedback from the maintainers Wherever I not even positive feedback. I think negative feedback as well. Just keeping a conversation going really helped So I think that's what really helped me at the Beginning and I think if I had any questions there would be answers and I know it's not like that It's not possible for every project to have such synchronous conversation as well, but I maybe if you know If someone opens an issue and it's not like dead for a week or something like that that might really help new contributors Actually, you know, keep them motivated and moving forward. I think and I also wanted to note that You're complaining about the documentation the documentation is actually one of the first things that I did because there was no design Documentation when I joined and I was like, I had no idea what to do So you can you can check that out as well. It's on the developer documentation just saying but I think that direction of Maybe looking around and knowing what to do would really would have helped me at that time because I felt a little bit lost Which is why documentation was the first thing that I worked on But it's very interesting that you were there was so much code documentation that you felt overwhelmed by it Yeah That is that is true. Documentation is very important. So yeah, keep that in mind everyone Code code commenting and yeah, that's true So Yeah, maybe maybe Let's let's talk about how can new people get involved in your in your area of where you work Like what would you now give us pointers so people have What would you point them to or what would you recommend as as things so that yeah there's one easy entry point maybe or or specific things that that are currently in the works or open something like that you think you can think of I Um, I mean like Jan mentioned we have a good first issues Label so anyone who wants to Like pick a low-hanging fruit like Pedro mentioned you can just filter by that label and there should be you know At least a couple of things that you know, you might be able to recognize or get a hang of so that's Something easy that you can do and I also actually have a lightning talk about how to contribute to design So maybe I should not talk about it at all right now. So all of you show up for that. No, I'm just kidding I think what can really help with design particularly is Maybe just pointing out some issues if you have an expertise in design I think that really helps when you have the designers I picks out something that maybe is missed or picks out of flow That's maybe not really really obvious to someone who's not a developer so easily usable for non developers So opening an issue about things like that can be really helpful I think because it also sparks a conversation in the following comments about you know, possible solutions or anything like that You can also do mock-ups. I think that's the most obvious solution as Designers you can just post like a little you know like picture of what the solution could look like and all of those are valid I think just taking the first step is The most important thing because many of the times there is a conversation that follows and then a solution automatically evolves from that so Yeah, sure. I can just add some more on that so Just to kind of justify myself for talking not so nice about documentation and it has improved a lot of course and But if you don't like reading a lot of stuff, I'm part of the group where team so male calendar and context What we make sure there. It's at least we have one public channel. So if you don't like to read stuff, you can just Join this public channel and ask the question and we'll point you where you need to be without you reading a lot of stuff We also help a lot of people to set up their Working environment So as deaf I mean as a Development environment if you want to contribute with different PRs We also will help you out to even open an issue when github so we can have a look for you But yeah documentation is good. I would say maybe stick with the github in the beginning If you are a technical person on our repose depending which app would you like to contribute? And if that's not good enough, then there's always a person behind that can help you Start and continue of course. I mean we're interested Okay, like yeah, we're interested in long-term contributions, but that doesn't mean that you should stick to it That's all Makes sense Yeah, I can't forget what was the question How to contribute How can people get involved in you right? Yeah, how can how to contribute actually right? um Sorry, I didn't finish my coffee Yeah, so Yeah, let's call a bro I think we found out that having a website where you have all documentation help So we have this collaboration online dot github dot IO But we also found out that Having regular calls like making sure that people don't get lost or at least that they don't feel they're lost They might be a bit lost, but it's okay. We will help them out So we we have these weekly calls And we go through all the PRs that that are waiting to you know to be reviewed or if anyone has a question suggestion And I think that helped out a lot But at the same time there is this what I found out is that sometimes There is this dangerous of getting overly invested in something before starting the line of communication, you know, so Example you can have for instance a designer that come come along and create spends a lot of time doing a mock-up Of an issue that maybe already existed and there was already discussion going on and there was already more other people You know contributing and there was really productive stuff going on there and then that person may then get upset because those things didn't get in and So we try to avoid that and and I mentioned designer But it goes the same for for a programmer that comes along and thinks oh wait a minute They it's missing some button here or some functionality. I will just do it, you know open You know open the repository read the code, which is awesome like we should read the code I mean documentation is great. It's good awesome, but also those comments in the code itself are Valuable, you know and even reading the git history git log it like all those things are our tools at our Disportial and we can we can we can see and go through them But sometimes it's good to don't forget to communicate, you know We don't need to be each each each one in their own corner. We can talk And ask the other and maybe there is already something going on and we can work together Instead of each one individually. So that's what I would say The barrier I see I remember the question Yeah, I just wanted to add something sometimes I Have the impression especially for people who are not very active that they kind of Expect that the employees should do that like help each other especially on github Actually our most helpful Members let's say our community people. So if you yeah, like they help each other to move on with Either a PR or documentation or whatever is needed. So If you are new on the project you read a ticket and you think you can help like you can do that You don't need to be staffed to help out or express your opinions especially on github On the technical level and in all levels, but yeah, so please do Yeah, and similarly for example Nimesha Earlier mentioned that we have a regular design call every Tuesday at 2 p.m Central European standard summertime or whichever time so thing it is and this is also open to anyone also to non designers of course right and some of some of our most active Participants are also not Trained designers or whatever and that's actually great. That's that's what our intention is like What are the initial reason why we did this call is because it was during COVID where we couldn't meet and We couldn't just be at the conference or at the contributor week and and go around and and fetch one of you and And say like hey, do you need feedback for your app, right? And so so with this weekly call we do we basically offer this and any one of you who wants design feedback Yeah, I can can ask for this and say like hey, I would like to like on the whatever Whatever acts of November. I would like to have I would like to Show my app in the design review and would like to give feet a good feedback And and then yeah, all of us will look at it. We will make a make a list Some are longer some are shorter doesn't matter Yeah, and then then you have a bunch of feedback you have a list that you can work on Yeah, and this is just really really sort of or we've made the experience that it's really quite helpful to developers We've got the feedback. I'm not I'm not saying that from our from our own sort of thing. Yeah, anyway Yeah Which which also sorry that one other thing that I would want to add to the like What was it? Well, no, I forgot the question how to contribute. Yeah, how to contribute in your area is like In your specific area, so The the general thing I would say that the the easiest thing maybe yeah is testing Yeah, every one of us uses next lot at least I assume so Even if you don't use next lot a lot you maybe use other software Maybe you use some Google product, maybe some Microsoft product or whatever. It doesn't matter But if you run into any issue if you run into any Misunderstanding or something that's too complicated. We should know yeah We should let us know and open an issue. Yeah, that's super helpful. Yeah, maybe sometimes we we're so like Focused on we looked at this for ages and stuff. Some of these things we simply simply go over our head So, yeah Sometimes we sort to get up issues by most up voted also so Yes Also, what I add one thing about what Pedro said I think one and when you're opening an issue something that could be useful is to see if there are any closed issues Regarding what you you know, you want to have a conversation about and there you can see maybe how people discussed it And if it's already merged or if there's a PR about it or something like that And I think that might help, you know, reduce some of the redundant issues that people open And if you have something to add or you know, some issues already closed But you have a completely different because it was closed like a really long time ago or something like that You can always, you know spark the conversation again, but I think redundant issues can really be Reduced by checking the you know issue history of like closed issues or like merged PRs or why something was not taken forward Yeah, exactly and I think more often than not there is Really cool stuff there like some good context there like for either historical reasons or something and Maybe there is a reason to start to talk again But I have two questions here Look at me destroying this whole thing. No, I mean the only thing I'm worried about is the time I think just just two questions when it's going to be your talk. I forgot Tomorrow so we cannot miss her talk And yeah, I wanted to ask if there was some cool stuff coming coming out from those design You know design cause because you said that there was a some cool feedback Well, so actually all the what we do with all these design calls all the notes generally They always end up in issues like all the all the teams Some do it some way some do it the other way some put it in one overview issue some create individual issues Whatever is easier for the team to manage. That's the but it's all public Directly afterwards Okay, I think we have to is anything more super important that you want to share or Thank you for all the contributions done so far. Thank you very much and We will not do a Q&A because First we're short on time but also because he can actually ask anyone Yeah, about how to contribute. Yeah, because everyone entire conference is a Q&A. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah And then we will continue with lightning talks