Workshop: Diving into an open source community

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This workshop is under construction. We're doing a first experimental run with Red Hat associates in Raleigh in June 2011 - if that goes well, we'll start looking at external audiences as well. Comments and thoughts always welcome! Mel Chua 06:32, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Logistics

  • June 8, 2011 (all-day)
  • Red Hat Raleigh office
  • 25-seat cap; advance sign-up required
  • Bring a laptop running Fedora or RHEL (any version).

[edit] Overview

Ever wonder how to practice the open source way, how open source communities work, or how to become a contributor to one - but never had the time to get started? Give us a day, and we'll launch you as a Fedora contributor in a way that will directly benefit your day-to-day responsibilities as a Red Hatter. By the end of the day, you'll go back to your manager and team ready to implement community tools, practices, and participation in work your team's already doing.

Note: this can be thought of as a follow-up to the "Community" segments of New Hire Orientation.

[edit] Audience

You're curious how open source communities work, how people begin contributing to them and how features are chosen and developed. You're convinced that there's something in that crazy rush of innovation that would really make a difference in your job and for your team, but you don't quite know what that might be; maybe it's a tool, a way of thinking, a connection to folks working on similar problems out in the open. And in any case, you're way too busy in the day-to-day rush of your work at Red Hat to take the time to really check it out.

If that describes you, this is your workshop. You don't have to code or even be technical in order to participate; we can work with people on documentation, design, marketing, infrastructure (IT/sysadmin), project/product management, development, testing, finance, packaging, translation, and more.

You must be comfortable using Fedora, RHEL, or a similar RPM-based Linux distribution for your day-to-day work, able to edit a wiki, and know how to converse on IRC. You need to be able to come for the whole day and bring a laptop. We'll ask you to create a Fedora Account System (FAS) username before the workshop if you don't already have one, but that's a painless process that just takes a few minutes, and we'll send instructions to registrants in an email the week beforehand.

Join us!

[edit] Content

Open source communities are powerful tools. We're going to teach you how to wield them.

Over 75% of the workshop time will be hands-on. By the end of the workshop, you'll have:

  • Taken the "vital stats" of an unfamiliar project - how do you assess the pulse of a project community before deciding to dive into it?
  • Created a contributor profile and introduced yourself to several members of a project's team.
  • Gotten plenty of practice with remote communication, with in-person feedback and a custom evaluation on what you could do to make your remote communication practices even more effective.
  • Drawn up a timeline of how the work you're already doing fits into a project's release and feature schedule. Don't know what these are yet? Don't worry, we'll explain.
  • Explored and experimented with several tools common to open source communities that also happen to be rather helpful for internal Red Hat collaboration; meetbot, etherpad, pastebin, ticket trackers, version control, and more, depending on your role.
  • Updated (or started) an RHU learning plan on how to acquire whatever additional skills you'll need to bring the open source way deeper into your everyday work.
  • Rehearsed an elevator pitch on your Red Hat work's value to the community in front of several community contributors, and rehearsed an elevator pitch on your community work's value to Red Hat in front of several Red Hat managers.

Exercises will be punctuated by mini-lectures from individuals such as:

  • Robyn Bergeron, Fedora Marketing Lead and Fedora Program Manager (for Red Hat)
  • Max Spevack, former Fedora Project Leader and current Red Hat Community Leadership Team manager
  • Sebastian Dziallas, Fedora proven packager and Red Hat intern

More speakers will appear here as they are confirmed.

[edit] Assessment

There is no assessment associated with this workshop.

[edit] Probable guests

  • Ivan Mafinksky, GLS (and Fedora contributor)

[edit] Work in progress

[edit] Todo List

[edit] Roadmap Merge

[edit] Elevator Pitch

[edit] Remote Self-Intro

[edit] Ninjahood Training

[edit] Workshop Plan

We will repurpose a good chunk of this curriculum for our POSSE Basics workshop in July for professors. More notes and a diff between the two workshops can be found at: http://openetherpad.org/more-workshop-notes (which Sebastian will merge when he gets a spare minute)

We want more than 75% of the workshop to be hands-on. That means 15 minutes of lecture, 45 minutes of Actually Doing Stuff (TM).

Mel is accountable for making sure everything is prepared before the workshop date. Leads for an activity are responsible for driving that activity AT THE WORKSHOP (they will have materials prepared either for or with them ahead of time, depending on availability), with their minion for that activity as a second, and the other two people (not listed for the activity) around as backup.

Activity Lead Minion
release-cycle matching-up page Robyn Sebastian
elevator pitch Max Robyn
contributor profile Sebastian Mel
community skills eval + RHU followup plan Mel Max

We have 5 hours to do everything (including breaks but not lunch), and people learn best in <90-minute sprints. Therefore, the schedule:

When What
09:00 - 10:00 (90m) intro + roadmap merge
10:30 - 10:45 (15m) BREAK / reflection time
10:45 - 11:45 (60m) elevator pitch
11:45 - 12:00 (15m) BREAK / reflection time
12:00 - 13:00 (60m) LUNCH with managers and elevator pitch
13:00 - 14:15 (75m) remote self-introduction
14:15 - 14:30 (15m) BREAK / reflection time
14:30 - 15:30 (60m) ninjahood training plan
15:30 - 15:45 (15m) wrap-up



[edit] Introduction

  • Have everyone take shared notes on an Etherpad document (side projector)
  • Introduce the concept of "insight learning"
  • Deliver orientation in Ignite Talk format - 20 slides, 30 seconds each, 5 minutes. (Mel)

[edit] Roadmap merge

Learning objective: Draw up a timeline of how the work you're already doing fits into a project's release and feature schedule.

End deliverable: A completed "timeline merge" worksheet on how community work fits into your RHT work schedule and vice versa

  • Hand out "release timeline racetrack" worksheets
  • Play the "6 months in 60 seconds" release cycle roleplay video
  • hand out "timeline merge" worksheet examples
  • hand out sample elevator pitches (in preparation for the next activity) so people can see how others have merged their timelines

[edit] Reflection 1

Feedback objective: What is everybody here to learn?

  • Have everyone type the reason they're here into etherpad.
  • Hand out insight cards
  • Once you've typed that sentence and written an insight card, you're on break

[edit] Elevator pitch

Learning objectives: Take the "vital stats" of an unfamiliar project (how do you assess the pulse of a project community before deciding to dive into it?) AND have rehearsed an elevator pitch on their community work's value to Red Hat in front of several Red Hat managers. (the managers will come at lunch)

End deliverable: An elevator pitch, backed up by stats gathered directly from a community in realtime, ready to present to a Red Hat manager.

  • Break into small groups and hand out "vital stats" and "elevator pitch" worksheet; have teams go for it with instructors roaming.
  • Note: we may do "vital stats" in the earlier block, depending on whether participants need more time for elevator pitch or roadmap merge. Will decide this on the day of the workshop based on attendee experience.

[edit] Reflection 2

  • Insight cards again
  • Instructors collect morning materials to digitize/transcribe during lunch

[edit] Lunch

  • managers enter
  • elevator pitch feedback rounds

[edit] Remote self-introduction

Learning objectives:

  • Rehearsed an elevator pitch on your Red Hat work's value to the community in front of several community contributors.
  • Explored and experimented with several tools common to open source communities that also happen to be rather helpful for internal Red Hat collaboration; meetbot, etherpad, pastebin, ticket trackers, version control, and more, depending on your role.
  • Created a contributor profile and introduced yourself to several members of a project's team.

End deliverable: A (remotely) peer-reviewed open source contributor profile page.

[edit] Reflection 3

  • Insight cards again

[edit] Ninjahood training plan

Learning objectives:

  • Gotten plenty of practice with remote communication, with in-person feedback and a custom evaluation on what you could do to make your remote communication practices even more effective.
  • Updated (or started) an RHU learning plan on how to acquire whatever additional skills you'll need to bring the open source way deeper into your everyday work.

End deliverable: A "community skills" evaluation and RHU follow-up plan.

[edit] Wrap-up

  • feedback on the workshop
  • further learning & resources
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