HELP WANTED! (RE: [MENTORING?] Guiding volunteers)

["Dennis E. Hamilton" <de...@acm.org>]

There has been some useful mechanical assistance toward guiding volunteers to projects.

There is an experimental, alpha-level proof-of-concept "help-wanted" operation.  It seems very encouraging and if AOO participates with it, that could be very useful (and worthy of blog and social-media posts at the time).

Here is my summary:

 1. Interested volunteers looking for projects to contribute to will be directed to 
<https://helpwanted.apache.org/>.  (IMPORTANT: This is a sample, not "real" data.)
   Try clicking "Community Outreach", then check English and click "Find me something to do!".
You will see a typical list of projects, title of projects, and other information.
   Clicking on an entry expands the information and offers another button: "I am interested in this."  This will provide more information and direct you to the project in some manner.

 2. ASF Committers can add tasks to the system by clicking [Edit tasks] on the top Help Wanted page.  This brings up a form that can be used to identify the project, the type of task, a title for the task, any language (programming or human) required, level of difficulty, a URL for more information, an indicator if this is expected to be collaborative (as opposed to solo) work, and a description to include in the help-wanted entry.

 3. Apache Projects can promote this arrangement in two ways.  
   a. There is a widget,
< https://helpwanted.apache.org/wtest.html> that can be customized to list, on a web page, just the current help wanted items for a specified project (e.g., openoffice).  When this system is live, this can be put on the "I want to contribute" page or other places on web sites, wikis, and forums where the widget is usable.  (Don't believe the current sample of the HTML needed.)
   b. The widget does link back to the full list for someone who decides to see what else there is.  There can also be a link to the main help-wanted page as part of inviting contribution for those who might want to know more about Apache projects and generally what is available.
   c. If we put FAQ messages up on our mailing lists from time to time, as the project has done in the past, they could point to the global help-wanted and the page with the AOO help-wanted material, as well as provide guidance about a given list and the related services/activities (e.g., the QA list and QA use of the bugzilla).

This is all the work of Daniel Gruno (humbedooh) and the discussion is on dev@ community.apache.org.  Comments are welcome there.  Patricia Shanahan has already done so.

After looking around in this, I can imagine a ton of small to medium tasks that could be advertised and coordinated in this way.  

 - Dennis



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dennis E. Hamilton [mailto:dennis.hamilton@acm.org]
> Sent: Saturday, February 6, 2016 10:21
> To: 'dev@openoffice.apache.org' <de...@openoffice.apache.org>
> Subject: [MENTORING?] Guiding volunteers
> 
> It is now time that folks start looking at right-sized projects that
> could be mentored and made available to students participating in Google
> Summer of Code (GSoC).
> 
> There is also a discussion, as part of community development, on
> mentoring generally and finding ways to make opportunities for
> volunteers widely-known, since many inquisitive beginners do not know
> about individual projects and how to find out what project opportunities
> for mentoring newcomers in various projects might be.  That may also
> give rise to generic support for what it means to be working on an
> Apache project and what to expect.
> 
> It would be useful to find a way to guide eager volunteers to an
> available AOO mentoring, GSoC-related or not.
> 
> For that, we need a way to mark tasks in the bugzilla for which there is
> mentoring available for interested volunteers.  (We also need the
> capacity to do this.)
> 
> Then there might need a way to cross-couple with what may be a community
> entry-point where volunteers who don't have a project in mind can find
> opportunities in Apache projects, including AOO if we choose to visibly
> offer something.
> 
>  ??? Thoughts ???
> 
>  - Dennis
> 
> PS: Although GSoC is all about coding projects, there is no reason to
> limit ourselves generally.  There are many other volunteer-ready areas
> of AOO, including documentation, QA, internationalization, and various
> user-focused activities (e.g., mailing lists, forums, etc.).
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Ross Gardler [mailto:Ross.Gardler@microsoft.com]
> > Sent: Thursday, February 4, 2016 23:23
> > To: dev@community.apache.org
> > Subject: RE: Guiding volunteers
> >
> [ ... ]
> > 2) Pick your favourite project. Drop a mail to the dev list. Explain
> > your motivation. Ask them to mark issues according to the guidelines
> in
> > http://community.apache.org/guide-to-being-a-mentor.html
> >
> > 3) Get the message out to those who need a little guidance that they
> can
> > find such issues in JIRA (there are many ways this can be done, all of
> > them are good ;-)
> >
> >
> >
> > Ross
> [ ... ]


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