Open Source Festival 2020

Becoming a stand out contributor means you have to apply the best practices, write well-crafted documentation for features and sample codes.

Open source is one of the best ways to get started with the real-world experience of the programming world and learning quickly. Also, open-source organizations are very keen and welcoming to new contributors to their platforms. Lately, I have heard a lot of people saying that contributing to open-source projects is very difficult. So, I decided to come up with this talk just to break the myth. I know it can be hard at first but believe me, there are far harder things in the programming world than starting to contribute in the open-source. In this talk, I am going to share the motivation and plan to write your first patch for the open-source organization that you love to use in your personal time.

Open source is beautiful! It makes powerful, potentially life-changing software free and open to all. However, open-source software has been largely associated with poor user experience and aesthetics. Could this be because designers are not interested in contributing to free software? Actually, “Most designers don’t have a clue about open source,” says Eriol Fox of Ushahidi, a non-profit social enterprise that creates humanitarian, open-source tech tools. And there’s no doubt, personally I was not aware for the longest time in my tech career that designers (and people from other fields other than coding) could contribute to open-source software almost as much as programmers do. Why should you contribute to open-source as a designer? What opportunities are open to you as an open-source designer and what help is available to help you get started? These questions and more will be addressed in this talk. It is open to everyone, including non-designers and non-coders.

Being treasured within the team you work doesn’t only happen when you are a 10x engineer and can push code at the speed of light. Many times, your worth within your team increases as a result of helping others in the team. This can be by mentoring a colleague, or teaching a teammate a new concept you understand better or reviewing Pull Requests with great attention to detail that ensures little or no bug gets deployed to production. Being valued in your team can come as a result of bringing into the team, your unique qualities, and personal attributes, and not only your technical prowess. You can thrive in a new team by bringing out the parts of you that impact others and makes the team (a part of the world) a better place.