Very great points! +1 for 4) and 5)
> -----Original Message----- > From: Zach Boldyga [mailto:z...@scalabull.com] > Sent: Sunday, March 17, 2019 8:33 AM > To: dev@mxnet.incubator.apache.org > Subject: Re: Call for Ideas and Approaches to Community Building > > This is a great discussion, thanks for opening, Carin! > > As a newcomer to MXNet and Apache communities in general, I’ve been > considering what I can bring to the table here, and what importance it would > have to me. > > I'm not employed by large organizations, and communities like this are > perhaps the only way to be involved in projects of such a large scale and > importance. An opportunity to join this type of team without the full > commitment of employment is fantastic! I see potential for this to be a form > of validation, a chance to meet others and build professional relationships, > and a vehicle to learn from some of the most well-educated people in the > industry. > > That said, here’s what I’ve noticed thus far: > > 1. There is a healthy amount of activity in Github Issues, and the committers > are doing a great job at allowing newcomers to jump in. I was able to get > started on my first ticket within 10 minutes of searching thru issues. > > 2. The dev mailing list is a great place to discuss all of the nuances of the > project. I also like meeting people and it would be rewarding to get to know > people in the community via Skype or in-person meetups! This doesn’t have > to be for everyone, and I don’t think it’s appropriate for Q&A, but for some > people a social element purely for the sake of putting names with faces can > be rewarding. I’m open to virtual meetups :) > > 3. My first commit was smooth. When approaching the second one, I’m > hitting some hiccups. For instance, I recently created a JIRA ticket based on > a > Github Issue some users reported, and the ticket has been sitting for a week > without any activity. Should I just dig in and open a PR? How do the > commiters decide what can and can’t reasonably go into the project? We > may be able to make some changes to the contribution documentation or > processes to make it easier for first time contributors to ramp-up into > regular > contributors? > > 4. I would love to see more discussion about the future of MXNet. I imagine > those who have been involved in the project for a long time have thoughts > about next major steps, but as an outsider I’m not sure where to find this > information. The roadmap on Github is fairly short-term and outdated, and > lots of interesting ideas are sprouting in projects like TF Swift as of 2019. > > 5. Something I’ve observed across many Apache projects: there isn’t much > focus on marketing. I wonder why? A tool like Tensorflow is reaching 10x > more people, mainly because of marketing. > > Best, > > Zach Boldyga > Scalabull | Founder > 1 (866) 846-8771 x 101 > > > On Thu, Mar 7, 2019 at 5:38 AM Tianqi Chen <tqc...@cs.washington.edu> > wrote: > > > what happens (also) happens in the mail-list. > > > > If there is a certain things or person’s contribution is only known by > > colleagues, it is a indication of things that should be improved > > toward more apache way. > > > > Tianqi > > > > On Thu, Mar 7, 2019 at 4:42 AM Isabel Drost-Fromm <isa...@apache.org> > > wrote: > > > > > On Wed, Mar 06, 2019 at 10:03:57PM -0800, Steffen Rochel wrote: > > > > I agree with Tianqi on "One approach toward building a more > > > > diverse community is to acknowledge the fact that we want to > > > > encourage > > > interactions > > > > in the Apache way beyond our physical cycle." However, I disagree > > > > with > > > his > > > > suggestion regarding "One principle to toward that is to encourage > > > > PMC members only nominate committers from other organizations" for > > > > the following reasons: [...] > > > > > > I spent quite some time digging remembering that a similar topic had > > > been discussed somewhere at the ASF at some point in time with many > > > whys, pros and cons towards contributor employer diversity - finally > > > found a long and winding thread there: > > > > > > > > > > > > https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/7a7412316ddbe1d43f5fb3d3703ea25a6 > > > b26e56de602e27e175785c0@1337815698@%3Cgeneral.incubator.apache.or > g%3E > > > > > > > > > There is one answer in there from Roy Fielding which has a similar > > > story to the one that you are describing, Steffen. My main takeaway > > > of what was discussed back then: "Diversity is only a warning sign > > > that means we need to check for decisions made in our forums and > > > advise accordingly." > > > > > > The questions I personally tend to ask myself: How easy is it to > > > follow > > the > > > project from just subscribing to it's mailing lists (remember the > > > "if it didn't happen on the mailing list, it didn't happen"), get > > > active, get involved, be treated as a fellow project member and be > > > voted in as committer and PMC member. > > > > > > For a more condensed text on the topic of "ASF projects are made of > > > individuals" > > > you might also want to check out the ASF guidelines over there: > > > https://www.confluent.io/apache-engineering-guidelines/ > > > https://www.confluent.io/apache-guidelines > > > > > > Related material was published at ApacheCon : > > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFNE0IpKOxU > > > > > > There's also lovely content that was recently produced over at > > > dev@community: > > > > > > > > > https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/183nXPAxpJymQBOYOt1FnFaahRcQ > skI > > vOyIvHRC6UAnE/edit#slide=id.g4a86a2ca5a_0_69 > > > > > > > > > Isabel > > > > > > > >
