From no OSS experience to the core team in 15 minutes a day (RubyConf 2016)

Using and contributing to open source has been a cornerstone of the Ruby community for many years. Despite this strong tradition, it’s hard to find anything collecting the likely advantages and costs of working on open source. This talk will introduce open source work, the benefits and costs of doing that work, and then provide a straightforward list of activities that can be done by anyone, no matter their level of experience with programming. Pick a project, schedule at least 15 minutes per day, join the core team. It’s your destiny!

Transcript

1. FROM NO OSS EXPERIENCE TO THE CORE TEAM IN 15 MINUTES PER DAY
2. André Arko @indirect
4. The Ruby Way therubyway.io
7. how to start contributing to open source
8. what exactly is contributing to open source
9. you are experienced enough
10. “real programmers” do not exist
11. GitHub is not your resume
12. what are your goals?
13. your time is your own
14. what even is contributing
15. benefits! there are some
16. should you do this thing?
17. can you work for free?
18. making money is a valid choice
19. open source means losing control of your work
20. choose a license carefully
21. we made it! here’s the plan
22. 1. wtf
23. 2. answer questions
24. 3. help with issues
25. 4. reproduce bugs
26. 5. writing patches
27. 6. improve everything
28. 7. you’re doing it!
29. 8. now you’re in charge
30. what did we learn?
31. thanks for listening! (also thanks to @ashedryden @mountain_ghosts for writing about these topics previously, and @sailorhg for many ideas in this talk)