7:55 a.m.
Hi,
I would like to get some feedback from Fedora contributors who attended
the event on what went well and what we could improve for the next year.
I intend to write in detail at some point but my short list:
* Met Susmit, Ankur, Hiemanshu, Joerg Simon, Kedar and others which I
think is a important part of the event more than anything else.
* Fedora Potd went pretty well but I think we should have put up
posters/banners somewhere in front to guide the audience.
* Booth was a pleasant surprise and talking to other booths, a number of
them didn't get explicit confirmation either. We had to rush to get the
Swag done (thanks to Susmit). Must avoid that in the future.
Let me know your comments.
Rahul
10:03 a.m.
On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 7:25 PM, Rahul Sundaram
<sundaram(a)fedoraproject.org> wrote:
Hi,
I would like to get some feedback from Fedora contributors who attended
the event on what went well and what we could improve for the next year.
I intend to write in detail at some point but my short list:
* Met Susmit, Ankur, Hiemanshu, Joerg Simon, Kedar and others which I
think is a important part of the event more than anything else.
Same here.
* Fedora Potd went pretty well but I think we should have put up
posters/banners somewhere in front to guide the audience.
The problem was we didn't get new faces who were interested to get
started. Otherwise, it went well. My observation is that big events
are fine for meeting old friends and get ongoing works done. But these
are not very suitable for getting new contributors q(plenty of choices
for them?) or starting a new work.
* Booth was a pleasant surprise and talking to other booths, a number
of
them didn't get explicit confirmation either. We had to rush to get the
Swag done (thanks to Susmit). Must avoid that in the future.
As long as I am in Kolkata, I can arrange things in (preferably) a
couple of days notice.
There is not much you could do as the booth was really a surprise. :)
--
Regards,
Susmit.
=============================================
http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/user:susmit
=============================================
Sent from Calcutta, WB, India
10:32 a.m.
On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 5:03 PM, susmit shannigrahi
<thinklinux.ssh(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The problem was we didn't get new faces who were interested to
get
started. Otherwise, it went well. My observation is that big events
are fine for meeting old friends and get ongoing works done. But these
are not very suitable for getting new contributors q(plenty of choices
for them?) or starting a new work.
I shall disagree here. May be you will get a hall filled with students
in a not so *large* conference. But what is the turnover number at
such places? Consider the number of Fedora Activity days / Fedora
awareness campaigns having been conducted all over India and the
number of *active* Fedora contributors we have. Turnover is bad in
terms of numbers for sure otherwise this list would have been already
hitting 1000's
At conferences such as FOSS.IN you have a selective set of people
coming in. The majority (say even *vast* majority) have a specific
target when they come in, and these are folks who have not been forced
to sit in any talks. They came in voluntarily. So I would expect the
turnover to be much higher which is atleast true wrt RTEMS this year
and KDE over the past few years.
KDE - Shanthanu tushar who lead the PoTD this time attended FOSS.IN
2008 first time. So did so many folks who are now active KDE
contributors. I am sure Pradeepto will agree with me that FOSS.IN has
produced more KDE contributors than any other random talks he has
given all over India.
RTEMS - I already have 2 new contributors and several requests are
coming through email. Definitely in teh past of all teh lecturing I
have done, people used to be enthusiastic but very few held on and
actually contributed. But getting 2 new contributors in just 5 days
who actually contributed patches is a good accomplishment.
So there is something else that has gone wrong. We need to dig deeper.
And oh, new work has always been started at large conferences. At
FOSSDEM I kicked off some work, at FOSS.IN 2009 I started playing
around with Adruino. So again I disagree :)
What needs to be looked into is, given plenty of choices why did
people not chose Fedora PoTD or becoming a Fedora Contributor? Where
did the mistake happen?
Still open...
Regards,
Aanjhan
10:44 a.m.
On 12/11/2009 10:02 PM, Aanjhan R wrote:
What needs to be looked into is, given plenty of choices why did
people not chose Fedora PoTD or becoming a Fedora Contributor? Where
did the mistake happen?
Still open...
Point taken. However I don't think that we can compare something like
KDE to Fedora. Totally different dynamics but if there are suggestions
on what to improve, I will gladly take it.
Rahul
12:15 a.m.
________________________________________
From: fedora-india-bounces(a)redhat.com [fedora-india-bounces(a)redhat.com] On Behalf Of
Rahul Sundaram > > [sundaram(a)fedoraproject.org]
Sent: Friday, December 11, 2009 10:14 PM
To: Aanjhan R
Cc: fedora-india(a)redhat.com
Subject: Re: [fedora-india] FOSS.IN 2009 retrospective
On 12/11/2009 10:02 PM, Aanjhan R wrote:
> What needs to be looked into is, given plenty of choices why did
> people not chose Fedora PoTD or becoming a Fedora Contributor? Where
> did the mistake happen?
>
> Still open...
Point taken. However I don't think that we can compare something like
KDE to Fedora. Totally different dynamics but if there are suggestions
on what to improve, I will gladly take it.
I thought the workout concept was good. Making a list todos with some low-hanging
fruit items to begin with, and getting new folks to get some concrete work done
would help.
Because for many, they don't know where to start, but once started they can
keep going.
Rahul
Kedar.
12:19 a.m.
On 12/12/2009 11:45 AM, Kedar Sovani wrote:
I thought the workout concept was good. Making a list todos with some
low-hanging
fruit items to begin with, and getting new folks to get some concrete work done
would help.
Because for many, they don't know where to start, but once started they can
keep going.
Yeah. Difficult part is finding a list of such items that new potential
contributors can get involved with. What would be the good entry points?
Rahul
3:42 a.m.
On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 7:19 AM, Rahul Sundaram
<sundaram(a)fedoraproject.org> wrote:
Yeah. Difficult part is finding a list of such items that new
potential
contributors can get involved with. What would be the good entry points?
We must check where each of the current active Fedora contributors
started off? Just a short 2 sentence "What was the first thing you did
for Fedora? and why? "
IMO, we should be able to observe some sort of pattern and try putting
forward similar entry points somewhere on the wiki or work on such
points during FADs.
Though I am not active - My entry point was Fedora Electronic Lab, my
interest is electronics and hence that was the obvious start point.
The first thing I did is to patch Xcircuit (I think)
My two paisa :)
thanks and Regards,
Aanjhan
5:04 a.m.
On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 10:42 AM, Aanjhan R <aanjhan(a)gmail.com> wrote:
We must check where each of the current active Fedora contributors
started off? Just a short 2 sentence "What was the first thing you did
for Fedora? and why? "
IMO, we should be able to observe some sort of pattern and try putting
forward similar entry points somewhere on the wiki or work on such
points during FADs.
As I was cleaning my room, this flash appeared and I pen it down here.
May not make much sense but worth going on records :)
1. Important tasks of being involved with a distribution (Packaging /
Documentation / Testing / Artwork)
2. Out of the above tasks you show to a new comer, which one do you
think would excite him/her the most? IMO nothing gives the adrenalin
rush to immediately sit down and start hacking. (No. I am not saying
the above are brain dead things. I do understand the difficulties of
packaging tex ;) )
3. Consider a project like ; say Lekhonee. I feel it is much much
easier to get people excited to contributing to such "upstream"
projects than to the distro specific tasks. IMO, other than Lekhonee
being hosted on fedorahosted.org and having core devs from Redhat it
has *nothing* specific for Fedora. So I think showing a pathway , a
top-down contribution pathway to the folks might help getting more
people into the contribution mould? (where top = upstream)
End of my ramblings.
Regards,
Aanjhan
5:07 a.m.
On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 12:04 PM, Aanjhan R <aanjhan(a)gmail.com> wrote:
being hosted on fedorahosted.org and having core devs from Redhat it
OK. Red Hat :)
5:24 a.m.
On 12/12/2009 04:34 PM, Aanjhan R wrote:
On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 10:42 AM, Aanjhan R <aanjhan(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
> We must check where each of the current active Fedora contributors
> started off? Just a short 2 sentence "What was the first thing you did
> for Fedora? and why? "
>
> IMO, we should be able to observe some sort of pattern and try putting
> forward similar entry points somewhere on the wiki or work on such
> points during FADs.
As I was cleaning my room, this flash appeared and I pen it down here.
May not make much sense but worth going on records :)
1. Important tasks of being involved with a distribution (Packaging /
Documentation / Testing / Artwork)
2. Out of the above tasks you show to a new comer, which one do you
think would excite him/her the most? IMO nothing gives the adrenalin
rush to immediately sit down and start hacking.
That does vary between people. Within the free software world, I started
out doing L10N, then moved on to documentation, did some system
administration, perl and Qt programming, packaging and now doing a bit
of everything. There are aspects of individual communities which are
incredibly appealing.
I don't think you can sit in a session with the Fedora design team and
not come away excited about the possibility of creating new user
interfaces or themes.
One of the reasons why I did try and provide a more holistic view in the
Potd rather than the traditional hacker only culture is not just because
Fedora Project itself believes in bringing together people with wide
variety of interests but also because I believe in it based on my own
personal experiences as well.
We have a fairly well rounded team in Fedora. Susmit does infrastructure
work. Hiemanshu does websites. A bunch of us do various upstream
projects, packaging, QA etc. That is not accidental and I believe it
leads to a healthier community. The challenge is breaking down chunks of
it enough to mentor and recruit new contributors. Let me note that
within India, among distributions, we have by and far, the largest base
of contributors. So I don't believe we are slacking. Just that we can do
better and that's always going to be the case.
Rahul
5:40 a.m.
On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 12:24 PM, Rahul Sundaram
<sundaram(a)fedoraproject.org> wrote:
We have a fairly well rounded team in Fedora. Susmit does
infrastructure
work. Hiemanshu does websites. A bunch of us do various upstream
projects, packaging, QA etc. That is not accidental and I believe it
leads to a healthier community. The challenge is breaking down chunks of
it enough to mentor and recruit new contributors. Let me note that
within India, among distributions, we have by and far, the largest base
of contributors. So I don't believe we are slacking. Just that we can do
better and that's always going to be the case.
Agreed. A community like Fedora does need a well rounded team and I
never mentioned we are slacking. So wrt the challenge - I feel there
is fairly a neat list out here http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join . I
dont see what more needs to be done to get more people interested and
get started. The only important thing to take care is not to lose
interested people. Forcing does'nt work. For all we are volunteers :)
Basically as I always felt, it all boils down to being interested /
individuality. No amount of cajoling will help in the long term.
Regards,
Aanjhan
5:48 a.m.
On 12/12/2009 05:10 PM, Aanjhan R wrote:
Agreed. A community like Fedora does need a well rounded team and I
never mentioned we are slacking. So wrt the challenge - I feel there
is fairly a neat list out here http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join . I
dont see what more needs to be done to get more people interested and
get started.
IMO, breakdown individual tasks into small enough items. For QA, this
would involve bug triaging. You can triage a few bugs in an hour and
walk away and still make a useful contribution. This is difficult to do
for other teams but there are useful steps using whiteboard markers in
bugzilla like easyfix and studentproject
http://blog.chris.tylers.info/index.php?/archives/217-StudentProject-keyw...
There is also the interest from existing contributors to use their
network of relationships to cultivate more contributions. That's
happening slowly but something we need to actively push for.
Lastly, I think we can plan a Fedora specific event next year and gather
all the contributors together on a hackfest.
Rahul
12:51 a.m.
Hi,
This thread started with a discussion about FOSS.IN, which I had planned on
attending but unfortunately had to cancel those plans at the last moment.
Although, it now has brought out a few good points about contribution, so I
would like to submit my 2p worth.
As a packager, one of the biggest turn-offs for me used to be the turn-around
time for the reviews. I've submitted my first package for review in F9 (or early
F10), i think, but got my first one accepted sometime in the late F10 cycle.
However, once i accepted the delays, it became easier for me to just submit and
wait for a review.
So, IMHO, besides generating the initial enthusiasm, it is also important that
we have a way of sustaining it. This can be done by either setting real
expectations on the delays involved for initial contributions to get through or
by decreasing in some manner these delays.
We could for instance ask new contributors to send out a mail here to
fedora-india list mentioning their BZs so that someone responds more quickly.
cheers,
- steve
[...snip...]
--
random non tech spiel: http://lonetwin.blogspot.com/
tech randomness: http://lonehacks.blogspot.com/
what i'm stumbling into: http://lonetwin.stumbleupon.com/
1:06 a.m.
On 12/13/2009 12:21 PM, steve wrote:
Hi,
This thread started with a discussion about FOSS.IN, which I had planned
on attending but unfortunately had to cancel those plans at the last
moment. Although, it now has brought out a few good points about
contribution, so I would like to submit my 2p worth.
As a packager, one of the biggest turn-offs for me used to be the
turn-around time for the reviews. I've submitted my first package for
review in F9 (or early F10), i think, but got my first one accepted
sometime in the late F10 cycle.
That's pretty fast considering the length of the review queue and yes
its one of the long standing problems. It would help if people volunteer
to do more reviews. Every package maintainer can do reviews except for
non sponsored first time review of a new package maintainer.
http://fedoraproject.org/PackageReviewStatus/
However, once i accepted the delays, it
became easier for me to just submit and wait for a review.
So, IMHO, besides generating the initial enthusiasm, it is also
important that we have a way of sustaining it. This can be done by
either setting real expectations on the delays involved for initial
contributions to get through or by decreasing in some manner these delays.
We could for instance ask new contributors to send out a mail here to
fedora-india list mentioning their BZs so that someone responds more
quickly.
I am not sure how to direct potential package maintainers to do that?
Rahul
4:20 a.m.
On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 7:51 AM, steve <steve(a)lonetwin.net> wrote:
As a packager, one of the biggest turn-offs for me used to be the
turn-around time for the reviews. I've submitted my first package for review
in F9 (or early F10), i think, but got my first one accepted sometime in the
late F10 cycle. However, once i accepted the delays, it became easier for me
to just submit and wait for a review.
Now this IMO is true and important to be taken care of. Because every
human being likes to see his / her contribution right there, accepted
and feel excited about it. Especially the first contributions.
I remember Sankarshan or Sayamindu asking for a app to be packaged and
in a couple of days the packaging was done and submitted for review.
*This* is fantastic response. Why not the same for "Reviews of First
time packagers". Why not somewhere in that Fedora-India wiki page put
up a note asking people to send out an email to this list requesting
package review? Or during those fedora activity days, the mentors can
sit and review packages of new contributors and right away upload it?
Or have a mentor for a new contributor (I am sure this this is in
place already) and that mentor accountable for quick reviewing of the
very first packages or contributions ?
There has to be some priority queuing for reviewing packages that are
being uploaded by new contributors?
My 2 paisa. Hope we get a rupee by the end :)
Regards,
Aanjhan
4:26 a.m.
On 12/13/2009 03:50 PM, Aanjhan R wrote:
. Why not the same for "Reviews of First
time packagers". Why not somewhere in that Fedora-India wiki
page put
up a note asking people to send out an email to this list requesting
package review?
The join page for new maintainers is at
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join_the_package_collection_maintainers
It is not regional specific obviously. I can add a note in the India
wiki page but I don't think interested folks will necessarily see it.
Rahul
5:37 a.m.
2009/12/13 Aanjhan R wrote:
On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 7:51 AM, steve <steve(a)lonetwin.net>
wrote:
> As a packager, one of the biggest turn-offs for me used to be the
> turn-around time for the reviews. I've submitted my first package for review
> in F9 (or early F10), i think, but got my first one accepted sometime in the
> late F10 cycle. However, once i accepted the delays, it became easier for me
> to just submit and wait for a review.
Now this IMO is true and important to be taken care of. Because every
human being likes to see his / her contribution right there, accepted
and feel excited about it. Especially the first contributions.
[..]
As Rahul pointed this is a _general_ problem. And reasons are a) big
queue b) need of sponsor c) time taken by reporter to show how much of
guideline understanding s/he has.
I remember Sankarshan or Sayamindu asking for a app to be packaged
and
in a couple of days the packaging was done and submitted for review.
*This* is fantastic response. Why not the same for "Reviews of First
time packagers". Why not somewhere in that Fedora-India wiki page put
[..]
Because the process for new contributors is different then usual.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/HowToGetSponsored
Link wouldn't work because of outage.
up a note asking people to send out an email to this list requesting
package review? Or during those fedora activity days, the mentors can
sit and review packages of new contributors and right away upload it?
Or have a mentor for a new contributor (I am sure this this is in
place already) and that mentor accountable for quick reviewing of the
very first packages or contributions ?
There has to be some priority queuing for reviewing packages that are
being uploaded by new contributors?
[..]
If I remember last review sig meeting I attended this has been taken
care by *few* sponsors who are very active in reviewing new requests.
But that meeting was held ages ago. After that meet fisco dropped the
bar for getting sponsored, but waiting time is surely a problem. The
only way to expedite it is in hands of new submitter: do some more
work ... and make noise. Moreover reviewing is very critical work +
grunt work, getting more sponsors attracted towards this process could
be seen as other way of reducing the time gap for everyone. If you can
think of ways of doing it ?.. raise the issue in fedora devel .. and
move on the discussion. I would suggest go and participate in review
sig.
--
Rakesh Pandit
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Rakesh
freedom, friends, features, first
11:10 a.m.
Hi,
--- On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 10:02 PM, Aanjhan R <aanjhan(a)gmail.com> wrote:
| Fedora
| awareness campaigns having been conducted all over India and the
| number of *active* Fedora contributors we have.
\--
You should not compare apples and oranges. An awareness campaign is
not necessarily the same as a developer conference. Each has different
objectives, and different audiences.
There have been places/colleges with people who didn't even know
something like *nix existed! It is our foremost duty to show them our
world before they can get started!
---
| Turnover is bad in
| terms of numbers for sure otherwise this list would have been already
| hitting 1000's
\--
Patience is a virtue.
SK
--
Shakthi Kannan
http://www.shakthimaan.com
11:59 p.m.
On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 7:25 PM, Rahul Sundaram
<sundaram(a)fedoraproject.org> wrote:
I would like to get some feedback from Fedora contributors who
attended
the event on what went well and what we could improve for the next year.
Following the discussion in this thread (thanks to all those who
participated), I tabulated the discussion at
<https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Sankarshan/fossin09_feedback>;.
Please feel free to add/modify my interpretation of your feedback if
you feel that is required. Additionally, also try and identify action
points that we can put as ToComplete in the coming year.
--
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
<http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog>
Sent from Brisbane, Qld, Australia
5255
days inactive
5260
days old
18 comments
8 participants
participants (8)
-
Aanjhan R -
Kedar Sovani -
Rahul Sundaram -
Rakesh Pandit -
sankarshan -
Shakthi Kannan -
steve -
susmit shannigrahi