Why you should contribute to

Open Source

Created by Sanyam Khurana | @ErSanyamKhurana | @CuriousLearner

Who am I?

  • One of YOU! -- Part of the community
  • Mozilla Representative
  • Open Source Contributor
  • Goes by "CuriousLearner" all over the web

Learn new skills

  • Not just coding skills or learning yet another framework
  • A lot of skills
  • Coding, debugging, testing, writing docs, collaboration, etc
  • Soft skills

Improve existing skills

  • Improve on things you don’t know
  • Learn intricate details
  • Get feedback from mentors (and all of the world)

Meet like-minded people

  • Explain what you are hacking (working) on
  • Listen to what other people are working on
  • Learn in the process

Learn people skills

  • Team management
  • Resolving internal conflicts
  • Brainstorming on a new feature
  • Public-speaking
  • Time-management
  • Conducting meet-ups/conferences

    Learn to READ

    It’s not just literature, but:

  • Documentation
  • Development guide
  • The source code

“Code is meant to be read more times than it is written”

    Find mentors

  • An opportunity to learn from domain experts
  • Volunteers are out there waiting to help everyone and anyone
  • Learn any skill you want from the experts
  • Respect everyone's time

    Teach others

    “While it is important to get your code reviewed, it is much more important to review other's code.”

  • Learn different coding styles.
  • Learn from the experience of the others.
  • Advocates healthy discussions and code reviews.
  • “Code reviews are hard. But they help a lot in improving skills.”

  • Skills of both the mentor and the mentee

    It feels great to make (small) changes

  • Gratifying to see the whole world rely on the small code changes you did
  • You don't necessarily need to work on big features in a project or become a life-long contributor
  • A small change in the documentation matters - it isn’t something inferior
  • Get to learn tools such as Sphinx and (re-Structured Text) rST

    Building your reputation and career along the way

  • A demonstration of how you write code and what you can do
  • A depiction of how you work with others
  • Experience in working with people having diversified skill-set
  • Get that commit bit flipped when you've contributed (a lot) & community starts trusting your actions

    Why do I contribute to Open Source?

    Mozilla’s mission says a lot about it

    “Doing good is part of our code”

Resources

Questions?


Shout out on Twitter: @ErSanyamKhurana
Github: CuriousLearner
Shoot a mail at: Sanyam@SanyamKhurana.com

My websites:
www.SanyamKhurana.com | www.TheGeekyWay.com