This document provides life lessons for navigating open source communities. It advises starting where you feel comfortable, bringing friends along, avoiding showing off, sharing knowledge, ignoring haters, and focusing on yourself.
#7:T Swift made a country album before she jumped right into the pop scene. Learn about something, dip your toe in and feel out the water. You don’t have to know everything about everything before you decide to contribute or get involved.
#8:Turns out, open source is pretty rad and not everyone is lucky enough to get to contribute at work. So drag your friends along to meetups, have them help with a side project, etc. Its more fun when there is a community involved.
#9:Just like at work how no one likes the A-hole who pretends like they wrote everything and/or the universe revolves around them, no one likes that in open source world either. Don’t get me wrong, everyone wants/deserves a pat on the back sometimes, but this is a group effort and its often too easy to take credit for other peoples work, so don’t.
#11:On the opposite side of this I will say we need to do a better job of pushing back on those people who are rude and hurtful. Keep codes of conduct in place, actually enforce them, and stand up for your fellow opensourcers.
#12:Everybody is different and not everybody fits the ‘tech’ mold, heck I’m not even an engineer and yet I still sometimes feel judged against this mold. Ive said it before and will continue to say, whats the fun of a community if everyone is the same/has the same interests. I love my dogs, lipstick, craft beer and literally anything on VH1. Ill end with be loving, be accepting, be yourself, thanks for your time.