Thomas Goirand <z...@debian.org> writes: > "search[ing] for talent and passion" is a great goal, but just writing > "The key to my goal is communication" isn't enough for me. So, how will > you do?
I have a couple of ideas, including - but not limited to: * As mentioned in a different thread, I'd love to get a "Review & Mentor" team up and running. This would make it smoother to start contributing to Debian, and with a few people working together to mentor new contributors, it'd be easier to spot the ones we can recruit for the tasks that need more manpower. It would also make it less of a burden to find sponsors, and not having to wait weeks or months certainly helps keeping one's passion fueled. The hows are many and diverse: on one hand, we can make the process smoother even without a review & mentor team, see the DebExpo GSoC project, or recent mails on -mentors@. On the other hand, when the software and infrastructure supports it, the task of mentoring & sponsoring can be split up more easily, which would help forming a team. The hardest part is finding enough people for the team, once the infrastructure is in place. I have a few vague ideas how I'd approach the problem, but no bullet-point plan yet. * Local teams and user groups are another way to attract interested people (somewhere on this list, this was already mentioned, probably by Zack), and they have other uses aswell. Having local teams all around the globe is very useful for organising events, be that bug squashing parties, or training or demo sessions touching various areas of Debian (typically those that'd need some more contributors; as a way to spark interest). As part of this, encouraging the origanisation of local hacklabs where there is demand for it (or sparking demand for it!) is another tool in the talent & passion fishing repertoire. As for the hows: convincing people this is a good idea, finding willing ones to take the lead, and find sponsors to host the BSPs and hacklabs. There are numerous people within the project that have experience with some (or even all) of the above, I plan to rely on their input and experience, and go from there, see how we could help them, and how we could lure more people into being interested. * Knowing what kind of different things attract people to Debian is another piece of information we could work with (to strengthen those parts that already work, and pick up those, that would be desirable, but are lacking at the moment). To help with this, I'd approach the NM front - the AMs and new members in particular -, collect information about what the AMs see in prospective members, the initial experience of new members, what prompted them to apply, and so on. Thankfully, a lot of this is already available via the AM reports, and perhaps I'm mistaken, but I do not think we're doing much with the information gained from these. What I'm especially curious about, is what strugges people have, what obstacles they had to overcome to become contributors. These things are yet another area where we could make ourselves more accessible. * Periodic news aimed at prospective contributors, with a little more verbose introduction to the particular piece the news is about, a little more emphasis on attracting new people would be another tool. Why? Because while reading technical news is interesting, in my experience, that rarely sparks interest. A little bit of non-technical, but still relevant content can go a long way. At the same time, we must not abandon the technical news, either, because those are also tremendously useful for other parts of the project: to those who are already involved. * There have been attempts[1] at introducing a "gift" usertag, to mark easy to solve issues, something a new contributor could do in a short time, and both help Debian, and get a bit more familiar with it, too. I'd like to expand on this idea, too, as it would help with Google Code-In organisation aswell, and could provide a steady stream of easy hacks to work on. I believe such easy hacks can be great introductions, as they lead to a successful contribution pretty fast. [1]: http://wiki.debian.org/qa.debian.org/GiftTag * I plan to attend conferences and events myself, but I can't be everywhere, and I'm not the best speaker, either. So I plan to rely on the press & publicity teams to continue their fruitful work, and try to support those who speak on behalf of Debian. Speaking at major events is important, and I hope that we can support and encourage those with the most skill and experience to attend and speak on every suitable occassion. All of the above, though, can only happen if the rest of the project shares at least some of my goals. I can't do it alone, nor do I wish to. I believe we have the tools to improve our communication, and our accessability, we just need to use them. I wish to play with those tools, perhaps we can build something even better than what I had in mind - if we all throw our heads together. -- |8] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87r4wrflai....@luthien.mhp