 Hello, everyone. Welcome to our session, OOSS 101 in production to open source for students. In the session, it's a panel discussion. In this panel discussion, me and my fellow panelists, Mritanjai, Joe and Anushka are going to discuss some beginner level questions on how to get started with contributions. What are the benefits associated with contributing and we will at the end of the presentation, we will also share some resources that will help the students get started with the open source contributions. My name is Savita and I am an active contributor to the Kubernetes ecosystem for about two years now. And recently I led the 1.22 release team. Along this journey, I have learned quite a lot, starting with improving my get skills, making friends along the way and even getting through the first rough portion of the pandemic. All was possible because the open source community and I'm here to share my experiences. I would like my fellow panelists, Joe, to introduce himself. Hi, I'm Joe Kuttner. I'm a software architect at Salesforce.com. I'm also the co-founder of the cloud native build packs project, which is a CNCF incubating project. And that's how I met some of the panelists here. As part of my job at Salesforce, I work a lot with the open source community and I have for for many years. Some of that is at a technical level, you know, contributing to projects, steering projects, but a lot of it is also working with the people and with the community. And I think those are equally important parts as the technology and I'm looking forward to talking about why that is and how you can become a part of those communities today. So I'll turn it over to Mirtun J. Thank you so much, Joe and Savitha. And thank you so much to all the viewers who have joined us today. Introducing myself, I am Mirtun J. And I am currently in my final year and I'm pursuing computer science engineering in India. At the same time, I think that it is because of open source only that I have got the software engineering internship at Hackathran. So currently I'm an intern there. Other than that, I have been contributing to multiple communities like Kubernetes and in fact, Joe, I met Joe. So one such community, which he's a founding member of that is called Cloud-nated Buildfacts. So I was maintained with him and Google Summit of 2021. I've been a CNCF intern for Kubernetes as well in the spring and I've made a lot of amazing friends from that community as well. And as everybody mentioned that open source is always, always, always more about the people. The people make the code, the people make the community. And one of such friends is also with us today, Anushka Mittal. And I would like her to introduce herself. She also has a tremendous journey in her open source and she will definitely be a star in this community. Thank you, Mr. Anjaye. Thank you, Joe Savitha. Hi, everyone. I am Anushka Mittal. I am a student from India. I have been in open source communities for about three months now, really just a minute. And my journey started as an LFX summer mentee with my mentor Jim. I worked on a project called PalcoAdapter. I've learned a lot from the open source community as a software developer, as a programmer, as a person really. And here I am with my fellow panelists helping, trying to help our audience get started with their journey. So let's get started, right? The first topic our panel would like to address, discuss is why, why should one do open source contributions? Why, what would be the right motivation, you know, to start? So, Joe, would you like to add to this? Sure. I think there's a lot of, a lot of reasons for students both to grow their skills, but to also build their network, you know, it's also fulfilling, right? So being an open source contributor is something you can put on your resume, but it's also something that gives you a great deal of satisfaction. But even if you have experience already, it's something that can sort of expand the scope of what you know and how you do things. If you've already been working with other developers or even in a job, you learn one way of doing something. But when you're exposed to the open source community, you learn new processes, new ways of doing things. And so, like, I like to say that software developers are perpetual students and we're always learning. So, yeah, Ratunjee, do you have anything to add to that? Yeah, I mean, as Joe mentioned, we are all students and I think one of the biggest things that I have learned as an open source contributor is that we all have a learn it all mindset. And basically, because of this, there are various like people usually find motivation, how to buy it to contribute to open source, how to contribute to open source. One of the biggest motivation I think that one can have is like the kind of impact they are making. Even if a one documentation fix in a project like Kubernetes or Linux or any other open source project, one small documentation fix or broken link fix can impact millions of people. The kind of impact, the most important thing that I feel is one of the most important thing that affects is impact. The second thing is that the kind of mentorship open source programs are for even when you are a student. That is something that is, you know, something unique by unique because in colleges, like there is theoretical knowledge in abundance, but when you need practical knowledge that are being used in the real world, we require something, we require some motivation as well as some programs that can help us get mentored. There are various programs like Google summer of course, LFX mentorship, our teaching internship, and we all have mentioned about that in our resources as well as the shared data. But I think these programs are very, very amazing because you're not only getting, you know, you're not only learning, you are also earning. So you're also moving towards financial independence, even when you are a student. So I think this is one of the major, major, you know, it can be, you know, what can, what do we say, an importance, how you, if you come and join open source communities. So I mean I would like to move it to Sarvita if she has to say or something like to add to these points on this. Definitely. So Ritunja and Jill, those were really, really great points. As my fellow panelists covered here, they talked about the community, they talked about the opportunities for mentorships, in addition to that, there are a few things that you will learn, being a part of the open source ecosystem like, for example, a product spans the entire world, which means you will learn how to collaborate, how to communicate, how to asynchronously work with your peers. These are really great skills and please bear in mind that contributing to open source projects being a part of it is a no judgment zone, which means that you can start something small, you can learn along the way and it is okay to make mistakes, don't be afraid of them, I have made a lot of mistakes. For example, I was a docs lead for 1.19 release team and I messed up an entire set of deadlines, I swapped them and I didn't catch it until the end and we as a team got through it. It taught me how to take responsibility for something that I clearly missed and it helped me work with my team to get the issue communicated to the wider audiences. So I have learned quite a bit of things just by making mistakes, so don't be afraid of them. And personally for me, the real motivation is the community, I get strength from them and I learn a lot, I learn something new every day, which keeps me going. So that's something that I want to add and I don't have anything more to add, I'm just going to ask my friends here if they have anything else to add to it. I think we've covered most of our points and I think the impact is what motivates all of us, the impact we have as individuals in such a big community. So Joe, would you like to bring up the next issue? Yeah, I'd love to. So we talked a little bit about why it's important to contribute to open source and get out of it, but there's also the how, you know, how do you get started? How do you break into a project? How do you engage with new people? And there's a lot of issues that make that hard, including imposter syndrome and just feelings of inadequacy. But you know, when we asked on social media, we asked for questions for the panel for this discussion and one of the questions that we got and actually more than once was, you know, what if the maintainers think I'm stupid or what if I ask a dumb question. And so, you know, I'd like to ask the panel, how can junior or junior developers or less experienced developers feel comfortable contributing to open source without feeling like an imposter. And let's start with Anushka. Thank you, Joe. I am, I think I'm the most new person to the open source community out of all of us in the panel. So I absolutely understand it's just very recently that I have, you know, come out of my comfort zone and address this overwhelming. And by the looks of it overwhelming community code and, you know, open source softwares. I think something that's really stuck with me, something that Joe, a panelist here has said once is we were all babies once. And that makes sense because, you know, it's natural to make mistakes when you start off with something new. It should be anything and well open source contributions and just contributions to softwares in general is well a big thing and you will have to start and you will make some mistakes. It's not true. I think the right way to deal with this is to accept it as a part of your learning, learning curve and get your hands dirty, make mistakes. You have the community to ask questions to to get help from there's a lot of souls, there's a lot of material available, you know, to help you guide you. So yes, just accept the mistakes, be happy, start contributing. Savita, would you like to add? Of course, so this topic is something really, really close to my heart, because I have been there, I have felt like an imposter. I have tried a few things to come out of the feeling of, like, what would folks think what what if this question is like, not even a big deal. It's all okay. It's fine to ask. You can ask the maintenance you can ask in a project discussion forum, whatever question that you have. Don't think if it's going to be a silly question if it's going to stupid question if it's like something really simple. It's all okay. Please keep in mind that the questions that you're asking someone might also have the same questions and they don't want to ask or they are intimidated. So just the first step that you can take is to ask. Ask for help and there is nothing wrong in that. It takes a bit of courage and to even ask like, what is going on and if you see like big projects like Kubernetes, there is a lot of things going on. So if you think like you want to know and learn everything in one day or couple days, it's not possible at all starts make changes to the nation start meeting documentation. Like you can familiarize yourself or start attending the meetings right so every communities has verticals special interest group, you can start attending the meetings and it is it is this this pattern is not possible to any other open source every open source projects has community meeting calls. They have their own discussion forum in the form of flag. They use a combination of get up issues. So you can pick you can go and see what is happening. So if you have any questions or comments with your interest first thing I just want to know what's just going on in the world outside of your coursework. Join the call, say hi. I don't feel a lot to say that but once you just introduce yourself and express your interest there will be someone or the other who would would be there to welcome you and help you through the first few days of your journey till you feel comfortable and don't forget to pass it on right so once you have that thing going on once you have started contributing once you feel comfortable written the favor like please be welcoming to the new contributors you can guide them and also one other thing that I want to mention is that sometimes keep in mind that when you ask few questions in a public forum. Maintenance might take a little bit of time to respond because some of them have a job. Some of them things going on and everyone is all around the world which means they have some festival they have some vacation. So it's okay to wait and please don't lose patience or don't feel like they are not getting back to you, they are just dealing with something at that particular moment and someone will definitely get back. So I want to ask the newcomers to have a little bit of the expectation like okay wait for a couple days or wait for like a week just to make sure that you get the reply that you want before jumping in and having the fear that oh no one's responding which means that it's not my place to be. I have felt all those things and that's the reason I'm sharing. There might be so many things that's going on that is not in the control or out of the control of everyone. So just be empathetic and please be nice to your fellow contributors. I am going to that's all I have to say so I'm going to pass it on to Ritunjai. So yeah I mean I totally agree with Savita's last point especially like everybody is you know doing it quite you know empathetically so both the contributors as well as the maintenance everybody have to be empathetic towards each other. And the another point that I wanted to add like one of the most important points when we discuss about imposter syndrome is like people you know are very afraid of asking questions. So one of them I know I mean this might be just my opinion but I feel like asking question in a community channel itself is an open source contribution. Why because when you are asking a particular question you are indicating that there's something that is a link that is not being connected with a new beginner and with the community documentation or maybe the structure process or something. There is something that there is that like gap between someone who is just trying to begin and someone who already knows it because usually people who build the documentation they might think that this is quite normal person who has to be knowing it while building those documentation it is it is very much possible that they might have missed on some steps which a beginner might not get. And that is where if you ask a question in public especially in a public channel why I'm saying in a public channel because then not only you will be getting responded early because whoever knows about the issue they will reply. There is a learning happening for everyone in that community because everybody will look into that question everybody will try to answer that question or maybe someone another who is. Fancy who is offensive who is still not asking the question they can have their question get answered so totally agree with that and I think another doubt that people have which I would like to come to other panelists right after this is that. Can I contribute to open source even if I don't know you know technical they don't have the particular code language knowledge or they don't have a particular technical skill. How can they indulge in non coding contribution because even they are very important. So I mean Joe if you would like to begin with it. Yeah, there's absolutely so many opportunities opportunities to contribute even when you don't know that the technology or the language open source projects like any other project require a diverse set of skills. Technical you know for coding but also marketing and project management and things like that. So, lots of opportunities to contribute documentation fixes documentation itself. You know writing blogs to promote the project, helping organize meetings and record meetings and take notes. Yeah, creating content that the marketing team can use on social media. I can't stress how many different possibilities there are that said if you want to learn the language. There's always going to be, you know, resources to help you do that too but yeah lots of lots of different opportunities for all sorts of different skill sets. Anything you want to add to that. Yes, Joe. That was a really informative answer Joe thank you very much. So my first contribution was to the Korean release of Kubernetes where I changed this one link in the documentation in the read me. And even though back then it didn't seem like a big contribution because I just changed this one little line of the goal of the read me even a couple of days later when I saw my name in the release and when I realized that you know, there's been a project like Kubernetes of that. Well that bigger project going out with my name in the release because I have fixed something I am going to be somehow impacting how people are using that application that software right. That was beautiful really that made me realize how important non coding contributions are, because anybody trying to familiarize themselves with that project will go to the read me, you know go through those steps, try to go to the link that I corrected. So open non coding contributions are a big part of open source contributions. And, you know, to address what open source contributions are, they are just contributions that's helping the software become better right become easier to use more accurate, just better. So, all the contributions that you make making a blog to, you know, help someone get started with the project or correction and read me, all of them are welcome and just think about the impact it's making thousands of people using the software, getting helped by whatever you've collected or whatever you have contributed to the project that's a big motivation for me to make non coding contributions and should be for you know everyone out there. Savitaji, would you like to add something. Definitely so like Joe and Anushka mentioned, I cannot stress enough like how important the documentation is. I personally believe in one of my good friend mentioned once to me that as it's off the project depends on the quality of the documentation. So, it's really really important to have a good documentation and that's a great place to get started with familiarizing the project and also like it's a non code contribution and you don't have to be afraid. You know the language and you can always do a translation you can do localization that way you can help a set of people who don't know, or who are not native English speakers and they would want to understand the technology and they would want to start on with their own native language and then move up the ladder by learning English later or contributing back and forth. So there's always opportunities to start a localization if it doesn't exist. And if it exists, you can always contribute more towards it. Moving to that, Joe mentioned about marketing. Any project, any open source project is always a need of people who can help with marketing, marketing as I like, even publishing the project starts the number of new contributors or the issues like in figuring them out and then making sure that it reaches public in a consumable way, right? That is a talent to present all the details and stats. You can help there if you are a data analytics person who want to do some kind of they're mining with the which month there are a lot of new contributors coming in. Like you can always, there is a raw data set already available, you can take it and you can process it and you can create this mini little dashboard or something and you can always share with everyone within the project outside the project. That would be helpful. You can, if you have great social media skills, which I don't possess at all for whatsoever reason that I cannot be a social media person, you can help making posts in Twitter or other official channels of the particular project that you're contributing to. You can do that. What else? There is program management. So if you're interested in program management, project management, you want to learn what it is, you can contribute there. You can do triaging of issues. That is a great way to learn the project as well. And that gives a little bit of insight into even the coding part of the project and it's not a lot of things at once, but it is like taking baby steps, right? So you can learn a little and then you can just move on and then you can just expand your knowledge. So those are the points that I wanted to add. I don't have anything else, but I want to just open it up and ask if anyone wants to add more to the topic before we move on to the next one. I think we've covered most of this question. I think the only other point that I would like to add here is that I'm always willing to help you with your Instagram posts, Twitter posts and I would love to. So yes, let's, we can get to the next issue. Thank you. Thanks Anushka. I'm going to take you up on that. I'm so bad. Like everything that I type, sometimes it goes into a wider reach and I realize that there is a spelling mistake or there is an important thing missing from the post. And after I make it and it gets shared multiple times and I realize, okay, there is a mistake in there. And so it's, it's, it's the story of my life. So moving on to the next one. I've discussed a little bit about how to get started, how to overcome the imposter syndrome, and how what kind of contributions that you can do, how to learn the language, what language is right for me, and so many things. The next question is more on the focus of which project, how can I choose a project and what is the right way like. I know what I want to do, but I don't know a way to start or how to choose a project so would the, would you all be kind enough to add a couple more points to it and make sure the students have places to start with. Yeah, so I mean Savita that's a beautiful question because start is almost always the most difficult thing, you know, the most difficult thing is the beginning itself. Once you have pushed yourself towards the start then nothing stopping you usually if you are consistent. So I have like from my personal experiences as far as I can share or to the students or to the folks whom I know. People should try to first of all self evaluate like what kind of projects are they interested into and you know I mean they are good map these days available but I personally feel that we should have a more of an exploratory journey rather than a particular theoretical one so people should explore first of all like what is their interest in where their interest, their lies and interest should not be based on the popularity of that's my personal opinion as well as I feel that's important because, you know, Kubernetes is a huge huge huge open source project and a lot of contributors but at the same time there are many other CNC projects which are doing amazing but they have less contributors just because they aren't that famous. That doesn't mean that they aren't doing good or they are not making the community or the software world very very valuable. You will get the opportunity to learn a lot there. So don't put yourself in a particular comfort zone first of all and try to self evaluate first before moving on to your first open source period that's what I wanted to say. And next I would like to say like my mentor Joe can add more to it because he has been my friend and he has been mentoring me, so I think he will be able to answer it from the other side. Yeah, I mean I think the best project to contribute to is the one you can contribute to, whether that means you understand it or you're able to engage with the community so the only way you'll figure that out is, is kind of by diving in right asking questions which we've talked about why that's okay to do, but also just trying to use the project. So very often I think people come to an open source project because they're already using it some way and that's a good reason. But even if you're not just, you know, enter with the beginner's mind, you might uncover things that are common problems but the maintainers don't recognize immediately because they're kind of heads down in the technical parts of it. But yeah I think getting your hands on the code or the documentation or whatever part you're looking to contribute to is will help reveal whether that particular project is right for you. I mean that's my take as a maintainer though I think I'm curious to hear what Anushka thinks as a contributor. Yes, I was on mute. Those are really good points Joe, thank you so much. I think the only thing I would like to add is since I was a beginner and I saw this happening with me. Go look for, you know, good first issues or issues that have mentioned, you know, help wanted or such issues. These issues are usually simpler and you know you would find yourself understanding more of the code and being able to contribute more easily. Yes, that's one thing. The other being that we will be sharing some resources at the end of the session. And please feel free to go check them out and find the projects you like and contribute to it. All projects usually also have guidelines to how they would, you know, like you to contribute maybe something specific like they want a signed off comet, commit sorry. Right, so do read the guidelines, having some basic knowledge of get to get her will help you. And I think, I think we have covered all the points here. If not please I would require the panel members to add something that they would like to. We could have those other concluding remarks as I believe we have about five to 10 minutes of our session left. So starting with 730. Those are really, really great points. And by being a part of this panel, I am learning a lot already said to add more to it. Please don't be a stranger. Thank you for coming to us and we would link our handles and slag IDs later in the presentation. Feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions and it's okay to feel or when it's okay to feel like everything that you feel before getting started with something really big or like something out of your comfort zone. One step at a time and help us just to ask away, like all you need to do is just ask and someone always be there to help in one way or the other. And we, we had a great discussion, I feel like but if you have follow up questions, please feel free to ask us in the Q&A or in the Twitter or in the Slack anywhere that you feel comfortable with. Moving on to Rich and Jay. Yeah, I would just like to say first of all thanks to all the fellow panel members because all of your point were, you know, I guess, a learning experience for me as well as for everyone in the audience. And this has been a fantastic discussion and we will definitely like you all to connect with us even later on after this talk. We're all here to help you. Don't forget to ask your questions. Thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, it's it's my honor and pleasure to help you students grow in your careers and in your skills so thanks for being here and engaging and look forward to your questions. I'm grateful for this panel really it gave me an opportunity to be here and you know share my experiences open source community has been nothing but great to me and I wish to be the same to whoever would need help and whoever is a newcomer to the community. So please do reach out and we're all here to help. Thank you so much for being here I hope our panel did give you something that you were looking for the push, some resources, anything and we will have a couple of slides following this with a few resources. And if we have some more time I think we can come on live for question and answers, or we can answer them in the chat here. Thank you so much. Thank you everyone. Thank you.