---- On Thu, 31 Jan 2019 19:45:25 +0900 Thierry Carrez <thierry@openstack.org> wrote ----
Hi everyone,
The "Help most needed" list[1] was created by the Technical Committee to clearly describe areas of the OpenStack open source project which were in the most need of urgent help. This was done partly to facilitate communications with corporate sponsors and engineering managers, and be able to point them to an official statement of need from "the project".
[1] https://governance.openstack.org/tc/reference/help-most-needed.html
This list encounters two issues. First it's hard to limit entries: a lot of projects teams, SIGs and other forms of working groups could use extra help. But more importantly, this list has had a very limited impact -- new contributors did not exactly magically show up in the areas we designated as in most need of help.
When we raised that topic (again) at a Board+TC meeting, a suggestion was made that we should turn the list more into a "job description" style that would make it more palatable to the corporate world. I fear that would not really solve the underlying issue (which is that at our stage of the hype curve, no organization really has spare contributors to throw at random hard problems).
So I wonder if we should not reframe the list and make it less "this team needs help" and more "I offer peer-mentoring in this team". A list of contributor internships offers, rather than a call for corporate help in the dark. I feel like that would be more of a win-win offer, and more likely to appeal to students, or OpenStack users trying to contribute back.
Proper 1:1 mentoring takes a lot of time, and I'm not underestimating that. Only people that are ready to dedicate mentoring time should show up on this new "list"... which is why it should really list identified individuals rather than anonymous teams. It should also probably be one-off offers -- once taken, the offer should probably go off the list.
Thoughts on that? Do you think reframing help-needed as mentoring-offered could help? Do you have alternate suggestions?
Reframing to "mentoring-offered " is a nice idea which is something can give the best result if there will be. Being mentor few times or as FC SIG member, I agree that it is very hard to get new contributors, especially for the long term. Many times, they disappear after few weeks. Having a peer mentor can attract few contributors if they technically hesitate to start working on that. Along with that we need this list as a live list and should be reiterated every cycle with the latest items, priority, peer-mentors mapping. For example, if any team adding any item as help-wanted do they provide peer-mentor or we ask the volunteer for peer-mentorship and based on that priority should go. If I recall it correctly from Board+TC meeting, TC is looking for a new home for this list ? Or we continue to maintain this in TC itself which should not be much effort I feel. One of the TC members can volunteer on this and keep it up to date every cycle by organizing a forum sessions discussion etc. Further, we ask other groups like Outreachy, FC SIG, OUI to publishing this list every time they get chance to interact with new contributors. -gmann
-- Thierry Carrez (ttx)