[Events] Planning a GNU Contributors event

[Deborah Nicholson]

If we want to do a dry run with a few people, I'd be happy to guinea pig.
Setting up the environment on a few different machines and then fixing the
docs based on whatever is learned will make the sprint run much smoother.
Cheers,
Deb

On 22 December 2011 17:48, John Sullivan <johns at fsf.org> wrote:

> Hi Asheesh,
>
> Asheesh Laroia <asheesh at asheesh.org> writes:
>
> > On Wed, 7 Dec 2011, Asheesh Laroia wrote:
> >
> >> Hi John,
> >>
> >> I wanted to email with the notes from our conversation a couple of
> >> months ago.
> >
> > In terms of which project should "go first" for a new-contributors
> > event, here's my thoughts:
> >
> > * Emacs is a good one because many users know Emacs lisp already
> >
> > * MediaGoblin and F-Droid are good because of the strong, active
> > Python community here in Boston
> >
> > I would suggest Emacs would be the easiest to attract people who are
> > committed to GNU ideals and therefore likely to stick around. Just to
> > set expectations properly, one thing I've seen relatively frequently
> > is that there are people who hack on projects at sprints and never at
> > other times. You're probably going to cultivate a few people who are
> > like that. That's okay! They're great people to have as part of a
> > community.
> >
>
> I think Emacs is the best first choice also.
>
> > The most important things for having a high-quality sprint, I believe,
> > for new contributors, are:
> >
> > 1. Well-tested documentation for how to get a dev environment going
> >
>
> It has this, and it's very simple since Emacs is its own dev
> environment. It's easy to load and unload code being tested without
> having to compile or re-run any sort of setup tools. I guess the main
> instructions needed here would how to check out and build the current
> code from bzr. Also how to use bzr :). (Although, there is also an
> up-to-date git mirror).
>
> > 2. Good-quality tasks for new contributors to work on, perhaps
> > tailored to the particular interests of specific attendees if you know
> > them well.
> >
>
> We have http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=emacs to draw from
> for possible tasks, plus C-h C-t which shows a TODO list, and C-h C-p
> which shows a problems list.
>
> > 3. Availability of current contributors to the project to answer
> > questions, plenty of which will come up.
> >
>
> The #emacs channel on freenode is very active and friendly, and we know
> several people who would make good in-person mentors/guiders as well.
>
> One of the primary emacs maintainers, Chong Yidong, lives in CT and has
> attended at least one LP conference in Boston. We could reach out to him
> and see if he might be interested in attending, and/or being in the loop
> for planning.
>
> > 4. Give people a link to the rest of the community so that when they
> > leave, they can feel surrounded by activity.
> >
>
> Sure -- besides the IRC channel, and the official emacs mailing lists
> @gnu.org, there is emacswiki.org.
>
> I guess sharing code on the wiki and helping to improve it could be
> another rewarding and productive form of participation during the
> sprint. The wiki would probably also be a fine place to document the
> development set-up process for the sprint (in fact, I bet the
> instructions we need are mostly already there).
>
> There is also http://planet.emacsen.org -- if people wanted to blog
> about their activity during the sprint, we could get them on the planet,
> and then they could stay on it.
>
> > 5. Get their chagnes pushed/committed/merged/etc. during the sprint!
> > Don't wait until afterward.
> >
>
> This might be more difficult, but the emacs maintainers do reply very
> quickly to proposed patches, especially if they pertain to existing
> reported bugs. So I'm hopeful here too. If we gave the maintainers a
> heads-up, we could probably get a better response.
>
> > I think it'd be best to have that event before LibrePlanet. I imagine
> > we might want to do this as a Saturday or Sunday daytime activity.
> >
>
> Agreed. The dates for LP have been set as March 24th and 25th.
>
> -john
>
> --
> John Sullivan | Executive Director, Free Software Foundation
> GPG Key: 61A0963B | http://identi.ca/johnsu01 | http://fsf.org/blogs/RSS
>
> Do you use free software? Donate to join the FSF and support freedom at
> <http://www.fsf.org/register_form?referrer=8096>.
> _______________________________________________
> Events mailing list
> Events at lists.openhatch.org
> http://lists.openhatch.org/mailman/listinfo/events
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openhatch.org/pipermail/events/attachments/20111223/1b5fc227/attachment.html>