Hi, I might be getting ahead of myself on involvement but I thought I'd share a few lessons I learnt about Apache incubation...
1. The main focus of Apache is the community and the Apache Way. When you first get involved, it's a bit hard to understand this since you're likely used to drive product and product value. You do need an interesting project for people to get involved (what can be cooler that IoT!) but Apache cares more that we build a community, get releases out, and so on. 2. Distribution list are everything ALL (and I mean ALL) discussions and decisions need to happen on the iota mailing lists. These mailing lists ARE the record of the project and indicates activity. Of course, you need Stack Overflow, Slack, and other things to build a community but they don't quite "count." Further, we need to ensure that both user and dev lists are active. The easiest way to think about user is to go "would a user benefit from this?" A good example is discussing how to install the product for documentation -- have that discussion on the user list since it allows people to find install instructions before the website has proper documentation. 3. Release often It takes a few releases to dot all the Is and cross all the Ts on releasing the Apache Way. Don't worry about quality in the beginning, worry about following the processes and getting passed on the legal stuff. Next, move to a stable/bleeding edge model so that you can continue to release often. You'll find that the major Hadoop projects follow this model so that people can help testing without having to build the product and to ensure constant project activity. I recommend a scheduled train model every N weeks. 4. Mentors have day jobs The mentors' job is to help guide the incubator to graduation. GUIDE is the operating word here so don't expect hands-on help unless the mentors have time for hands-on. Further, mentors are often involved with several incubators. 5. You have to excite people People get involved when they think that a project is cool. It's very much a fashion thing in my opinion. For example, I'm getting involved in iota because I love the idea of IoT and want to be able to build IoT solutions. Plus, I think that I can help. My point here is that you have to sell the project as much as you sell products developed on top of it. We need presentations, videos, Twitter, easy ways to get involved, and so on. 6. Lead with open source Ensure that whatever solution you're building on top of iota relies on the fact that the required functions are put into iota and released so that the solution DEPENDS on iota release X. It's the normal pecking order: OS before database before middle ware before applications. 7. You are an individual You may be paid by a company but to Apache, you are an individual that expresses your opinions and makes your contributions. This was very hard for me in the beginning because I was used to always communicate in we form. Now, I've learnt to use "I" when I am expressing what I think and "we" when I am referring to the project as a whole. I hope this helps. -- Thanks, Gunnar *If you think you can you can, if you think you can't you're right.*
