Teaching padawans to chop wood and carry water in their open source journey

Maintainers of most open source projects long for everlasting engagement from their contributors. Community-driven projects stand a better chance at this, provided the community itself is well-fed with new contributors and fresh ideas. Contributors may begin their journey with many motivations, however staying and taking on maintenance responsibilities is aided by the community's culture and willingness to mentor. We began building engagement for the OpenStack Manila community years ago with one-on-one mentoring of new contributors. We scouted for interested folk at events, conducted hands-on workshops and continuously improved our on-boarding documentation. Our methods constantly changed with feedback from mentees. After mentoring nearly two dozen Outreachy, GSOC and college interns from across the world, we want to share our process and learnings through this presentation.

Transcript

1. Teaching padawans to chop wood and
   carry water in their open source journey
   Stephen Finucane
   Victoria Martinez de la Cruz
   June 2022
   

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2. Let’s talk about some wonderful
   people for a moment…
   

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5. There’s a long history of mentoring in
   OpenStack…
   

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7. Why do it?
   computer PNG Designed By ngupakarti from Pngtree.com
   Empower willing contributors
   Foster diversity in the community
   Bring energy and new ideas into the project
   Gain deeper understanding of the project you mentor
   Train the next generation of open source maintainers
   Recruit new contributors from a wide talent pool
   

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8. What about our involvement?
   

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9. Intern @ OpenStack Horizon (Dec-Mar 14)
   Mentored 8 mentees @ OpenStack Zaqar / Trove / Manila
   Coordinator @ OpenStack
   Intern @ OpenStack Zaqar (Mar-Aug 15)
   “Design and implement the graphical user experience for share
   networks” (January - March 2022)
   “OpenStack Manila API v2 support in OpenStackSDK (cont)”
   (September - December 2021)
   “OpenStack Manila API v2 support in OpenStackSDK”
   (September - December 2020)
   Mentor at Open Source Day for OpenStack 2015, 2019, 2020, 2021
   Coordinator at Open Source Day for OpenStack 2019, 2020, 2021
   

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10. NDSU Students (September - December 2021)
    Working on adding missing cinder functionality to
    openstacksdk (SDK)
    BU/NEU Students (January - March 2022)
    Working on adding missing cinder functionality to
    openstackclient (OSC)
    

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11. So what have we learned about
    not sucking at this? 🤔
    

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12. Case Study A: Cinder Gaps in openstacksdk
    ● Four students from North Dakota State University
    ● Three months
    ● 5 merged patches, 8 in progress
    Case Study B: Cinder Gaps in openstackclient
    ● Four students from Boston/Northeastern University
    ● Three months
    ● 12 merged patches, 5 in progress
    

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13. Case Study A: Cinder Gaps in openstacksdk
    ● Four students from North Dakota State University
    ● Three months
    ● 5 merged patches, 8 in progress
    Case Study B: Cinder Gaps in openstackclient
    ● Four students from Boston/Northeastern University
    ● Three months
    ● 12 merged patches, 5 in progress
    

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14. The second mentorship program felt
    more productive and resulted in more
    merged code, more positive feedback
    and all round good feels ❤
    Why? 🤔
    

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15. 
    Goals & objectives
    
    
    Communication
    Process
    

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16. 
    Goals & objectives
    
    
    Communication
    Process
    ● Constrain your scope
    ● Define clear objectives and goals
    ● Ensure you use (and provide) the
    right tools
    

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17. 
    Goals & objectives
    
    
    Communication
    Process
    ● Talk often
    ● Write more
    ● Involve everyone (both team and
    community)
    

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18. 
    Goals & objectives
    
    
    Communication
    Process
    ● Give feedback 🌟
    ● You also need to do reviews
    etc…but healthy limits are good
    ● Stay professional
    

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19. 
    Goals & objectives
    
    
    Communication
    Process
    

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20. Sounds like a piece of cake! 🍰
    How do I get started?
    

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22. Outreachy
    Applying as a mentor:
    ● Submitting a project
    ○ What would be a good project to propose?
    ● As a mentor, what is expected from you?
    Applicants:
    ● Time commitment
    ● As a mentor, what should you expect from interns?
    How an internship round works:
    ● Interns will apply
    ● Mentors sign up and propose projects
    ● Contribution period
    ● Choosing your interns
    ● Interns are announced
    ● Internship runs for ~12 weeks
    Current round:
    ● OpenStack has funding for 2 interns
    ● Internship runs from May 30 to August 26, 2022
    ● Project proposals are closed
    ○ 2 projects selected in the OpenStack
    community
    Next round:
    ● Internship runs from early December 2022 to early
    March 2023
    ● You can sign up as a mentor and propose a project
    on the Outreachy page starting from late July 2022
    

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23. US Universities
    Expectations:
    ● Depending on the college and course, students may
    have one or two semesters with you.
    ● This impacts what projects you should propose to
    the professor, you may have ~15 weeks or ~30
    weeks to work with students
    ● Groups may have between 3 and 5 students
    participating, suggested to have 2 or more mentors
    available
    ● OpenStack community members co-mentor
    How it works:
    ● Project proposals occur before the semester
    begins
    ● Suggested that projects have a workload that
    is easily divisible so students can assign
    themselves individual tasks
    ● Meet weekly at a time where most students
    and mentors can attend
    ● The first couple of weeks is an Intro to
    OpenStack, dev environment setup (admittedly
    mostly devstack debug), negotiating
    appropriate timeline, MVP, professor and
    student expectations, etc
    ● Coordinate pair-programming sessions with
    the students, dedicate some time to assist
    them
    ● Non-technical mentoring: review or share their
    CV/resumes, offer career advice etc.
    

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24. Open Source Day at Grace Hopper
    Previous Rounds:
    ● Summer Open Source Day: July 15th
    ○ Attendees: 6
    ○ Mentors: 8
    ● Autumn Open Source Day October 1st
    ○ Attendees: 12
    ○ Mentors: 10
    ○ 6 bugs fixed
    Next Round:
    ● GHC - September 20-23, registrations not yet
    open
    How it works:
    ● First segment is spent on introductory presentation on
    openstack, its services, and participating mentors
    ● Next is helping participants set up their gerrit accounts,
    an intro to devstack (recommended to come with
    available dev environments for participants to use day of
    the event), practice using the sandbox, and assisting all
    throughout this process
    ● BYOB - Bring your own bug!
    ● Mentors and mentees are separated into zoom rooms to
    work on a bug or two together, then collaboratively
    review each others bugs and spend time talking about
    careers, answering questions, and general non-technical
    mentoring
    Expectations:
    It’s a one day long event, choose your bugs on launchpad some time before so no one swipes it from you before the
    event, mentors can rotate throughout the day according to availability and time zones, depending on attendance you
    could have more than one mentee per mentor, or you can tag team a group of participants
    

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25. Other opportunities
    Project Proposal: ~Feb 2023
    Timeline: Jun to Sep 2023
    Timeline: Oct 2022
    (Only for GitHub/GitLab projects)
    Project Proposal: ~Feb 2023
    Timeline: Apr-Nov 2023
    Are there more?
    

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26. 
    

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27. Contacts for more information
    Kendall Nelson (IRC: diablo_rojo)
    Email: knelson@openifra.dev
    Ildiko Vancsa (IRC: ildikov)
    Email: idliko@openinfra.dev
    Amy Marrich (IRC: spotz)
    Email: amy@redhat.com
    Victoria Martinez de la Cruz
    Email: vkmc@redhat.com
    Stephen Finucane
    Email: stephenfin@redhat.com
    

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