Want More Students to Work on Your Project? Unbreak It For Them!
Gina Likins glikins@redhat.com
Tags: student, community, education
Brief Description
10 Things That Will Make Your Community Less Broken For Students Who Want to Get Involved
Short Abstract
When I speak to students about open source, I hear the same comments over and over: “I really want to get involved, but when I look at projects, I have no idea what to do.”And: “I tried to get involved with this one project, but I couldn’t get the installation to work, so I gave up.”Or: “I tried to fix a bug, but no one ever responded to me(sad trombone). How frustrating for them -- and, fortunately, how fixable for us. Learn what you can do to make your project one that students both want to contribute to and are able to contribute to.
Long Abstract
"Every project needs new contributors, and students are eager to learn open source. Sounds like a match made in heaven, right?
Not quite yet.
When I talk to students about open source, I hear the same comments every single time:
I really want to get involved, but when I look at projects, I have no idea what to do.â€
And:
I tried to get involved with this one project, but I couldn’t get the installation to work, so I gave up.
Or:
I tried to fix a bug, but no one ever responded to me (sad trombone).
In this presentation, I’ll go through ten fixes that communities can make to lower the barrier to entry. We’ll also talk about some of the attitudinal and technological “blockers” to making those fixes, along with what causes them and how we can change them. (Have you ever heard someone say “I figured it out -- it’s not that hard,” about something that you know is non-trivial? Why is that?)
The good news is that anything that an open source community does that makes it ea..."