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
2. Let’s talk about some wonderful people for a moment…
5. There’s a long history of mentoring in OpenStack…
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
8. What about our involvement?
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
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)
11. So what have we learned about not sucking at this? 🤔
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
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
14. The second mentorship program felt more productive and resulted in more merged code, more positive feedback and all round good feels ❤ Why? 🤔
15. Goals & objectives Communication Process
16. Goals & objectives Communication Process • Constrain your scope • Define clear objectives and goals • Ensure you use (and provide) the right tools
17. Goals & objectives Communication Process • Talk often • Write more • Involve everyone (both team and community)
18. Goals & objectives Communication Process • Give feedback 🌟 • You also need to do reviews etc…but healthy limits are good • Stay professional
19. Goals & objectives Communication Process
20. Sounds like a piece of cake! 🍰 How do I get started?
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
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.
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
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?
26. <insert bualadh bos 👏>
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