Monica
Jul 15, 2020
Please welcome Monica Ayhens-Madon, @peripateticacad, @ubuntu_mate contributor this week here on @imakefoss
@imakefoss is a rolling curator twitter account. Wanna be one of our curators? Please get in touch via DM or info@imakefoss.org https://t.co/vNfvNq8wdD
Jul 15, 2020
Hello! I’m very much a newcomer to contributing, so if you’ve been thinking about getting started in FOSS, I hope this week can illustrate what those early stages are like. And if you have any questions, ask away! You don’t even have to raise your hand.
Jul 15, 2020
As a member of the web and documentation teams for @ubuntu_mate , I deal with the wordier side of FOSS. My degrees are in Ancient Greek and Maritime Studies, and in my non-FOSS work, I’m a college writing tutor. So contributing through documentation just makes sense.
Jul 15, 2020
Contributing documentation to FOSS projects often requires specific tools and skills. For me, these were Markdown, Git and GitHub, and Jekyll. I won’t lie - I had some pull requests where everything went wrong. But I also had patient team members who helped me improve each time.
Jul 15, 2020
@BigDaddyLinux Well, hello! It is great to be here, and just goes to show what an amazingly welcoming and supportive circle I found in the Linux community. :)
Jul 15, 2020
@franksmcb1 Thank you! I have you to thank for helping me get into the community, and I just hope I can pay that back to a future community member (or members!) out there. :)
Jul 16, 2020
Good morning! Today I’m working on a new ‘Support’ page for https://t.co/ycxgO8orLV, to clarify some confusing overlap between bug reports, our Community page, and the ‘Get Involved’ section. Revision and responding to constructive criticism make for better docs!
Jul 16, 2020
Thankfully, I have a team who knows how to give feedback: acknowledge what works, point out what doesn’t, offer suggestions and ideas for improvement. They helped me see some issues I’d previously missed. This is a vital skill, and one to encourage in open source projects.
Jul 16, 2020
@josp0001 That how-to sounds like an excellent idea! So glad you and your daughter have been enjoying it - especially since a PS3 drum kit is probably much quieter than the ‘real’ thing!
Jul 16, 2020
Also, I’d like to note how important caffeine is to the documentation process. I just spent an hour in our GitHub repo looking for something that, as my mom says, if it was a snake, it would have bit me. But I’ve found it! Maybe it’s time for a cup of tea.
Jul 17, 2020
Maybe it was the lack of caffeine, but I broke an important rule yesterday: I needlessly complicated the page I was planning. Docs geared for newcomers or people who need a refresher should get them where they need to go quickly and clearly. An interstate vs. a winding road.
Jul 17, 2020
@franksmcb1 It would - it would probably also get you to some good eats! Okay, an interstate in Atlanta at 3:30 in the morning. ;)
Jul 17, 2020
Sometimes constructive feedback means going back to step 1, but what I have in my notebook by the end of today won’t have to be wiped clean (insert product plug for Rocketbooks here) and is going to make for much better content down the road.
Jul 17, 2020
Productive talks mean a solid roadmap sketched out for the weekend - and bonus brainstorms on migrating our user guide into Markdown and turning publishing into continuous integration! This kind of collaboration deserves a cup of tea. https://t.co/ZylpHOcSg3
Jul 17, 2020
@argrubbs @franksmcb1 Or cows. Or money. Or a whole bunch of d6s.
Jul 18, 2020
You could make a good case for calling this account ‘wemakefoss." Unless it’s a genuinely solo endeavour, we’re usually part of a team, especially those of us doing documentation.
This is both great and challenging.
Jul 18, 2020
Most of us probably have anecdotes about communities that fractured or teams that just withered away.
Making FOSS, in many ways, is making community, and making community is hard. Making a healthy, welcoming, inclusive community is harder.
But it’s so worth it.
Jul 18, 2020
Making community is worth it because good communities make amazing things. They take ideas and play with them, encourage them, test them, improve them, and let them out into the world.
Think of when this happened in your project. It’s catching lightning in a bottle. It’s magic.
Jul 18, 2020
Me: Cool! @Xubuntu has their guide online
@goinglinux (guide writer) and @LukeHorwell (web lead): We could do that!
brainstorming about docbooks and Markdown
Norbert and @franksmcb1 (QA): Feedback!
Luke: Tada! https://t.co/U9cMFm0iCs
Jul 19, 2020
After a ridiculously decadent breakfast at home (our Death Star waffle maker has gotten so much more use these past 4 months), it’s a research sort of day where I get to play with a bit of QA/bug triage for our Known Issues section.
Jul 19, 2020
Documentation has gotten me a little more comfortable with different hats, even if I’m only trying them on for now. I can’t fix bugs, but I can learn the process, from reporting to temporary workarounds to fixes. I can document AND reproduce new bugs to help two teams at once.
Jul 19, 2020
We don’t just wear different hats for our teams. We have (gasp!) lives outside FOSS: families and friends, jobs and obligations, and a world in crisis. Some days or weeks we might be super productive. Some days it’s an accomplishment getting out of bed. It’s okay to admit that.
Jul 20, 2020
I’ve gotten used to some interesting tools in my FOSS journey. But if you’d told me a few months ago I’d be ordering a footprint-shaped cookie cutter for the GNOME community’s main conference - well, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Jul 20, 2020
I loved OSS-NA. So when I saw GUADEC was coming up, had great panels on community health, and was free, I registered. (We use a fork of GNOME 2!) The form also had a text box for social activities you might offer to host. I wrote ‘Animal Crossing get together or tea party."
Jul 20, 2020
A few days later, I got an e-mail asking me to tell them more about the tea party.
Jul 20, 2020
So I gave @KristiProgri and @mmillions (last week’s curator!) the basics: keeping it short, possible structure if we got a lot of attendees, fancy hats optional. We had a talk on jitsi that brought up some useful issues for virtual social events at online conferences.
Jul 20, 2020
Online conferences and meetings, especially social offshoots of said events, need CoCs just as much as face to face interaction. People should be able to drink tea (and everything else) and be respected as a person.
Jul 20, 2020
@mmillions made some excellent points last week about how FOSS events can be boozy, which can unintentionally exclude some who don’t drink. Tea parties and things like mocktail recipes provided alongside cocktail recipes can make social spaces more welcoming for everyone.
Jul 20, 2020
More people in open source spaces, especially when those spaces have delicious things to eat and drink, is a good thing. I’ve met so many foodies in FOSS, and they’d be as unsurprised as me to find that sometimes, making food and making FOSS overlap. Bon apetit!
Jul 21, 2020
@de_maulwurf87 It is! All the Social Hours for GUADEC are listed here and OMG, there’s a crafting hour tomorrow!
Jul 21, 2020
@JamesAMawson You’re more than welcome to join me and a bunch of other Linux foodies at https://t.co/zRClQzSYbR - we love sharing recipes and pics and chatting a lot about food and food gear.
Jul 21, 2020
Today is a busy day of a busier week. Been prepping and teaching a virtual summer camp on Antarctica, for kids who know how to use Zoom better than I do. If you’re a teacher you know hours and hours of prep go into each class. It’s fun but exhausting.
Jul 21, 2020
But even 30 minutes on a busy day like today, drafting or editing text, is time well spent. Sometimes it’s hard to see incremental progress as progress. The guilty voice that says ‘you can’t work on your project all day? What kind of contributor are you?" is loud. But it lies.
Jul 21, 2020
Any time spent making FOSS, which includes making community, is good, whether it’s 30 minutes or three hours.
If it helps you, make it with other people.
Jul 21, 2020
We’ve all found weird new lockdown hobbies. Mine has been @m_wimpress ’s livestreams. My husband @The_Unwise_Geek is also there, and a lot of people we know from Telegram, and its ridiculous fun. It’s like tinkering with your friends, who are thousands of miles away.
Jul 21, 2020
Another new habit has been joining @BigDaddyLinux on their Saturday livestream, which has become another group of friends. There are so many communities across all kinds of platforms, and if you’re new like I am, they’re worth seeking out. Find a welcoming and encouraging group.
Jul 21, 2020
At some point, I won’t be the new kid, and I’ll need to be the welcoming and encouraging one. But seriously, that’s not a bad thing for all of us to consider. We all were beginners at some point - who might end up making FOSS one day because of you?
Jul 21, 2020
Thank you so so much to @killyourfm and @josp0001 for letting me take the mic, and thanks to all of you who’ve read this newbie’s week. The GUADEC tea party is this Saturday - you’re all welcome to bring your favorite cuppa and chat!