Links about helping newcomers participate, from the experience of other open source projects

[Britta Gustafson]

At hack night last week, there was some great discussion about how to help newcomers get started with contributing to brigade projects. Lots of projects in the broader free & open source software community have thought about how to effectively help newcomers get started, so checking out these resources might be interesting for brigade members. Here are some links!

A detailed article about helping designers (and other people) contribute to open source software: http://opensourcedesign.is/blogging_about/import-designers/

An interesting structure for thinking about how to help people participate: http://infotrope.net/2014/08/12/the-pathway-to-inclusion/

A thorough academic analysis of barriers faced by newcomers: https://www.academia.edu/7628876/Preliminary_empirical_identification_of_barriers_faced_by_newcomers_to_Open_Source_Software_projects

Another organization I volunteer with (OpenHatch) compiled some advice for running productive software improvement sprints/hackathons with volunteers, including newcomers: http://opensource-events.com/ - it includes advice about building suggested task lists for newcomers. At a sprint I helped with, we made those task lists with the equivalent of a Google Doc.

Britta

P.S. When trying to post this message to the "Main Discussion" board, Google Groups told me that I was also required to put it into either the "Project Proposals" or "Active Projects" categories. It's neither of those really...but I picked "Project Proposals" to let me post this. :)