 Thanks everybody. I'm surprised as many people showed up. Thanks. That's really awesome I forget I be talking to myself and maybe Claudine and send doodles here. So thank you for coming. That's great So about me, I'm not gonna get into a lot about me because this presentation is gonna kind of be about my journey through the Drupal community So you're gonna kind of get to know way more than you probably wanted to know about me But it should be kind of fun. We'll talk about some great moments in Drupal history and some stuff like that But for those who don't know who I am I'm I'm pretty much Drupal obsessed would be the a way to put it So, you know, I'm a core committer for the Drupal project. I'm one of like seven people who can make changes to Drupal core I wrote a book. I wrote a second edition. I'm not writing a third edition So if anybody would like to take using Drupal for Drupal 8 let me know I work at Acquia for the office of the CTO and Dries by Tart the project lead is my boss, which is pretty awesome And I'm a board member for the Drupal Association. I'm a cat herder I was on a magazine once blah blah blah and I don't do all this just to like, you know Pump myself up and make me look good because really what I'm trying to communicate here is like I am someone who dedicates my life to Drupal and I love it and I love every second of it And I think I'm the kind of person not me personally But you know, we want to cultivate more people like that in our community more people who You know look at Drupal and they say man This is what I want to do and this is really what gives me jazzed up in the morning and that kind of thing So I'm going to kind of talk about how that happened with me and hope that we can kind of extrapolate from there Some general lessons that can be applied to many different communities not just open-source communities. So So this is me in about 1983 it's my dad playing guitar. That was the last time I ever wore a dress by the way Yeah, so around this age, maybe it was really early. I was reading when I was like one It was kind of crazy But anyway, we got a Vic 20. Anybody remember this thing? Yes. Awesome. Yeah It's like this huge friggin keyboard you plug into the TV and then you know like so they had all these little cartridges You could plug in to the sides like, you know Jupiter lander and there was a mouse maze game thing but one of them was basic and so I Would read in the back of three to one contact magazines and they'd have these like 30,000 lines of code you type them in and then you could like make a recipe for chicken soup or something and I don't know So I'd like type these things in and then I would like change them and see what that did and sort of like Modifying and stuff and it was you know, that's kind of how I got into technology and learn how to code That's also how I became completely obsessed with video games And that's a skill that has served me well to this very day But that really did nurture an interest in technology for me like lifelong I like wanted to know how do you do video games and it turns out it's a lot of math So I kind of didn't do it, but you know the point is It really kept me interested in healthy, you know the addiction to video games kind of got me into Technology kept me into it into my adult years So, you know one of the lessons learned here is you need to get people while they're young You know it nurture kids interest in technology early and especially girls. Okay, a lot of people like oh Why would you say especially girls whatever? We're all equal open source hippie. Yeah. It's like no The problem is The problem is that society doesn't treat women the same so from early age, you know a girl's role models are pretty much like Disney princesses, do you know what a Disney princess is like big? You know talent is Sees to be like falling asleep and getting kissed. That's pretty much the only thing they're bringing to the table there So this is who you're you're kind of looking up to and then your whole life You're kind of told that your role in you know in the universe is to be a caregiver a nurturer a homemaker You know push towards feminine jobs nursing this kind of thing And there's nothing wrong with that per se But it becomes a problem when that's sort of the mold that you're sort of pushed into and if you don't conform to that mold Then you're sort of seen as an outcast type of thing and then it's interesting because whenever you see a woman next to a computer She's normally doing this, you know, it's like oh god. It's so complicated Why couldn't a man come and explain this confounded thing to me, you know She's never you know, unless she's Angelina Jolien hackers for example You know typically not really on the computer doing awesome things mostly being frustrated by it You know banging her face pulling her hair this kind of thing and then on the rare opportunity that you know Women and technology do mix they typically look like this So it's sort of like from very early age There's just sort of this, you know Message from all around you that technologies for boys and it's not really something you should be getting into And then if you do manage to get through all of that and still become interested in technology, then you have this So every time that you go to an event or you go to a meet-up or something There's some people that are so confounded that there's a female person in the room who actually like Cares about computers and they think you're some kind of weird multi-headed unicorn or something And then you also have this problem Which is you know a survey was sent out is called the floss pulse survey and it's actually a really fascinating survey It's a few years ago, so this may not be accurate anymore But they asked the question have you ever observed discriminatory behavior against women in open source and all the men and the women? Answers are completely inverse in other words men and women are experiencing or observing the same Behaviors and the same actions and the same words things being thing and interpreting results completely differently I have a pretty good example of this when I was at the floss pole or sorry Flourish conf in Chicago in 2007 or something It's a Linux conference. So there was a bunch of open source people there And I was speaking about women in open source ironically And there was a girl there who's like just hardcore like I don't know ran her own Servers and all the kinds of stuff she knows like I don't really know much about Linux other than the basics because I run a server I'm dream host so I know how to LS and CD and I know vi and some other things But it's not like I'm like, you know setting up my own DNS servers and stuff like this But anyway, she was that kind of person We were just chit-chatting and this guy came over because he was using I don't know I think he's using windows to like idiots. No He came over because he was having problem with his Wi-Fi connection So he comes to me because he knew I was on the speaker list so figured I would know something about it, you know And I was like, oh, let me look at this, you know, and he turns to her and he goes, oh, we're talking about computers here Right so to him that was fine because it's safe for him to make an assumption that if a girl's here She must obviously be somebody's boyfriend or you know, like maybe she's the help who's running around and you know putting out coffee for people But she found that like super offensive because here he's talking to kind of the Linux dummy Honestly about this kind of problem that he was having in here is this super technical person happy wearing lipstick and suddenly that just invalidated Everything that she had so it happens a lot So do try especially if I have a daughter I'm gonna have a daughter soon and I plan to get her involved in technology. Yay She'll probably be a cheerleader. Oh, I might need help with makeup and stuff. Yes In what show choir don't even know what that is singing and dancing We did that once Yeah, okay sparkles. Oh god. Anyway, it's a whole nother world. Yeah, I was gonna ask you if Yeah, I was gonna say these are the things that I know about what what are other ones mine Okay, okay, so wait for the recording this gentleman in the back Lee He was saying Minecraft is actually a really good option for introducing kids to programming. By the way, this is Jess Because I don't know something about resources to build logs or I don't know what you said But you know, but it's sort of like teaches kids the logic They need in order to sort of that builds them into programming because your problem solving and trying to get different Supplies to build different things and you were gonna add whoops Okay, so I wrote that down any other resources people are aware of because you know Scratch okay, I'm gonna come to my next presentation with half finished lives and everyone can just give me the answers in the room That's great. Okay, so there you go But great thing to go find kids that are kind of interested in technology You know, if you're here, you're probably at least somewhat technical because god How could you stand Drupal if you weren't? Go find some kids and show them how to do awesome things with Drupal. So I did a spoiler there, but yeah, this is me in 1995 You said I used to be a total metalhead Listen to like so I would go to concerts like Metallica and Megadeth and Pantera with my mom And my mom would like stay out in the in the lobby doing crossword puzzles And I would like go to the show and the mosh pit and stuff and then come back anyway We had a lot of fun So around this time is when I got my first computer and it was a penny like my real computer because the big 20s I'm really so as a Packard Bell pinium 133 with a 14.4 K modem. Yes And suddenly I discovered the internet and that was completely amazing It totally blew my mind So like I was kind of in this small town in Minnesota. I didn't really know anyone. I was pretty sure it was gay It was like a whole thing The internet allowed me to meet people who weren't in a small closed-minded little white bread town and actually expand my horizons And so I proceeded then to learn everything there was to know about how the internet worked because I was just fascinated by it So, you know, I taught myself how to build computers how to build networks You know, I taught myself programming and web development and blah blah blah security Everything there was to know because I was just fascinated by this topic And so naturally very shortly after I started getting involved in all this I learned about Linux I first installed Linux in 1995 or six I can't remember but anyway the the first version of Linux I successfully installed was Debian rex Which fit on seven floppy disks. I don't think Debian fits on seven like Not even DVDs like seven terabytes worth of if I don't know like yeah, it's it's huge So yeah, so I mean this is I was in bug and so, you know, I got into Linux And I thought that was really cool this whole open-source thing and how it's you know, like wow, you know You these smart people all work on this technology They give it away for free to other people to learn from it and expand it So naturally I started looking up to some of these guys So like Linus Torvalds Richard Stallman Eric S. Raymond Kevin Mitnick, you know these these guys are all like really big thought leaders in the open-source community at the time and You know all kinds of stuff about freedom and giving things away So of course having role models like this the first thing that I thought I knew about open-source was this Right that the only people who contributed to open-source were like super genius people and I was just like a mere cheerleader at the side Sort of like cheering them on and that would be my only role in open source So that's what I thought in 1995 How many people here by the way still believe this right now? Yeah, right it's easy to get that way right you see Dree standing up there with his very intimidating spiky hair and you know Or me with my intimidating Shirt yes It's gray. Oh You know and and so oh Morton you missed the best picture man. Hold on. I have to go back and show this because All right, this was me All right, we're done with that now Back in the day So yeah, so I thought this for a long time So I totally don't fault anyone who thinks this but you know So I thought that this is what happened You know you had Gina the genius out there somewhere right and she's a genius So her head is like the size of a friggin metamelon right and all she does all day is like sit there and ponder stuff You know I have this brilliant idea, you know for this new feature for this piece of software So I'm gonna whip out my text editor Hey, there we go Which is probably emacs anyway And then I'm going to type up type of this thing and then everyone around me is gonna go wow That's amazing and that is your best work yet How many people think that that is how contribution in open source happens? Yes, okay good because that's not at all what happens. Okay. Here is what actually happens So you have Edwina the end user. Oh, no, did you seriously? Okay? I'll go fast All right, and she's really Peaved because she just hit a bug right so she goes to the issue queue and she files a bug report that explains her problem That might be the last thing that she ever does for the Drupal community But if she submitted a bug report that made sense to someone else that is a huge contribution to open source She is just done because you know how many bug reports you get that it's like it's broke or you suck Yes, exactly So a bug report that makes sense That's a very valuable open source contribution then follow the programmer wanders around and she hit the same bug She searches the issue queue and she goes oh look it's a bug report and I can fix that So let me try so she posts what's called the patch and marks it needs review and Then Tatiana the tester comes along and she's a tester and she has big coke bottle glasses because she just looks at bugs all day And she looks at her code and she says what is going on there? You know because it's not real great like there's problems with it So she says okay Let me post some feedback so she might say stuff like you know your coding standards are a bit off Don't forget test coverage and you know There's a better way to do this algorithm that you did here try it this way instead And so she'll post feedback and mark it needs work Paula says great. Let me do that. Thanks take two by the way a lot of people are scared to do this part They don't want to put other people down Like they don't want to you know, it's like well, you know Paula probably worked really hard on that patch Why would I kind of criticize her work right? The problem is if Paula posts this thing and and nobody responds That's way worse It's way worse to like put something out there and feel like nobody cares Then it is to put something out there and get constructive feedback on how to make yourself better So always think of it as your role is to help that person get better make their code better Make the product better all that kind of stuff. Anyway, then you have Wendy the poor soul stuck on Windows XP And do you know what she says? You know what she says she says it breaks an IE six and Also mine your spelling because the only reason that she's using XP is because it runs that one version of word that she needs Because she's a book author and so you know whatever So she marks it need work So Paula says all right one more time needs review Tatiana comes back and she looks at she's wow much better Not only did you incorporate my feedback, but your spelling is all cleaned up That's wonderful And so she marks it reviewed and tested and then it will go to someone like myself or Dries or whoever the project maintainer is And then they'll do one final check over and then it gets in usually So that's how to and the thing to keep take away from this is no one person did this themselves Everybody in this scenario contributed something whether it was a typo fix or whether it was the initial bug report whatever it was and Every single change in Drupal from like a new database abstraction layer to like rewording of the documentation somewhere goes through this process and it's every single person contributing a little bit of information that they know So the lesson to take away from here is we must destroy Einstein Okay, because the problem with the Einstein complex is that it affects people who are already Really excited about what you're doing right like I love Linux I was a the biggest Linux fan ever and I like talked about Linux to all my friends and family and stuff But like I didn't think I could contribute to it because that was not my role, right? But here I was this really excited person and worked out okay because I don't want to gotten on Linux and not Drupal And I like what I'm doing now, but you know what I mean It's it's like there's people that you have to convince to contribute to you Then there's people out there that want to contribute to you, but don't feel like they're good enough We need to stop that and get those people powered up and ready to go So one way that we've tried to address this in Drupal community is through novice issues So we take issues that we basically have the sort of this rule That's like if that's gonna take you five minutes or less to fix don't fix it Instead file it as a novice issue to tag it with novice And then what'll happen is somebody else can go along and that thing that was gonna take you five minutes to fix That might take them a week to fix But the important thing is they learn a lot through that process to learn what it is They know how to set up a development environment. They learn about the coding standards that kind of thing And this is actually worked pretty well. I think You know what we definitely like my experience has been as soon as I file a novice task within two days It's taken care of so there's there's people out there hovering waiting for stuff to work on So if you find yourself in the position where you're doing a code on it You notice some stupid thing that's like, oh, it's not even worth filing an issue about please file an issue Because somebody will do it and they'll have a really fun time a bit So in 2005 I was sporting the tank girl bangs. Oh, yeah And You wouldn't recognize me back in 2005 back in 2005 was extremely extremely shy and awkward and weird I'm still weird, but I'm a little less shy More awkward though. But anyway, um, but the point is like I you know The thought of getting up in front of a room like this would make me like physically sick like I couldn't do anything like this Back then So it's interesting because the role that Drupal has played in transforming. It's not even transforming me as a person It's more like allowing me to be the person I always was but giving a safe place for that I'm gonna be grateful to Drupal forever. So how that started was there's a program called Google Summer of Code back in 2005 And this was the only thing that broke down the Einstein complex for me because it said oh, you're a student So you want to contribute it open source. I was like, oh, okay So if they know we're students, they know we don't know everything yet So maybe I could do that and somehow at the like the 11th hour somehow I got chosen I was just about to get dropped off the list, but he flipped it at the last second. So thanks Robert Douglas But anyway, um, I was about to not get chosen I did get selected and then you know, I was like holy crap So I chose Drupal as my project for Google Summer of Code Because I had seen it on the spread Firefox project and I'm one of those people that just goes around and clicks view source on every page I just want to see what's going on in there Yeah, so I got accepted and that that worked out pretty well So lesson I took away from this is is mentoring plus plus if you have like a well lit entrance for people to come into your project That's that's really really good thing to have. How many people here have as much money as Google? Right, okay, so so we don't have as much money as Google either But here's are some ways that we have tackled mentoring in the in the Drupal community So one is is what's called Drupal office hours org and Jess sort of spearheaded this program now Zen doodles works on it And there's a bunch of like sort of a cluster people working on this And what it is is they sort of pre-select Kind of low-hanging fruit issues maybe not novice level of triviality But pretty decent ones and they sort of get input from I'm very nervous with you in the room I'm gonna say something wrong, but anyway, and then you come into IRC one of two time slots a week We do one in the morning and one in the evening so that somewhere around the world You always have a time slot that works for you And they're right up there the times and then you know someone will hand you a task to work on they'll help you So they answer questions. There's no dumb questions. You can't ask during this time. This is the time to ask I don't know what get is can you help me up? They'll help you with resources, you know with all kinds of stuff like that And these are real core developers who are heavenly this, you know, it's it's really it's a unique thing I have not seen in any other project. So that's pretty awesome Crowdsourcing is another way we do mentoring. So this is the Drupal ladder and there's a presentation on this tomorrow morning I think by Addie So definitely check it out So how this works is it's sort of a go at your own pace self curriculum thing where they've bundled up all of the ways to do different things like test the patch write a patch and it sort of goes from easiest to hardest and Then each one of these is a self-contained little unit of information You can take this to your Drupal user group meetings or whatever you want to do and sort of you know Hold little contribution sprints all over the world So they have a really great goal by Portland to do Do you know Jess? Is it like 20 different cities or something like that? Yeah, so there it's like 20 or 24 Yeah, so they have a set like they have different goals set up for different periods of time to try and like spread the Word about this program is really really awesome And then we also have a peer tutoring program called the Drupal dojo and I don't know if this has been as active recently But the premise of it is amazing It's basically like you get up and you get on some kind of a screen sharing program You share whatever bit of Drupal information you know So maybe you're a Drupal initiative owner talking about that or you're someone who just finally figured out how to make a blog And Drupal and you talk about that or whatever it is, but people helping each other to learn Drupal That was a really successful program So my first five minutes in the Drupal IRC channel went a little like this So I came in and I'm all like sunshine and rainbows. I'm like hi everybody My name is Angie and I'm so excited because I'm a Google summer code student. I can't wait to work with you Shut up You know it's like this is a channel for serious developers only go away and then I spent the next day hiding under a blanket This was really painful, you know because I was so excited to finally cross that threshold as an open source contributor It was extremely vulnerable because I had this Einstein complex You know so the full lesson learned here is full frontal nicety because honestly if I hadn't been contractually Obligated to work with Drupal at that point. I probably would have split, you know, that's not cool You don't talk to people like that. So I've kind of spent the next, you know However many years of my life trying to make sure that doesn't happen to anyone ever again But you need to change your assumptions and you need to assume even if that newbie is kind of obnoxious And being stupid in the development channel, you know try and help them or try and guide them to where they need to be Because you never know that person could turn out to be your next core committer who knows And you also need to really be careful of this Okay, because when you're a jerk to somebody you're not just being a jerk to that person You're also being a jerk to anyone who witnessed that behavior Okay, and that includes newbies and contributors alike so if you're a jerk in IRC there's 300 people in there that all see that happen and The response the community does in response to that is really important because if somebody calls someone a jerk and tells him to RTFM and the person leaves and the person says they're gonna ha ha ha so smug I told that newbie off ha and nobody sees someone come back and say dude That was not cool or girl. That was not cool Then they get the impression that that is actually condoned behavior and this is not a friendly community and I'm out of here So it's really important that you not only don't be a jerk to people But if you see other people doing a jerk called them out on it One of the best things we did and this was most actually that led this thing is it was totally rip off the Ubuntu code of conduct Because it's a great code of conduct it basically establishes the ground rules for what we expect people to work like Work like in the community and this is really important because if someone's being a jerk you can say You know I someone was a jerk to me and we can say oh that's not actually cool This is how we're supposed to behave and that was out of line with our community And it gives them a way to be reassured that that was kind of a one-off you're always gonna get those people that are sort of in a Cranky mood But it's important that they are able to contextualize that and say that was a one-off versus that's a systemic way that this community behaves And one thing I especially like About the Ubuntu code of conduct is it's phrased positively so in other words It's like let's itemize the things that we want to see we want people to be considerate We want them to be respectful because if you start going the other way and saying like we don't want you to be insulting We don't want you to think then somebody is inevitably gonna say well you didn't say we couldn't kickbox the newbies So I don't know what you're so mad about so yeah, try and do an inclusive positively worded code of conduct So I finally recovered from my initial trauma in IRC and I decided to sort of poke my head out and start contributing a little bit And so instantly I thought well, you know Obviously for some reason they think I'm smart because they accepted me in a summer of code and like it's open source So everyone's gonna see what I'm gonna do and that's going to be terrifying So I better sit here and like really work on it really hard and refactor it 500 times before I share it with anyone Because I wouldn't want to embarrass myself in front of other people. Okay, does that ring true for anybody in this room? Yeah, I'm seeing a lot of nodding right because that's very logical, right? It's like dude I'm like a dribble first. I don't want to be embarrassed. These people are like really smart They're gonna look down on me all this kind of thing So I would do really smart things like bash my head into a table for three days instead of asking a question I could do this on 30 seconds because I didn't want to look stupid Anyway, so I knocked that off pretty quick Because here's here's the reality of how things go in the open source world All right, so we have two profiles here this you didn't have in your slides because I just made this up on the plane So We have perfectionist pat on the left and we have sloppy Sam on the right So the way perfectionist pat goes about his Drupal contributions is he gets an idea for patch He's like okay Well, let me start with you know tests of course because I do test-driven development because I'm a perfectionist, right? Then I'm gonna code. I'm gonna test and refactor do all that kind of stuff I'm gonna write all my documentation and those are gonna conform 200% to the documentation standards I am also going to run coder and make sure my module conforms to coding standards I might go back through this loop a few different times and then I'm going to go to the issue queue when it's perfect Okay, so right that's one way to get it done right and there are people out there who have that workflow and it works well for them Now let's examine what sloppy Sam does sloppy Sam says I found a bug Let me check in IRC first and see if anybody You know has any idea about that and she gets a response says oh, yeah I actually had that bug at a client site last week and I didn't really finish this off But here's a half working patch for you and she goes great Let me take that and you know clean it up a little bit and post it to the issue queue So goes into the issue queue and it might go in the issue queue and a needs work state sort of acknowledging I haven't done all the other stuff that you need me to do yet But there it is and we can look at it and talk about it It might get marked back to you know needs work because it doesn't have tests So then she might add tests and some docs Post it back to the issue queue then somebody comes back and says ah your coding standards are messed up blah blah blah this kind of thing And so at you know looking at that that looks like a complete mess, right? Like why would you run your life like that? That's just silly here's here's the thing though assuming that sloppy Sam is not being like lazy Because you don't want to do that you want to be like I have a problem right my code for me, right? But as long as she's like I'm trying to solve this and I'm just having a little bit of trouble with this or that thing Here's what happened perfectionist Pete all right and issue Q again perfectionist Pete got plus one karma He interacted with the community once and it was a great interaction, but it was a one-time thing But sloppy Sam, you know she first talked to my RC then there was some issue queue chatter Then there was more issue kitchen and saying she's got a plus four thing because she's now been in the community She's provided transparency around she's working on she's friendly and she's you know Obviously keen and kind of go get her the community is gonna get to know who sloppy Sam is way before they know Who perfectionist Pat is? The other danger with this flow is that she could be doing all of this Well, you're still writing code and if you're out of the loop on what's happening there You're gonna have a really frustrating situation when you get to here and you find out somebody's already written your patch Except they got reviewed by the documentation maintainer and the coding standards maintainer thus It's way more perfect than your perfectionist thing So don't do this if you can help it Resit, you know the the main lesson you have to learn is you need to fail early fail often and fail in public Because that really ironically is a way to jupe a success All right, so I'm okay with failing. I'm starting to kick some ass. All right. Let's go You know so I started working on my module and then I worked on core That was my first core patch. That was pretty much the best day of my life. That was pretty cool By the way, it was number 65 So back then that was what was the long issue nowadays. It's like 400 comments, but anyway And then I started documenting things I didn't understand at all And I didn't always get that right the first time like I just try my best and then you know kind of show it to people And they're like, oh, that's pretty good But you miss this this and this because people will help you with that kind of stuff What they can't do is sit there and write this whole thing But once it's written they're very happy to tweak it and make it right And I can't tell you how much you learn a topic by sitting down and doing this You know so the next time you find yourself like I'm trying to figure some stupid panels problem out for a client And there's no docs. Oh Earl Miles. Why do you do this to me? It's like write the doc, okay, and then show it to Earl and ask him if it's right or not and yeah Um, I was also doing dorky things like this. This is a very terrifying thing back in the day that I was like the second best designer in the truthful community at that time Terrible terrible terrible. I'm so glad that's not the case now But the lesson we learn here is you need to encourage diversity in your contributions, right? Because it ain't just about the code you have no idea how someone's gonna come into your community They might come in through code like I came in through code and then I got into these other things But some people come in through documentation. Some people come in through event management. You literally have no idea And to drive this point home when we ask what's a contributor, you know A lot of people think that means a hairy sweaty developer like me like chugging Golan, you know, but no it's like someone who has three attributes They see something and they say that is dumb They also say I want to see it fixed that's important because I see lots of things that are dumb, but I don't care enough about them to fix And then they say I can do something about it Those are the people that power open source and a lot of people think I can do something about it means You know coding but that's not what it means at all because these are just a sampling of different ways that you can actually help Move those things forward So if you're really mad because Drupal doesn't have such and such a feature hold a sprint about it in your offices You know or donate to somebody who's looking for funding to fund that feature or you know Once it's getting developed usability test if you have access to people who are not Drupal experts A lot of us don't a lot of us our closest companions are our cats So, you know we would love to have some if you have internet explorer That is an incompletely valuable contribution that you can do it all of those things and then coding too at the tail end Okay, so don't get caught up if you're not if you don't feel like you're a strong developer There's still plenty for you to do So then we get to 2006 and this was the open source CMS conference So this is the first Drupal con in North America and not coincidentally I live in Vancouver now for a good reason But anyway, my mind just was blown coming to this conference because I just I sat there and I met all these people that I only knew from online And found out that in real life, they're super awesome Like they're down-to-earth friendly funny people and I believe even what are we seven years after that? I believe that that still holds true today like I feel like we have a pretty great community still You know goes up to drinks together They get together in code and all that kind of stuff and speaking of that So this is the code sprint again led by most this was back when we were working really hard to try to get Drupal 4.7 out Is that ring a bell? So we're gonna be doing these a lot in the next couple months with Drupal 8 and stuff like that But you know most just was like, you know, we have to get the release out Here's a list of the issues we got a fix and he'd be like you you take this one You do think that it was great because I like actually got chosen to work on something and you know What's that I? Don't think I'm not I didn't think there was a moment at that. You kind of is not smiling. I'm pretty sure Yeah, I know it was great. You know, I was like all this stuff anyway So provide opportunities to meet and meet space because it's so valuable You know the amount of work that we get done in like three days at a Drupal con is just the astronomical when compared to The thing and that's how you meet like the real people behind the screen names because a lot of times in in the issue queues It's very business oriented. It's like, you know fix that fix this fix this and then you talk to this person in real life And it turns out they have a Transformers collection and whatever, you know, like that kind of stuff In Drupal we have local user groups So I know there's one group for Australia. Is there more than that though? There's subgroups because I said that's a very big region Australia Yeah, so chances are there's a there's a local user group in your region no matter where it is and if there's not What's that? It's it's it's an old it's an old graphic Okay, that was lame, I'm sorry Worst talk ever I know Anyway, so if there's not a local user group because the pin got left off the map say look there first But if there is a one go to an internet cafe and advertise to people that you're gonna be there and see who shows up You know because you never know there could be Drupal people hiding out in your hometown We also do regional camps and cons obviously because you're at one But these are cool because they get a more diverse Population then you know a local meetup a lot of times people miss them But usually they show up to these and then sprints sprints are amazing It's the opportunity to sort of like go and you know rub elbows with the people who actually make Drupal happen and become one of those People and you know like they've gotten bigger or smaller. We do focus sprints We do group sprints all this kind of stuff and speaking of sprints There is a sprint on Friday And so there's two parts to this one here if you're new to Drupal development You don't really know a lot about contributing and stuff like that Addie in the back there is teaching that class and it covers get development environments patches and issue queues Did I leave anything out? IRC Okay, so those things And so if you need a refresher on that kind of stuff go to that and that's a nicely structured course and all this kind of stuff otherwise the regular code sprint is nine to five thirty and Yeah, so the community tools workshop be in this room the codes friend will be in Centennial, which is that way I understand Yes Shoot no, I didn't you guys are completely insane. I definitely didn't do that. I Don't know what you're talking about that clearly says Saturday. Okay, okay moving on So a few months later Drupal 4.7 was released. Yay Okay, we're all happy about that and then the next day trees posted this Which was a post asking for personal battle plans for the next Drupal version And so this was pretty cool because it wasn't feature requests, right? And it wasn't for like wish list. I wish Drupal 5 came out with this But instead it was like what are you gonna work on you know, which was really empowering And so some people said, you know Adrienne said I'm gonna work on dependencies or install profiles. We can do distributions Handelar said I'm interested in anyone who wants to like make a new theme that doesn't look revolting All right, and I'm a total underachiever so this was mine Yeah, I think I didn't do half of the things on that list and I ended up helping with other people's stuff No Sadly, I did not fix signature. I almost fixed signatures in Drupal 6 But they still don't show up on the node in a forum. I know it's it's one of my great life regrets I kind of am scared to fix that though because I feel like if I fix that then my mission for Drupal would be done And I would have nothing more to live for us. So, you know, I'm just kidding So in your own communities cultivated duocracy because if you empower people who are passionate about your topic to act Without having to ask anybody for permission or that kind of thing and feel ownership over what they're doing They can amaze you with what they can do 2007 I started taking on all of these other roles because I don't know how to say no to anything In 2008 something cool happened. So some friends of mine Basically nominated me for this award that I got at Oskon for best contribute contributor and Then later that year I got named a core committer. So that was a big year for me No pressure But it's important to recognize contributors Because most of us don't really need a pad on the back But it does help, you know, if you're gonna like do a lot of stuff and also if you see someone who's exhibiting leadership qualities You know, give them an opportunity to shine say hey, I like what you're doing there What would you think about you know stepping that up a level and they might go on freak out and leave But they might also step up and surprise you so, you know So we do these things called community spotlights are actually terrible at doing these community spotlights We need to be better at it But the goal is to give a limelight to people who may not be very well recognized yet at the time Not now anymore, but you know But sort of highlight their contributions and also show them that they're real people, you know A lot of people think, you know, you get up on a stage and suddenly you're some kind of you know God or whatever, you know, but it's not that Jess isn't a god, but you know But but yeah, it's just like show them the real place show the journey that they went through and stuff like that We also do some metrics. So we added this really cool We added this cool mentoring field so you can go on your Drupal order profile You can say the people who mentored you and I tried for like a weekend to figure out social graph Programs and it was really hard The point is no, but this is really neat, you know, it's like a really cool metric That's very inclusive and that kind of thing. We also do this metric which I'm less thrilled about This is the metric where we take everybody, you know Contributed to core and then blow up their names according to how much they've contributed Which is cool. I mean it acknowledges some people are making a really big effort But it's not very balanced. So like some people whose names are huge or doing huge Architectural refactoring these other people are just fixing a lot of typos, you know So it's not perfect So you want to be careful of leaderboard and style things like this because they can create kind of a weird environment Yeah Yeah, that's true. I I try to always credit major reviewers when I commit patches but I don't know if that's true across the board and And you're right and a lot of times people who review the patch which cannot which can often be almost as hard as Or harder. Yeah, then writing the patch the first time Aren't credit in this. So anyway, it's a way to do a metric. It's not necessarily the best way But the point being that people do like to see themselves recognize when they do something good They don't want to see themselves working their ass off and not nobody noticing so kind of back to that whole thing about Yeah, this is based on it's Exactly. Yeah, that's why it's a shitty match that darn toot and crappy metric. Anyway. Yeah, it's not it's not great But yeah, it's it's it's it's one thing that we have to do that It looks really cool. So that's why I keep doing them But you know keep them get kind of hurt feelings on them So from 2001 to present basically what I've been working on is growing Drupal, you know So my job at AQUI is basically finding the biggest pain point in Drupal at any given time and trying to solve it So when I started the biggest pain point was nobody was using Drupal 7 So it's like, okay Let's dig into here and figure out how we can fix that so people start using Drupal 7 So we did stuff like set up a little, you know website to track the progress of module porting and did some direct outreach with You know contributors to modules set up some sprints blah blah blah all this kind of stuff Try and do that Then it was like the collaboration tools on Jupyter suck and they still suck but they suck a little less now. Yay And just different things like that The big thing that you I took away from this is you need to learn how to scale yourself, you know Because I can't do the things I used to be doing the community anymore I can't mentor people one-on-one a lot of times, you know stuff like that So you really want to help nurture others along your path, you know If you see those really cool people that look like they've got a spark of like ooh, you know You look like you could be awesome at this reach out to them and try and nurture that, you know Because if you're doing your job really well, you'll learn to yourself completely irrelevant And then you can just do what you want to do now I was kidding and don't forget to take time for yourself to I forget to do that all the time But I should probably stop so to recap what we learned You want to corrupt young minds, especially the girls You want to destroy Einstein you want to do mentoring in your communities help new people come in and and be included Full frontal nicety always remember that whenever you interact with anyone you're representing your community whether you're wearing that hat or not You want to fail early often and in public so that you get those touch points with the community. They start to learn who you are You want to encourage diversity both in contributors and in contributions because that's how people see that person that they look up to and they go Oh They're obviously doing okay here Maybe I belong here too or they see some tasks that you know Oh, I could actually work on that because I have a background in that You want to meet and meet space as much as possible? Cultivated do accuracy it sort of spawns this feeling of ownership in your project Recognize your contributors who are doing great stuff and then also work on scaling yourself so that you don't have a bus factor of one questions Think I have 15 minutes maybe Something like that No questions. I answered all your questions. Perfect. You guys were so chatty during the talk Yeah, I can let you go earlier if you want but well, I did bar the doors from the outside No, what are you? I mean we're a small enough group like what have you guys found? What's your business your experience in the Drupal communities similar to that? Like are there other things? Yes What is that? I'm sorry. Oh wave. Okay, me and you are like soul brothers from another mother or something Except I'm not a boy, but anyway. Yes That's cool So that experience I'm repeating for the recording that experience of being really intimidated and seeing people who look technically stronger than you But then that one person who reaches out to him says hey, you can do this too. That's really important and Chicks did that for you took to that for me as well So the question is if you're if you're not very strong technically, but you still want to help In the community and contributing. What are some ways to do that? Is that correct? Um So there's lots of different ways like what what what are your skills? What do you enjoy doing like what's fun for you? Learning okay, so just broad learning anything. Okay. Well, then you can become technical if that's really what you're interested in You know, you could download the Drupal ladder distribution and go through that that's sort of a self-paced thing Maybe team up with a buddy and do that if you don't really have an interest in being technical though There's a lot of different things that you can do for example. There's you know There's a lot of stuff on like particularly project management kind of stuff We suck at really badly So if you happen to have a talent of that or marketing we're also terrible at that We're also a pretty terrible at graphic design unless you're born Like you know We're a lot of these skills that are non-technical or things that we're really weak in and I think it's hard for me to pinpoint specific Instances we're like oh this is something that really needs help because I'm in this technical domain And it's hard for me because mostly how it works in the Drupal community is you just see something That's not being done, and you just jump in and start doing it I mean that's how I wrote the form API reference right because I was like I don't understand Let's do form API at all and neither does anybody else so let me see if I can figure this out You know, but I've never like asked anybody is it okay if I write Documentation of this because nobody would have known how to answer that like uh, yes I don't know you know so I mean what I would ask you know you if you're interested in learning Let's try and narrow that down a little bit like if you're interested in learning on mobile technologies You're interested in learning on you know anything you could try and pick an area of the community like say a Drupal 8 initiative Or a particular module or something like that and and you know former relationship with the people leading up that That's a lot easier to jump into than like this huge issue queue with a bunch of things going on Yeah, and Lee you headed up most of the time right Yeah That's good to find that in yourself and say it's time for me to not be in support No, that's a good point So Morton was saying that um one of the things that helped him learn Drupal really well was going into the support channel and Sort of listening what other people were asking and sort of trying to figure that out I mean, that's how I learned Drupal as well because it was before there were books and stuff It's actually a really great way to learn Drupal and you also help other people in the process On the beach yeah Yeah, so more than was saying that you know one one thing that's unique about the Drupal community as opposed to other open source Communities where he's kind of seen in some communities There's like sort of this jostling for position as far as who's the expert, you know It's like, you know, you're both trying to answer somebody's question But you're trying to one-up them and how you answer it and that kind of thing and that the truth really isn't really like that We more like oh you're excited about this thing too. Well, so am I and here's what I know and what do you know? Oh, you know that I didn't know that that's great And there's like a lot of this kind of thing and that you know That's what kind of causes people to come to events like this So to some extent we're preaching to the choir because you're here obviously but unless you're watching this on video In which case please come to a Drupal con because can I hear it for Drupal con? But yeah, I totally agree. I think that's that's what I think it might be a large part to Dries and the way he You know runs things because I've seen project leads in other open source community And there's very much a trickle-down effect not to use a Reaganism But you know if the project lead thinks that they're hot shit and full of themselves and that kind of thing generally speaking They'll cultivate an environment of people like that because they see themselves in the leader and they say oh this is a place where I can You know be I don't know why people do that I have no idea what the draws Whereas Dries is very humble and he tends to like very much cultivate this environment of knowledge sharing and mentoring and this kind of thing And that also has a similar trickle-down because you see someone You know who has those qualities and it tends to attract people like that too. Okay, cool Thanks everybody for coming. I really appreciate it