Open Stack

Hi Adam

[removing the community list from the cc, crossposting is not good]

On 08/27/2014 11:11 AM, Adam Lawson wrote:
> Something I've been hearing the last couple summits is folks who have
> seen the light and want to get involved with the project is that they
> don't know where to go, where to start since the amount of information
> covered in the docs and projects they cover can be pretty overwhelming.
> Especially for the first time.

Yep, indeed getting started is complicated for everybody. At the moment
we have only documentation for a few set of contributors, mostly these
are contributors who are ready to commit to the project for a long time.
"casual" contibutors are not served very well.

For the "committed" developers we have Upstream Training program, some
documentation (like the How To Contribute wiki page, the Welcome Guide,
and volunteers on IRC, like the channel #openstack-101). But all this is
still waaaay too much for "casual" contributors: people who just need to
fix one simple thing and move on to the next task (most likely not on
OpenStack). These guys are not served well, and I doubt seriously it's a
problem of documentation or training for these (there are other
obstacles, like the Gerrit workflow and the way we check copyright and
patent grants).

> One of the ways I've seen complexity successfully navigated for
> newcomers is through a sort of guide/mentor program where someone hears

I started talking about this but got dragged into other and new
emergencies. Check some of my random notes:

https://etherpad.openstack.org/p/openstack-onboarding

There are also some volunteer mentors already signing up
https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Mentors

and of course we have the internship programs (for a third kind of
contributor), OPW and GSoC
https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/OutreachProgramForWomen
https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/GSoC2014

> Is this something that resonates with anyone or is it already being done
> somewhere?

I think the answer is a sound 'yes, it resonates'. Would you be
interested in helping out? Find me on IRC, maybe on Friday during
community office hours (11am PDT), let me know how much time you have
available so we can agree on tasks that can be carried out.

Cheers,
stef