This document is intended for whoever is in charge of organizing an event. It’s meant to remove as many unknowns as possible so that there’s a working formula for organizing a successful event. Any feedback from event owners is encouraged in order to make the process easier.
We’d like to publish the event 2-2.5 weeks ahead of time. There is importance to have the list of projects already since we received feedback that people didn’t want to sign up because they didn’t know what projects they’d be working on. Together with a threat of entering a black list if not coming, it makes sense that we’ll have more attendees if the list of projects is published.
Since the events are monthly, this means that if we start working on gathering projects just after an event - that leaves us with 1.5-2 weeks to get projects. Simple maths ;)
After 2 events, the feel is that an average of ~8 people per project is good. In February we had 5 projects and 50+ people, and it felt like too many per project.
When contacting a project lead, the following points can help:
The event is a way for people to interact and meet with other developers, through contribution to OSS (open source software) and by leveraging the common ground we all share - the passion for coding.
Projects benefit this greatly as we’ve seen from feedback from people at MobX, Mozilla, p5js.
It is meant for both experienced developers as well as beginners.
It is meant for both people who already contribute to open source, and for people for whom this is the first contribution.
For every project there is a project lead who will mentor and guide developers. This means, among others:
There’s a document intended for project leaders, once they have been chosen to take part in an event: https://jsisrael.github.io/goodness-squad/project-leaders-brief
Learning more: you can direct them to this blog post: https://hackernoon.com/goodness-squad-a8704d594a7a
Question: The project isn’t ready for open source contribution.
Answer: If it’s a matter of missing build scripts, issues, or documentation - then the project can ask people to join in actually making the project more accessible. If not, there’s an event every month so you can prepare the project for the next month. (This was what happened with several events in February)
If project setup is hard though, try to do what’s necessary to help, like running a central server instead of the full stack setup by each developer (e.g. if you want frontend contribution. That’s what Arik from Redash did.)
Question: What can people do in only 3 hours?
Answer: A lot. We’ve seen this in past events, but it also depends on the quality of issues and the ease of installation etc. If there are easy issues up for grabs, experience tells us that people are able to do big things. Also this might be ongoing and the project can participate in the next month as well. Not to mention people might actually continue to work from home.
The main focus is to get people passionate about your project, and then you’ll get good things.
The event is published in Meetup and Facebook by Alon about 2-2.5 weeks ahead of time. The meetup page isn’t used for registration. There’s a google form for that. Once the event is published, Alon sends out an email to project leaders with information and a link to the briefing doc. Alon let’s everyone know they are confirmed as soon as they register.
Once the list is full we should communicate that to the community
In the events folder you should create a markdown doc for the event. The doc should contain the hashtag #goodnessSquad, the list of projects with information about the project lead, the gitter channel, and instructions for setting up a local development environment. Participants should be encouraged to set up their env prior to the event for the project(s) they think they will participate in.