Colin CharlesJoshua MatthewsSalvi Pascual

Open collaboration

Date: This event took place live on September 13 2016

Presented by: Colin Charles, Joshua Matthews, Salvi Pascual

Duration: Approximately 3 hours.

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Description:

We have frameworks and languages for creating software projects, but successful projects include the human
factor—communicating with people, including a growing community of users and contributors. Communication, collaboration, and respect are the keys to making projects work, not just within your team but also among several teams, and often across organizations and the broader world. In this online conference, you'll hear from three experienced open source developers and contributors as they share their tips for effective and rewarding collaboration.

Forking successfully - 10amPT/1pmET
Colin Charles

Forking in the open source world means branching off into different goals and design directions. How do you pick a winner? How do you become a forking winner? Colin Charles presents practical examples from the MariaDB world (MySQL fork), as well as lessons from other projects like LibreOffice, LibreSSL, SuiteCRM, and Jenkins.

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About Colin Charles

A businessman who's big on open source software, Colin Charles currently works on MariaDB. In a previous life, he worked on MySQL, the Fedora Project, and OpenOffice.org. Follow Colin at @bytebot on Twitter.

Using open source software to connect Cuba to the Web via email - 11amPT/2pmET
Salvi Pascual

Salvi Pascual details how open source software can be used to change the world. In Cuba, 23 percent of the population can only access email—just 5 percent can access the Web without restrictions. Salvi offers an overview of his work with a nonprofit that connects thousands of Cubans to the Web via email and explains how you can contribute. You have a unique opportunity to learn this technology and use your skills to make a worldwide impact.

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About Salvi Pascual

Salvi Pascual is a university professor, experienced software developer, systems architect, and technology trailblazer for social good through his open source project, Apretaste. His work has an immediate and positive affect on thousands of people internationally, and he has received national recognition as a technology innovator. Salvi earned a master's degree in computer science from Florida International University and continues to teach and inspire future technology creators. He loves traveling and strives to not be the worst pool player in the world.

Optimizing your project for contribution - 12pmPT/3pmET
Joshua Matthews

As open source project maintainers, we are sometimes left wondering why our projects are overlooked and rarely receive contributions. This doesn't need to be the case. By taking a few straightforward but deliberate steps, we can lower the barrier to entry for our projects and increase the pool of potential contributors.

Joshua Matthews covers opportunities for automation, technology choices, communication styles, language hacks, and more that will increase the visibility of your project. Using examples drawn from a variety of open source projects, Josh presents concrete strategies to attract, encourage, and retain new contributors, focusing his discussion on a set of five core goals: prioritizing useful information, reducing friction, making expectations clear, responding appropriately, and following through

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About Joshua Matthews

Joshua Matthews is a platform developer at Mozilla, where he gets to write a lot of Rust code. He's a core contributor to Firefox and Servo and a keen mentor to new contributors. Josh gleefully demolishes any barriers to entry that he comes across in open source projects.