 Thank you for coming, folks. Initially, when I proposed this session, I had no idea what we were going to talk about. Zero idea. I just knew that there were a lot of people in Vancouver who wanted to get into open source, and for a long time, they didn't have the resource for it. And then eventually they did, but it was just by accident that we started doing something for them. So I'll get into that. My name is Manil. On the internet, I'm usually keyword new. I work at Envision as a developer advocate. And for the past little while, I've been involved in open source, and I'm really liking it. And I personally got into someone by accident. Some people I've talked to have actually experienced that. And I think that's kind of a shame that people have to find it by accident when you can get so much with them. So, like, let's try and bridge that gap. And now this is not working. Fantastic. Yes. My keyboard is weird. Great. So, first of all, what we're going to do, we are going to try to figure out what brings people into open source. And then we'll go over a couple of things like background for this project and resources that other people might need. But that's what I want to get a feel for in this room, just to see where people are coming from. People, I have had discussions with folks, most recently at DevilCon in Tokyo, where this person gave a talk with really good insight. I think you know I'm the person who made Ruby. And mentioned that everyone has their own different reasons for getting into open source, which makes it unusually tricky to figure out what appeals to people. And I want to see what, if anyone here was willing to share their motivations for getting into it. I'll get started. When I got into open source, it was kind of soon after I started becoming a developer. And my path into becoming a developer was I used to work in a different industry and I started getting involved in the developer community in my hometown, which is Vancouver. It's my hometown for the past like decade or so. And the community was very helpful for me to get involved, like become a developer, which made me just kind of look for more like paths to become, to be part of the broader tech community, not just like in my city. So I started exploring and someone invited me to a note school. And then someone invited note school to note interactive to the conference. And then someone invited note like that session into the call-out summit. So it was just a step of like steps of accidents of people just saying, do you want to come? Do you want to come? I'm like, okay, sure. Anyone else have something they want to share? I started by writing plug-ins for PM and Wiki, a PHP Wiki engine that I ended up needing in order to build the website for my university department. Because by doing that, I had enough possible deniability that I did not have to be an assistant on any of the courses that they were teaching. And then it sort of went from there. So initially you were solving your own problem. Oh yeah, absolutely. And it brought other benefits. I'm sure eventually. It becomes a habit sort of thing. It's certainly easier for me now when I'm working for, I work for, as a consultant developer, I've been now with the same client for about a year and a half and with a couple of other clients before that. And it's easy for me, these are Finnish companies, but they are entirely private in most of what they do. But practically everywhere, I managed to find bits of things that make sense for me to release as open source. And I've been able to sell that to the corporations that yeah, it's more worthwhile for you for this to be open source than for you to try and keep it all to yourself. Right, right. So there's actually, like for you, there's good business arguments to participate in. Because effectively, it's not that difficult to build a track record of if you actually build a useful thing and have someone else use it, then even just one or two GitHub issues that someone files in externally, you can point at them and say, see, this thing now makes your code better and you do not have to pay anyone for it and you know, you're getting a side benefit. And it's so far from what's your actual business that it doesn't matter for your, matter negatively for your income at all. When I was learning Node.js, I was using a framework for a project called Thought Kit to build Slackbots. And I was just learning JavaScript at that point. And I would read the code because it was on GitHub, like over and over and over, trying to figure out what the different connectors of the different platforms like Facebook, Slack, et cetera would do. And through doing that, I found some typos and comments or whatever. And I think probably my first couple of pull requests were to fix typos or something. But through reading the code, I got more familiar with it by consuming a bunch of code and eventually I got to meet some of the people behind that project. And when Slack released a new events API, I was like, I know how to do this now from the code. So I went and implemented it and whatnot and pushed it over as a pull request and it was ugly and terrible. And they took it and they cleaned it up and they reached it in. And that was the first time when I was like, there's other people using code that I wrote. Oh, no. Oh, no. But that was how I first got into it. And I always hooked basically ever since finding problems to solve because they were out there in the project. And so it's like very different reasons for getting into it. We just heard three. And to me, that sounds like different reasons to get included in to start participating in open source. I think with the, so the reason we were talking about this is because in Vancouver, we've been running a workshop and it's called getting started in open source. It's an in-person workshop that we do. And it's basically people come and the mentors in there are folks with stories very similar to this. We all had different reasons for getting involved. Some have been involved for less than a year. Some have been involved since I, you know, some people have been coding since like they're really young. But everyone just wanted to put something into the community where here's this resource that if you're curious or you had questions or you weren't sure where to start. Here's this in-person place you could show up to. Basically the reason people go to meals. So we started doing that in the summer of last year. And I'm sorry if I'm going fast, but like we kept the session short because right for coffee break and we all probably need your coffee. But we started doing that workshop last summer and we thought, okay, we'll see how it goes for the first couple of months. And we will do it once a month and we'll keep signups pretty low so we can have good discussion and maybe some people will shop. And if not, we'll just like, you know, triage our own issues while we're there altogether. So it was kind of like a social sort of hangout. But from the first month, it was already kind of like we had a waiting list. Like people just show up. You have the usual meetup like half the number of people sign up show up, but we always had a waiting list. Which showed us that there was an interest in at least in that city for getting some information in front of people that they might not have access to. But just like randomly scouring the internet or taking a chance on a code on a project where they have no idea how they'll be received, whether they'll get the support they need to level up from making like one small type of fix to actually putting in full pull request that like deliver a feature or helping them run events. Because depending on which project you have, you could have down code and code commit. So we started off by just making ourselves available answering questions which were like kind of like here's the myth of local sources. It's a person coding and no one ever meets each other and no one talks. It's just all code stuff like that. And we're like, no, there is other ways you can start there are different ways to contribute. And depending on what project you contribute to, like for example, the larger get there are more than just code ways like code channels. And we weren't sure what the efficacy of this would be like whether or not folks would take this information and eventually like because that idea a lot of times they go and commit to a project. And we weren't sure and we don't have hard data yet, but we do know that there are some people come back after making commits to projects, including notes. And they say, hey, now they want me to follow up and make this other pull request. How do we do this, which is really, really, really good to hear. One of our attendees actually went to the code and learn which is noted. Interactives, like they give you a simple commit to make it, you get your pin, and then that's supposed to help start you like down the path by committing more and more. I got my start there, like my first commit was there at one of the code. So one person went to that. And I think since then they've contributed to more. So I was hoping something like this would help them get the conversation started on if this was something that other people wanted to run in their own town. Or if you wanted something like this to happen in your hometown, what kind of resources would you want to give the people who are going to organize this. So someone reached out from Austin and they they had attended one of our community committee meetings and they found out about this project. So they're like, Well, I think you have a slide that can we use that. Okay, that works slide there. But what else would you need. And they talked to go to curriculum. So we actually started putting together curriculum that touched on a lot of what we had discussed we had a rough curriculum outline and we thought hey, there are some common questions, maybe we put something together and we run through these each time we do our meetings that work. So we thought hey, what if we split this up into three sessions that we just repeat so month 123 and then reset start again. That didn't work so well because some people would miss the first one and have no context for the second one. So we just went back to every month is it's own standalone thing, but people still come back even though they know there will be repeats because we deliberately keep 50% of the time for open discussion. So even if we cover similar items like get NPR and how to have like how to write communicatively on GitHub issues because even if you use GitHub in your org you don't necessarily communicate using it very well. At least in my experience. People just want to talk about different stuff. The reason we added CI and continuous integration to what we talked to people about or what we introduced was because someone asked us about it and then another person asked about it like two months later. So, um, yeah, I wanted to open the conversation up to what people might look for in something that this would you want to see this in your own town. And if you wanted someone to organize it, what would you be looking for in a resource. I'd be really interested in learning about the curriculum and some of the resources that you guys have used. Okay. Personally, I would love to run a better there are a lot I feel like there are a lot of people that want to get involved in the source and having that curriculum to work through. Since you guys have been tested in a bit. I'd be really curious about learning more about that. Would you at this stage having contributed already to open source like projects would you be so I'm not saying that you should run. I'm just saying is at this stage would you be comfortable with the idea of like yeah I feel like I can shoulder that you know responsibility of like yeah if they ask me questions I can answer from the point of view of a maintainer. Like or do you think it takes. Is there sort of barrier there. Well I'm not sure if I would classify myself specifically as a as a maintainer. I'm more of a contributor to other people's projects. Okay. But personally I know I would tell people I don't know the answer to that you know, but what I hear from what you told me so far about the workshop you created. It sounds like you know you're showing people at open source software is community. Like that's that's why I'm getting out of it essentially with it being you know 50% for open discussion 50% for kind of teaching and walking people through that sounds good. I would I would show up to that just because I love to meet ups and it would be great to have that community to spend more time with other people that are interested in open source. What are their news or whether they're people that are way above me on the food chain of open source basically. I don't I don't know how the other chapters are but no school. Definitely reaches the point eventually where you know people have kind of made their way through the curriculum they still like it so they still like it socially so look on every month. There's not necessarily a time to do. Yeah, so like this sounds it's only it's like a national progression of how you keep it interesting for like something should be quick uphill. Right for the more intermediate than all. It's interesting you say that because we actually for purposes of budget, we actually do it through no school by the art. Makes sense to me just from my view of like when I see people doing it. I'd be interested in seeing the curriculum and maybe flipping it so you're talking to a general audience about contributing to general open source right. Yes. But there are lots of smaller or just getting started open source projects that could use these materials as a way to please track themselves like. Oh, hey, here's a template for how people should contribute to our project. Yeah, and a lot when I see a lot of this project going like what is something project that I admire you. I'm going to do it that way. So this then becomes a resource for projects to attract more help. Okay, well maintainer burnout is a thing. And also like a big part of just the actual radars and the tedium is oh my goodness, I have to make a template for it. Oh my goodness, I have to like come up with a set of tags. I have to like do all the basic paperwork. I think the biggest realization is that you can skip. But it also makes it that if you skip all that only people who already know what's going on contribute. Because they already have the cultural knowledge. Whereas if you want new people to have to either go through a program like this or the documentation has to be at each separate project. It's hard to understand what people who don't know don't know. I like the idea. And then where Blaine actually that was a week and long we were mentors at a weekend long open source happy event that happened in Michigan. No, it doesn't matter where it is. I found difficult and it was fun and I think that it was neat to go but I definitely did feel that weekend intense learning like none of the people in the program really seem to be contributing to the project. And which was kind of disheartening like I didn't actually find we got that many people actually off the ground. I really reflect on what we got out of it. So I like the idea of a monthly thing. You can come back. Yes, a lot of mentorship to get someone actually to the point of contributing. Totally. And everyone is like bearing levels of bandwidth. They could drop off purely for the fact that they're not getting paid for this and they need to pay the bills and then they'll come back when they have time. That makes sense to me. We might contribute to something because we're using it really intensely. And then we stop working on that project. To use it anymore. Yeah. We have found that a lot of people will come and figure out that hey this is not for them. But that's to be expected not just with open source let's be expected with like any sort of like in person workshop. And maybe the format doesn't agree with them which is why sometimes we have it's great to have these discussions where you're suggesting formats and we can actually iterate on what we're doing. We're not doing something as well as we could. And we're also, yeah, I'm very caught into the fact that we're very short of time and I wish this discussion could continue more. So I'm wondering like of the people here. I think the best way probably to move forward on this is if you're still interested in somehow continue the conversation async. Say participating in discussions or maybe we'll come up will will post our curriculum somewhere public. And you can actually look through it make suggestions change it. If you want to do that I will move this to a document where you can drop some way to share that with you. I don't know I might. So if you go to that it'll take you to a page where you can either sign in or you can continue as guests. Okay, you can you can you can ping it you can write it down if you want to and I can take a piece of paper but that's totally your fault. Yeah, because I know you didn't have a lot of time. Thank you. Do you have time for questions? Yeah, I'm, I'm, I totally have time for a question. I don't mind missing coffee. I just don't want to impose that on other people. So, yeah. I'm curious if that's specifically part of the curriculum because I know that's a way I mean a lot of folks who might not I'm coming from my background I don't like to do a lot of stuff in person because of the environment and just like my identity I don't really want to chill with a bunch of people and but I think and but I think that if there's an emphasis on non code contributions you are reaching out to a more diverse that people who work in tech even check writers fans and people who contribute. That is totally in the curriculum, mainly because when we first started we put together a very simple set of what do people think open sources and what about that. Do we frequently have to tell people is wrong. Yeah, and that came up very early on, because when I got started. That's what I assumed. That's what everyone else told me. And it only got, like, fixed with exposure, but not like deliberately someone telling me this or what it is. It was just like, oh, I realized it was this. So we have to say that heavily in the beginning of each session. Yeah. Yeah. One point I would like to mention the container is like a but not thing but I think the content is also some kind of it's you're not a container if you're just a computer. Yeah. The other thing about being starting with open sources, but I've seen that most people don't realize that the start is that they are just attractive to this term that I'm open source or maintain our kind of I have some conveyors, they can show it and mention it somewhere. But as they start to go on, up to some time they will lose that motivation and then most of the time when they are not actually using that project or the thing they are trying to contribute. Like if you're a content developer, you spend most of the time in the front end technologies and just start to try to contribute to a movie or a Python project, maybe you will make a typo fix and think that you will lose the motivation at the end. Yeah. So the start I think people don't realize these products, these products they should start with. Yeah. Start with some projects, they do some comments and then they lose it and you know, they don't know where they belong in the open source community. It's a huge community. Yeah. So for every specific person, there is a very like specific like projects which they can maintain and contribute regularly as a. And that's the point where you should realize that the start of their contribution that they started. Yeah. If you are a open source, you can do it with regular technologies which are in the front end. If you're on the back end, maybe yes, you can look on those technologies that we use. Then you'll have the knowledge, you'll have the information and you will have to contribute to the project because you lose it, you know, the people who maintain it. That's the thing. So, yeah, we need to like look into the tool setting also. So to answer part of your question, we do offer ourselves as a resource. So the mentors in that workshop, we happen to contribute in the JavaScript space. Not all NodeJS, two NodeJS, one runs a framework like it's a REST framework on top of Node and another person who worked on P5JS. But what we do try to do is we try to make ourselves available to answer questions where it's like, you can bring this, if you're interested in a project, you can bring it to us and we'll help you identify a way to get into it. So it's like, oh, maybe this is a good way because they're very responsive if you try to contribute like documentation changes, but they're not so responsive to try to contribute to features. It's easier for us, I think, to notice that kind of thing, because we have a, if you're in open source for a little while, you might start noticing patterns that translate across projects. And that's another thing we do is we help people identify good reports to contribute to. So if it doesn't have, for example, that it's correlated for the conduct and it's not enforced at all, you can see that in their discussion. We don't recommend people like go there. And we try to explain why, because sometimes that might not be immediately obvious. But another thing I do want to make clear is that what we're trying to solve for is lowering the barrier entry. We are not necessarily trying to create motivation to contribute to open source. What we're trying to do is on the sunshine that you have the motivation to convert open source, we're trying to lower the barrier so you don't know where to go after we're fixing that point. It's like, I want to contribute, and then we're trying to create that path from I want to contribute to I am contributing. But if we don't have a motivation to contribute, that's okay, because, you know, like people do stuff, they contribute for a while and they lose interest, they move on to a different technology. And that's fine, we have to accept that that's just the nature of people's time. I think maybe a little totally right, but I think most of the time, like everyone in the deaf community has at least contributed to some project. Maybe a type or something, but the problem is that most of the participants, they start, but they just stop after some time because they don't, they bring the first barrier, but after that they don't know. Like, yeah, I did first thing now. I see. Yeah, that's the main problem. The starting point is relatively easy. Yeah, that's like the first step is very easy. The next step to go, to look for more things and actually get involved. That's where you lose the things to. I see. I'm on a misinterpreted the recurring nature of the workshop, but I heard from that and got me excited. I learned to code in a town that had, I learned a lot from my local tech community, but it's like a smallish town in Florida. It's like a college town, but we still had a small tech scene. And within that scene, we had meetups and all that, but there really weren't that many people that contributed to open source. And, you know, you were speaking about motivation and how people, once they do get over that barrier, whatever barriers exist for them to get into it. I totally see issues as like 100% non-code contributions as an incredible way to contribute to open source is depending on the project is low barrier. It's awesome. But for me, having that social aspect of just, hey, come together, well, maybe give some talks like this would be more of a meetup thing in my mind. Just some talks and education and then, you know, people can work on open source or discuss things or whatever. I was interpreting it as more of like people being able to come together and have that social aspect. I think that that's what keeps people motivated in my opinion is, you know, open sources community in a lot of ways. If you're the kind of person where you can find that community easily online through your online persona, then it can really help you keep motivated. But if you're just a person who wants to try to gain that habit. You already like it, you know, whatever you're intrinsically motivated or maybe you're trying to get a job, whatever. I feel like having a recurring event where people come together and work on whatever projects they're going to work on. Maybe somebody pitches you a project, whatever. But that's really satisfying to me to think about bringing that social aspect, which I think makes open source so successful. But bringing that into a realized space, which I think would be more welcoming to other people, essentially. You know, whether somebody is going to stick with a project or not, you know, you can't control that. But even just getting people to enjoy that process because open source can be such a toxic place that, you know, unless you can associate some good fields with it somewhere, somehow. And even if that's just having a beer or whatever you're doing with your friends and, you know, filling out issues or fixing bugs or whatever. That's like, that feels really powerful to me. It's the kind of place I would want to go. And humans like this. Yeah. Do you guys just like this? Yeah, I do want to push back just about the idea that like everybody in the deaf community, it's like maybe it's done with open source. Because I've spotted things when I first started moving, not traditional underrepresented backgrounds. I was like, this is a bug. I'm not going to touch it because I don't want to put myself out there. And like, that is a thing that happens for a lot of books when there's like, you might feel that there's more of a risk. You know, like exposing yourself or you have some imposter syndrome or you have all these other things. So not everybody like gets over that first hurdle. Or maybe they get over the first hurdle and then they have a terrible experience because that happens. And then they never come back. Yeah. And I feel like having that in like real life social, you know, like, yeah, people suck on the internet. But, you know, like, we want you to be here, you know, at the very least, that feels powerful to me. Yeah. Thank you for bringing that up. Because like, we, I think it's a project's responsibilities to make sure that they are conducive to recurring, like, And that's how we try to be very careful about recommending where people places go. We will not actually call out, like, say, you should contribute here totally. Yeah, just contribute somewhere until we know for sure that that place is good to contribute to either like one of us is conducive to it, or we know someone directly who has. Yes. Sorry. I'm sure you're aware of it. Do you know there's a no jazz mentorship? Yes. And I think it just has been a week or two. But it's a little different, though, because it's kind of more one-on-one pure mentorship. Yes. But we kind of need to, certainly not, we kind of need to combine some metrics. That's interesting. Yeah. From the workshop, connect to the mentorship. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. It's interesting that you bring up one-on-one, because I was going to ask, like, what's the ratio of? Oh, yeah. The promise is huge. Joey, come in. Thank you. Joey, even when I was doing, like, three or four at Hackel and Dome, it was good. Thank you.