Dear community,

Please share your thanks to Daniel Dias Dos Santos who has been invited by the 
TomEE PMC as a committer!

Thank you, Daniel, for all you've given the project with your many many PRs.  
You are indeed a big force behind our translation efforts.

Much more than that, thank you so much for all your effort helping to enable 
others to contribute to the project.  It's a rare thing.

Many people new on an open source project limit their participation.  If 
someone asks a question, they think, "Someone who knows more should probably 
answer that."  If someone asks how they can help, they think, "Someone with 
more authority should probably answer that." If someone submits a PR, they 
think, "Someone with more experience/commit should probably review that."

Reject that line of thinking.  It doesn't help you or the project.

The people you view as more capable and with more authority view themselves as 
servants.  Servants that are just doing the best they can.  You don't need 
permission or authority to be a servant.  When you show willingness and bravery 
to help others an also be a servant, you quickly become one of their favorite 
people.

The trick; it's not about your ability to help, it's about the person who needs 
help.  Focus on them, not on you.

It's not "do I know everything about x", it's "do I know anything about x that 
can help this person."  If there's any small thing you can do to help them, do 
it.  If you see they are not getting a response, then you have a wide open 
range of ways to help them; basically anything that isn't silence.  Even a 
simple, "I'm new here too, but happy to team up and learn together.  I can't 
figure out x, do you have any ideas?"

Thank you, Daniel, for having the bravery to help so many on the project.

You are now going to cross a magical line were people are going to look at you 
and think, "we sure, he can help/do/contribute like that because he's a 
committer.  I'm not so I can't."

Your new job is to convince them otherwise :)


-- 
David Blevins
http://twitter.com/dblevins
http://www.tomitribe.com

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