Friday, June 26, 2015

June 30 - Open Source Night

It's one thing to use open source projects in your work, but it's another thing entirely to go from being a consumer to being a contributor.

From the outside it can be daunting to contribute to an open source project, but it can also be extremely rewarding seeing your work being used by others or  knowing you've helped, even in a small way, with the development of something you get great value from. Se we're going to help you with that.

Here's what we plan to chat about:

  1. Starting your own vs. forking a (dead) project vs. joining an existing one.
  2. Licencing considerations, contributions on work time and Microsoft's stance.
  3. Getting a feel for the people behind a project.
  4. What makes a good Pull Request.
  5. Contributions aren't only about the code.
  6. How much time do you actually need?
  7. Finding a way to jump in to a project

We'll spend a short time on each topic and then, since the best way to learn is by doing, we're going to put it all into action! As a group, we'll break up into teams and try making some contributions to whatever open source project(s) you choose.

It should be a great night and aligns strongly to what we, as a developer community, are all about.

So regardless of whether you're an open source newbie or have been part of the open source community for decades, we want you to come along. You all have something valuable you can contribute and we wouldn't be who we are without you.

Grab yourself a free ticket so we know you're coming, bring your laptop if you have one (it's optional), and let's have some fun together! See you on the night!