Onboarding Newcomers - More Than Just CONTRIBUTING.md
E147 | Sun 16 Jul 10:30 a.m.–11:30 a.m.
Presented by
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Elizabeth Barron
@elizabethn
https://eb-tc.com
Elizabeth has over 20 years of experience in open source community management, with a particular focus on improving diversity, equity, and inclusion and leveraging open source for social good. She currently works as a consultant and serves as the community manager for CHAOSS, an open source project that tracks and measures open source community health. She also helps out with the All In project, which aims to open source DEI collaboration. Elizabeth is an author, speaker, and award-winning nature photographer. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio with her dogs and guinea pigs.
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Justin W. Flory
@jwf_foss
https://jwf.io
Justin W. Flory is a creative maker. He is best known as an Open Source contributor and Free Culture advocate originally from the United States. Justin has participated in numerous Open Source communities and led different initiatives to build sustainable software and communities for over ten years.
In October 2022, Justin joined Red Hat as the fourth Fedora Community Architect (FCA). He works closely between the Fedora Project community and Red Hat to lead initiatives to grow the Fedora user and developer communities and to make Red Hat & Fedora interactions even more transparent and positive.
Elizabeth Barron
@elizabethn
https://eb-tc.com
Justin W. Flory
@jwf_foss
https://jwf.io
Abstract
What is the secret for maintainers to sustain newcomers in their communities? Many maintainers know about adding a CONTRIBUTING.md file to their project, but is this enough to effectively support and integrate newcomers into your project? In this session, Elizabeth Barron and Justin W. Flory will provide a baseline for newcomer onboarding in today’s landscape and a close look at the CHAOSS and Fedora projects as real communities of practice.
While CONTRIBUTING.md files provide potential contributors with information and support to join the community, they have certain bounds. A poor onboarding experience can actually work against you and turn them away before their first contribution. Building an effective and inclusive onboarding process is crucial to ensuring a healthy open source community.
In this talk, you will learn about:
- establishing a baseline for what “newcomer onboarding” means in today’s open source landscape
- implementing actionable steps to ease onboarding for newcomers and maintainers
- two communities and their next steps for improving the contributor onboarding experience.
Elizabeth and Justin will represent the CHAOSS Project and the Fedora Project as participants, maintainers, and leaders in the communities and how experiments with newcomer onboarding led to lessons learned and the growth of the contributor ecosystem.
What is the secret for maintainers to sustain newcomers in their communities? Many maintainers know about adding a CONTRIBUTING.md file to their project, but is this enough to effectively support and integrate newcomers into your project? In this session, Elizabeth Barron and Justin W. Flory will provide a baseline for newcomer onboarding in today’s landscape and a close look at the CHAOSS and Fedora projects as real communities of practice. While CONTRIBUTING.md files provide potential contributors with information and support to join the community, they have certain bounds. A poor onboarding experience can actually work against you and turn them away before their first contribution. Building an effective and inclusive onboarding process is crucial to ensuring a healthy open source community. In this talk, you will learn about: - establishing a baseline for what “newcomer onboarding” means in today’s open source landscape - implementing actionable steps to ease onboarding for newcomers and maintainers - two communities and their next steps for improving the contributor onboarding experience. Elizabeth and Justin will represent the CHAOSS Project and the Fedora Project as participants, maintainers, and leaders in the communities and how experiments with newcomer onboarding led to lessons learned and the growth of the contributor ecosystem.