slides from our talk at OsCon 2012

1. Harnessing the Good Intentions of
Others for your OSS Project
@LynnLangit
@LlewellynFalco

2. - OR –
How we got volunteers to be
comfortable making small, significant
contributions with us immediately
@LynnLangit
@LlewellynFalco

3. Meet the Volunteers

4. Approval Tests
Open Source
Project
-- Java
-- PHP
-- Ruby
-- .Net

5. Courseware
Custom Libraries
Training Materials
Small Basic
C#
Java
T-SQL

6. Cindy Gallop
“The single biggest
pool of untapped
natural resource in the
world is human good
intentions that never
translate into action”

7. What to do with a new volunteer?
Hedge
• You do something
then come back to Invest
me
• I’ll train you

8. What to do with a new volunteer?
Do one
valuable
Hedge thing Invest
together
NOW

9. Hearing from our volunteers

10. Pairing with
Peik
Approval International
Tests Perspective

11. Pairing - how do you get there?
Pairing

12. How to listen
Twitter
StackOverflow
Blog/YouTube comments
Don’t be defensive Existing Where it
Architecture breaks
Start Small
Need to respond fast

13. Barriers to Entry - OSS
< ½ hour
10 minutes – 1 hour
3 – 6 hours
½ hours
1-2 hours
1-2 hours
Getting Started Fixing Submit Patch Understand Patch Acceptance

14. Barriers to Entry - OSS
< ½ hour
10 minutes – 1 hour
3 – 6 hours
½ hours
1-2 hours
2 hours
1-2 hours
Getting Started Fixing Submit Patch Understand Patch Acceptance

15. Time well spent - OSS
< ½ hour
1 ½ Hours
10 minutes – 1 hour
½ hours
1-2 hours
2 hours 2 hours
1-2 hours
Getting Started Fixing Submit Patch Understand Patch Acceptance

16. Pair Programming

17. Tools for Remote Pairing
Skype
Google Hangouts
Join.me
Mikogo
AWS EC2
remote desktop
shadow
VNC

18. Motivations
Software Volunteer
Product doesn’t do what you Desire to do good
want
Plan on around 2 hours of effort

19. Undervisning Med Lena
(Teaching with Lena)
Teaching
Kids Danish
Programming

20. Go Teach
Will Train you to
Teach
Pair Teach
Proctor
Easier Starts: Lowering the Bar

21. How to Ask – Short and Sweet
Twitter
TKP Korean

22. How to Ask – Consistent Message
Close every presentation with the same slide
Say the project name and website URL
Include one action step
‘Teach one kid to program with the first recipe’
‘Ask a question on Twitter, I will respond promptly’

23. TeachingKidsProgramming.org
Do a Recipe  Teach a Kid (Ages 10 ++)
SmallBasic or Java  Free Courseware (recipes)

24. Harness Their Passion
Road Trip!
Fun
Lego
TKP
Logistics
Read all about it at bit.ly/GeekRoadTrip Teaching
Coding

25. Budgets
4 hours
1-2 hours 1 2 hours
2 hours
½ Hours
Getting Started Fixing Submit Patch Understand Patch Acceptance

26. Who’s in the audience
What is your Project?
What is your name?

27. Because we have
invested
in the present,
we have left the door
open
for the future…

28. “The rest is history”
TKP in South Africa