fostering community
TRANSCRIPT
Fostering CommunityKaren Tracey
DjangoCon Europe 2012
Why?
• Django's community is one of its greatest assets
• Everyone can contribute
• Everyone can benefit
Who am I?
Programmer since forever
Crossword puzzle constructor since 2001
Cat rescuer since 2009
My Django story begins in 2006
• Django open-sourced a year earlier
• 0.95 just released, "dozens of contributors"
• Five core developers
Puzzle database
• Aid in constructing puzzles, accessible from construction tool
• Amassed over ~5 years
• ~5,000 puzzles, ~100,000 unique entries, ~500,000 clues
Problem: limited access to data
Project: web front-end for database
• Primary goal: better ability to "see" data
• Secondary goal: learn Python
Survey: Python web frameworks
• Django?
• Turbogears?
• Pylons?
Snag: my weird database
1 class Entrie(models.Model):2 Entry ID = models.IntegerField(primary_key=True)3 Entry = models.CharField(blank=True, unique=True, maxlength=150)4 class Meta:5 db_table = 'Entries'
Concern
django-users to the rescue!
My first ticket and patch
• Ticket #2517 opened 9:53:14AM
• 4-line patch
• Patch, 50% modified, committed by Adrian at 9:58:27AM
• Name added to AUTHORS
Sadness
• Probably never happens today
• Needs test!
• Balance stability with wow-factor
Github to the rescue?
Back to the mailing list post
• Hesitant to sign my name
• Open source has bad rep w.r.t treatment of women
• Confident of technical ability
• ...but conscious I didn't know much about web programming
• Would I get more respect if I didn't reveal my name?
Plea: encourage women
• Women actively discouraged from participating in open source communities
• Please don't join in bad behavior
• Speak out against it when you see it
Yes, we need more women
Back to my story...
My mailing list participation
Why did I become so active?
• Learn more about Django
• Improve communication skills
• Help people
• Puzzles!
• Long-range goal: get a job
What did Django community gain?
• Lots of triage/bugfixes prior to 1.0
• Some features/bugfixes since 1.0
• Helped many people learn Django
What did I gain?
• Became core committer in 2008
• Asked to write a book in 2009 (published 2010)
• Got a great job in 2010
Get involved!(You already are)
• Community events, big or small
• Mailing lists
• IRC
• Stack overflow
• Ticket triage
• Bug fixes
• Feature development
• Patch review
• Blogs
Image credits
• Venn Diagram: "User" and "Community", from The Noun Project collection
• IBM PC: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IBM_PC_5150.jpg
• Helicopter rescue: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rescue.jpg
• Fireworks: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:OperaSydney-Fuegos2006-342289398.jpg
• Mask: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Doctor-0001.jpg
• Superman Octocat: http://octodex.github.com/images/okal-eltocat.jpg, by Cameron Mcefee
• Coffee cups #1: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Discrimination-Diversity-01.jpg
• Coffee cups #2: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Discrimination-Diversity-02.jpg
• Story book: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chatterwell_Stories_3.jpg
• Sprout, from The Noun Project
• Liftoff: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1994_s64_Liftoff.jpg
• Teaching: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alice_Hamilton_in_an_anatomy_class.jpg
• Others my own