We WantYOU!

Contributing to the Django Community

LA Django - 2014-10-28Marcel Chastain (@MarcelChastain)

What we’ll cover• Why contribute• What’s in it for you• What the community needs• How to get started• Where to find people and projects• ???• Profit.

…WHY?

Why Contribute?• Open Source NEEDS you• Participate in something that helps tons of people• Keep the community alive and well• Improve software quality

What’s in it for you?• Learn more about internals• Pick up best practices• Understand different approaches/styles of coding• Get to be a part of something BIG• Reputation/Karma/Inner-Awesomeness• Feel super smart when you help someone• Raise your profile as a developer (job offers, contracts,

partnerships, book deals, your own sneaker, etc)

WHAT THE COMMUNITY NEEDS

Remote and In-Person• Online help through forums, chat, etc.• Also in-person help• teaching/tutoring kids in school• mentors for advocacy groups & nonprofits

• @GirlsWhoCode• @BlackGirlsCode• @CodeNow

• volunteers/contributions for events• Meetups(!)• Conferences• Hackathons

New People Need:• Answers to questions• Guidance on getting started• Basic understanding, recommendations• Someone to look at their code snippets• Reassurance when they’re overthinking or freaking out about

something

Developers Need:• Better documentation!• Code examples!• Step-by-step guides to achieve a goal (tutorials, blog posts,

videos)• A second set of eyes for their code snippets• Recommendations

Core / Library Devs need:• Bug reports• Feedback on performance, issues, sharp edges• Someone to triage, confirm & comment on new bug

tickets/issues• Patches, bug fixes, pull requests• Unit Tests written• Help moving to Python 3 or recent versions of Django• Suggestions and feature ideas• Rabid fans + Twitter Followers• Love and Kudos!!

GETTING STARTED – HELP NEEDED

1. Mailing Lists• django-users

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/django-users

• django-developershttps://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/django-developers

2. IRC• #django on irc.freenode.net

• many other library-specific channels on irc.freenode• #restframework• #haystack

Great place to idle! Learn just by reading other people’s problems and the eventual solutions!Chime in with an answer, debate merits, trade war stories, etc.

3. Help Sites• StackOverflow

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/django

• Reddithttp://reddit.com/r/django

• Google Groups

4. Your Own Blog• Tutorials• Guides• Explanation of Tricky Bits• Opinions/Rants• Libraries you’re excited about• Techniques• War Stories

5. Other People’s Blogs• People often ask for help in the comments sections• Or, if it’s an article with terrible advice, you can link to a better

one

GETTING STARTED – DOCS & BUGS

Django Core• “Contributing to Django”

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.7/internals/contributing/

• Report bugs in the Ticket Trackerhttps://code.djangoproject.com/

• Solve “Easy Pickings” bugshttps://code.djangoproject.com/query?status=!closed&easy=1

• Look at and comment on “Unreviewed Tickets”https://code.djangoproject.com/query?status=!closed&stage=Unreviewed&order=priority

Other Libraries• Github issues page

• Fork, solve a bug or contribute, then make a pull request

FINDING PEOPLE AND PROJECTS

Finding projects• Django Packages

https://www.djangopackages.com

• PyCoder’s Weekly Newsletterhttp://pycoders.com

Finding People• Meetup events• speakers• organizers• hosts

• Conventions• organizers

• Twitter/Social Media• follow other local devs!

What we’ll cover• Why contribute• What’s in it for you• What the community needs• How to get started• Where to find people and projects• ???• Profit.

???• How about commitment, hmm?

PROFIT.

We WantYOU!

Contributing to the Django Community

LA Django - 2014-10-28Marcel Chastain (@MarcelChastain)