Mon, 18 Apr 2011
Why I spend my time on outreach
Current mood: moved
Today is an amazingly great day. I wrote a blog post about an event that I put together, and an attendee then followed-up by writing a long-form comment.
The thing is, the attendee did a far better job of writing about the event than I did.
The amount of emotional positive reinforcement that this comment gave me is hard to overstate.
You can find it toward the end of the blog post but I hope you'll read the copy below.
I am stunned and awed. I guess I have my work set out for me.
8----< CUT HERE >-----8
I have never written software for an open source project. I am not subscribed to any development mailing lists. I have not been in a chat room on IRC for months. Yet I was delighted to see this tweet from @torproject on 04/15/2011…
“https://blog.torproject.org/blog/vidalia-get-involved – Join us in #vidalia on irc.oftc.net today at 13:00 UTC.”
The blog post described the “Build It” initiative for the Vidalia project, where people would be available to help you setup your build environment and compile the project.
I have wanted to participate in open source projects for quite a while, but never really knew where to begin. I have experience (and enjoy) writing software. I am glad to learn the languages they are using. I know how to compile software. I’m glad to learn their versioning system and build system. I looked into participating in several projects, but felt like I would be more of a burden than a help considering the relatively small amount that I was intending to contribute. I can generally figure anything out on my own, but it’s nice to have somewhere to turn when you are struggling with something “simple”. I thought that this would be a perfect opportunity for me, since I already preach the use of Tor and Vidalia. I’ve even demonstrated the bundle at a local LUG meeting. :)
I joined the OFTC #vidalia room and waited… nothing happened around 13:00 UTC, so I figured I’d missed the event. They began around 13:30 UTC and walked us through the source code download process and compilation process. They directed our attention to the Volunteer page and the HACKING page. chiiph even suggested several simple OSX-specific tickets for me personally, since he knew that I was building on OSX.
I’ve already managed to contribute a patch for one ticket and am ready to begin a second ticket. I wouldn’t have done it without help and feedback from chiiph and others.
I am confident that there are many others who would be glad to help out with one or more of their favorite open source projects if they only had some place to begin. I hope that other project members or leaders offer a similar “Build It” events for their users.
Jason Klein
