 So welcome Laura Arianna Reina, you will be talking about the welcome team and how to contribute without packaging in Debian Hello, thank you all for coming This talk is like two talks. I mean the topics are related, but I will talk first about the welcome team The Debian welcome team was like an idea that came up in 2015 maybe before but I learned about it that in that time The idea was to to get people from that are occasional contributors To regular to become regular members of the any team in Debian and also to help newcomers to start contributing to Debian the typical Situation of I want to help Debian. I want to give back something to the community, but I don't know well what to do And some teams and Debian teams have some mentoring initiatives, but We also thought that maybe we need some effort that is more global Some people guiding that knows many teams in Debian and try to find the best place for each one depending on their skills or their time or What they like Whatever and also to share among the teams the different things that tricks the how-to's About mentoring and about encouraging people to join Debian So we are not each team thinking And reinventing the wheel So the history that I know, but it's probably older than that But I know this idea from 2015 There was a buff in Decon 15 And the idea was brought up by Ashish Laroya and Enrico Cini I joined remotely and I tried to figure out and create We were thinking about Creating a wiki page and we thought and we found out that there was an old wiki page called wikidebian.org slash welcome There was also an old RSC channel Debian welcome and we decided to Give it new life and then when we start to work We found out that it was that old effort was not really dead There were people there in the channel and people did it in the wiki page, but They were focused mostly in new Debian users and we wanted to Have a place for new Debian contributors So we talked with each other and we decided to share The infrastructure the page the wiki page and the Debian channel and because some people come and They can just begin to contribute the same at the same time that they become users too So we decided like that and the resources that we have The pages that you can visit and I will show later Is wiki Debian or welcome slash users that I am not in that sub team and wiki Debian or welcome slash contributors That you can find the name the names of the people that are wanting to to help this effort and for now It's mostly me and now John Philip that he's around The RSC channel everybody is welcome to join the welcome channel we are like 15 20 people there just lurking and people come and ask things and we guide them Depending we ask back What are your Skills or what do you want to do or people that for example want to Interested in the artwork and they don't know where the teens that Care about that or whatever We have no mailing list I don't know if it this is good or bad if we have time we can talk about this later because I Feel that some people are really shy to post anything in public and the mailing list has a child so It can be intimidating and I feel that the RSC channel is more Fresh and more easy, but on the other side new people not many new people know one use RSC so Well something to think about it and I say no dedicated members because I see all the all the people that we are hanging on the channel most of us have are members of some other teams and are quite busy so There is nobody Particularly dedicated to welcome people in Debian except in other teams that I will explain now but not in the welcome team so It's a little bit weak the team we need the more human resources and There is some overlap with other deviant teams for example the outreach team but Usually they are focused more in more regular programs like Google Summer of Code or Outreachy with a certain calendar and certain specific people and It's in the welcome team is more like informal There are some mentoring efforts around deviant woman deviant diversity not only mentoring but also Being nice to new people being Welcoming in fact In the deviant support user support channels usually people ask anything so They receive also Information about how to join deviant or how to become Join a team There is also of course deviant mentors for the people interested in packaging software There is also a new member process for people that Decide to become former members of deviant and there is the deviant documentation project. I put it there because At the end people ask How can I help because they all they don't know so maybe Improving all our documentation or have or having a focus in welcoming New contributors in our document or our documentation maybe could help too and Some challenge challenges that we face we need We need a big team a very big team because the deviant is very diverse and very Spread it's not that we have like 10 teams in deviant. We have I don't I didn't count But probably we have minimum 30 40 teams different teams There are many many many different areas and nobody can know everything so everybody is welcome to help the welcome team because probably you know some parts and in that in those parts you can give advice or Give the hand to the newcomer to make the first Contributors contributions together or whatever but with the other teams that I show in In this slide also need Many members too because the tasks are very big. So if you After my talk you think that it is not an Interesting effort the welcome team but the but some of the others are interesting for you. Please join the others, okay? and I Say that the new deviant developers are the best members for the welcome team because When you are new to deviant, but you already passed the new member process you Know how deviant works, but you also remember Your old times when you were a newcomer When you stay some years in deviant and you become to know many people and attend some deviant events and Become comfortable with the infrastructure and with where is Where are things and so on then you become to begin to forget the old the the new the feelings and the strange things That people that is not in deviant find when they come to deviant. So if you are a new DD And also because when you are new DD, maybe you have your main Interest in deviant and not not much more things. So this is the time to Choose to mentor somebody Before that we catch you for other things on the other side I would like that I Would like to propose that we think that the whole deviant community should be focused in welcoming people Not I mean having a dedicated team is not something for the other things to say oh this new person and I can live I can send him to Somebody and I don't need to be welcoming because there is a welcome team to care about that. No, I mean My my proposal is that Is the other way mostly This person comes to deviant and I know that in that team and that in that in that in everything There are there is somebody or there are some people that are Especially focused in welcoming. So from the welcome team we send the newcomer to these other teams and I would like to Send people to any team In deviant not to a particular team because I know that is a person welcoming there and not in other teams Well, you get the idea so thinking about myself and the teams where I participate and maybe These are some things that came to mind that I propose you Everybody in deviant to think about the teams where they are participating to know or to maybe Guess if our team is welcoming or not, how can we improve? so usually in one team we have Different levels of commitment. We have occasional contributors. We have regular contributors We have core members and we have retired members We can if you are in the teams in some years, you can look To the past and see the movements of people people coming and going jumping from one group soup group from to another for example How many people retired? How many new people came if somebody stayed? Inocational contributors for so for too long and didn't come and didn't become regular contributor Maybe something is wrong there or if somebody is a regular contributor for a long time and It's not never was a core member. Maybe something is wrong I mean, it's perfectly it's perfectly fine if it is that that is the decision of the person But maybe we can think about the team if we are Facilitating this kind of movements or people that don't retire because they don't find other person to do the work in their place things like that and Also, we can look at our team membership and look at our diversity if we are Everybody too old if we have people from different places cultures skills If there are tasks that nobody picks up never things like that Also, we can look at our communication channels if people ask Shows up wanting to help how the team answered that kind of questions or proposals and And also The team infrastructure if the tools that we use are well documented documented or if we if our work is known in Debian and outside the Debian if we Have some event or blog or Place where we put news about our team at what do we do if we don't Show our work new people is very hard that they come to join because they don't know that we exist and Maybe if these Questions resonate in you or some of you maybe you can call for a team meeting and discuss about this and maybe some tasks show up To to make your team more welcoming but in any case the important thing is to find the specific things to improve and to be realistic and to I mean Everybody we have ideas and talking is very easy how we should do this we should do that But we also need to find the time and the motivation to actually do and finally I Invite all of you and all of your teams to share your work Join the Debian welcome channel the Debian outreach to and Also use the Debian publicity channels to make your Debian work or team more known not only inside Debian but also in the wider audience That's all For the welcome team if you have questions or comments We can talk later and in the ISC channel. I'm always there so you can find me I I wanted also to Show some specific contribution opportunities There are really many many things that anybody can do in Debian But I wanted to show some two or three things that don't require Coding skills or packaging and it are more or less easy So if you know somebody that says I want to help Debian But I don't know what to do and if she or he is really open to do anything You and you don't know what to say you can say go to this video and and Watch the video and do that and this is just starting and later They can if they don't like they can change him and probably they will also know More specific things that they like or they don't like in Debian Yes, this I already said many corners to start Sometimes it's not easy to do alone to start alone And the other the other possibility is to ask the people Who are you? What are your skills? What is your time? But I find that some this sometimes can be intimidating because If you say To somebody that you don't know how much time can you put in a week for Debian It's like a very strong question in my opinion. So it's a difficult thing So, okay, I will just explain spangling and it's a very very easy task It has secondary collateral effects That it makes you read about Debian because you review some mailing lists And you see the topics even the subjects of the males Find trying to find the spam you see some things that happen in that team and you say you Learning reading about Debian is very Invisible but very appreciated. I mean when somebody goes to the mailing list archives and find the list full of spam It's very difficult to find the correct the mail that you were looking for but if it is clean It's very nice So and you probably are the person that asked or you are probably Already subscribed to some Debian mailing list so you can clean that list And maybe choose another one to learn another topic another Debian topic and subscribe there No, in fact, you don't need to subscribe subscribe. You just read the web archives and It's in two steps mark the spam and the second the stem is the step is actually clean the spam For the second step, you need to be a Debian developer, but if the person marking the spam In insist can convince somebody to to do the second part So You just review the mailing list archive I will show later you when you review them the archive in the web The every message has a button Like a mark us as a spam. So it's just pressing the button when you find the spam And then editing a wiki page to reflect that you review that month of that list So people knows that this that work is done Okay Now I'll make an example So for example here There is the least some lists that are doing the spam cleaning no, and Then for example, you go you go with if you decide to clean Debian woman. So you go to List Debian or Debian woman and then see the months that you want to clean and Here there is no spam. So you see the other there is no spam No spam or this is clean already. I think I will choose another one for example Well, I'm very unlucky Which one like this? No No Why I don't use them my my lists my teams that I know that they have Here, okay This is a spam. I don't understand the language, but this is spam. So you press there and this is fun Yeah, and that's all I mean for the first You just go through the whole month Marking maybe this one. Yes like this and Well, I will not to review the whole month, but you see it's very easy okay, and then you go to the Corresponding team that we have here in webmaster and Then you edit the page Marking that you review the months the corresponding months you edit this page Yeah, you have you need a wiki account Okay But if anybody he's trouble has troubles with these things of having a wiki account Blah blah blah blah you can send them to the welcome team IRC channel and we can guide and then you edit and you put your name or To reflect that the you reviewed that Okay, and when we have five reviews With the site it's I mean automatically the system mark Actually as a spam that message, you know, we are quite conservative and And then if you are a DD It will appear to actually remove the the mail from the archive, okay, this is looks like strong, but well, we care about the our archives and we Somebody could also vandalize With the spam spam spam with the mail messages that they don't want that they are stored so So it's a bit Well maybe boring or tedious but if anybody Begins with this and they discovered it's too much. No problem. They already have a wiki account in devian now you can switch them to Translations in the wiki edit wiki pages or whatever Okay, and if you are a DD You can help clean in the spam So you go to the corresponding URL if you have no password you request a password and then you review the mails Confirming or saying that this ham not to spam and then the that months will become clean for the next people Review in the archive I think I will I will Skip to another task another task for example testing the devian images we produce Installer images leave images now also cloud images when there is a release point or when we are going to release These images are prepared before than publishing and we leave some time for people to test That actually the installer works and in you know We have many architectures and many different desktops and many different hardware Systems and people Wanted their system encrypted some other people wanted to use in the the accessibility options So there is a lot of things to test and the best thing is to have a very big team That each each person tests different things. So in few time you have many different tests run and You you can join is just about Downloading the image and try to install or try to run the images. Okay, so this is the Corresponding URL on where they explain the CD team and leave team explain How to do what to do you can also join the corresponding channels to ask and also, you can keep an eye in Release mailing list or in the publicity team mailing needs to know the weekend that we are going to release some something So you can put you in your calendar Saturday evening, I'm going to test the Vian. I don't have better thing to do And it's it's fun Elena can I think can tell too I I cannot test usually but I am hanging around in the channel and It's it's really fun and they are very very nice people. So Why not? the Actually The team Prepares a page. We're explaining what to do and for the each release prepares a matrix of the different tests So you can just try to run the devian is selling in specific architectures or with the specific desktop or Accessibility options or whatever if you have particular hardware the better Here you can where you can download from and then there is the big matrix Test matrix where people claim the tests then download and they say the what things Specific things they tested in which are in which hardware Which desktop and if it runs or not if it passed the test or not This is done usually for each release point But you can do it at any time with the devian installer with the new release of the The Vian installer and with the leaf images the leaf images particularly are not very tested because we don't have many many people so If you want to have an interesting weekend, you can just join and if you have a pair Machine a laptop no laptop or whatever. You can just try, okay? Let's come let's switch to the next one and well at some time We will release devian 10. So we will need many many many testers so putting your calendar some weekend or some some week in the next week's month We don't know but probably before the end of the years for sure and probably before the Autumn for sure We will need your help. Oh, pardon and About user support This is not about Joining the use support channels This is if you are already there giving Uses support channels. We would like you to give feedback to the other devian teams to devian welcome to the publicity team because it seems like Maybe I am wrong. But for me, I feel like there are two words and the user support is so Energy consuming task that people just decide if I will do user support Barely have time or energy or motivation to do all the things in devian and they are people that are in other teams in devian Just don't have the energy to add user support. Well, I Know people that are involved but It is difficult. So if you just pick an eye just put an eye in your Language user support channel Maybe it's fine that you give some feedback to the other teams the outreach the welcome the publicity the documentation from time to time to to know if we should do anything better or and also You can consider to focus in a subgroup for example join the devian accessibility mailing list or Devian desktop and then you just look look there and Join engage when you have time or when something pops up that you know. I mean, it's not like I Join I join a mailing list and I become core member from the day one at all and Of course again the the publicity team We welcome help in all our channels If you don't know any of our channels just ask or just fine And also We welcome people creating content we usually publish micro news Then the thing that we publish more often is micro news That is a sentence and a link and Transforming that in a paragraph for the devian project news or a blog post explaining a little bit more Or adding a photo or whatever is very welcome Okay, so if you don't I don't know what to how to create content for the Publicity team just go to the micro news feed and if some news already interests you you can Just summarize it for the next devian project news or give it another focus in a blog post or whatever We also welcome proofread and translations and Also the people that English is not their mother language Really It's not so important. We have Native speakers reviewing our content. So it's better that you Send anything or commit anything and then we review quickly all together and we get it get it in shape It's true. I mean It's no excuse that English is not my mother language to contribute to the devian publicity And We I was making to the publicity team the The questions that I show in the welcome team part and I realized that we need people Moving from their roles. We we have many people Occasional contributors, but we need them to To get more involved, okay So if you were thinking about it, you are welcome. Just do it. Okay And I think that's all I left five minutes for comments Okay Thank you Can you hear me? Yes, okay does the mix between helping new users and new contributors With the past year's experience What was the feedback about did it work? Well, did you manage to mutualize stuff? Or was it was was there was a confusion so redundancy another question our slides available somewhere and last questions Last question you talk about something related to tasting ISO that Every Saturday evening or this evening something will happen. I didn't did not understand Okay, the first question I understood the third I understood the second I didn't well I will We didn't have feedback we don't have feedback about the the Not much feedback about the what the things that work in the past Not it was just like that We wanted to use the welcome word and After we Revived the channel and we edit the wiki page. We found out that there were people Saying that hey, why are you using? our wiki page for a different thing and then We had to talk each other of course and everything was friendly and we just decided that Both teams are somehow related and we couldn't Choose which one keeps the world welcome Because it's silly that the one keeps it and the other one changed our try to find another thing So we decided to share the infrastructure But that's all the second question. Can you repeat are your actual slides full of link and interesting resources available somewhere? Yes in the slides. There are some links and I will the slides will be Uploaded to the wiki page to the welcome Contributors wiki page. So if you keep the last URL in your mind or only welcome that's enough. I will do it Sometime during the weekend. Yes, we encourage all speakers to share their links to their Slides on the wiki page. It's probably the best place Yes, I mean not only the wiki page of the conference the wiki page of the welcome team also will include this talk Okay, and there was a third question about the testing images. Yes. No, no I mean, we don't know when are we going to release The devian 10 or devian 9.10 or whatever, but not usually we know with some Days in advance So if you keep an eye on the devian publicity team the channels or the devian release Channels, you will know at least with one week or ten days before To when is release weekend? So you can join that weekend in life in the RC with the CD team the leaf team and test the images Right before they are published So you become like a privileged person to know if the image works or not before the other Person knows that was the And It's not really a question. It's more like a Suggestion so we have this association Organization in France, which is called from a soft who did this big project of un-googly-fying the world More or less it succeeded in un-googly-fying friends more or less So we used to do these workshops where we welcomed people from which were not a computer scientist And un-googly-fied their computers and phones and we still do that and now their next project is the Contribution Workshops project. So what they do is that they do workshops where people from that are not computer scientists come and Contribute to to free software. So What they do for this is that they Pick projects that have clear Things simple things to do. So for example, you could do a page where you say if you have five minutes You could do and then you do this palm tata tie your list of things if you have 30 minutes You do tata tata and this could really help us as a free software activist I I could do these workshops and Take this website and then Follow the steps and make people contribute to Debian in like five minutes 30 minutes one hour one week So maybe you could do a both about this tomorrow, or I don't know no tomorrow Unfortunately, I cannot do it. Yes. This is this this also needs to be done some team wiki pages have such kind of list of easy tasks or quick tasks and then more difficult tasks, but Maybe they are old and they need to be updated a little bit this Very interesting idea and of course welcoming buffs in depth conf. I think it is done at least some years and in mini depth confs or Debian user groups, it will be really nice. Yes, it just needs the human resource effort So I think it's that's all