[Noisebridge-discuss] Requesting people who want to get involved in open source

[Asheesh Laroia]

Hello dear Noisebridge Discussers,

I'm working on fine-tuning a curriculum about getting people involved in 
open source. If you're someone who knows (even a little) how to program, 
and wants to be involved in open source communities, I want to help you 
join a real community, through hands-on learning and mentorship!

== Who I'm looking for ==

I'm looking for people of any range of programming experience, starting at "I 
can cobble together PHP scripts" up to "I micro-optimize assembly code 
professionally." Really, newcomers to programming are welcome. For this round, 
you do have to have *some* computer programming experience.

You also should be excited about the idea of contributing more substantially to 
an open source project!

(That does mean if you're already a core contributor to some big collaborative 
open source project, you're not qualified to be a student for this round.)

== What I'm looking for from you ==

I need about six hours of your time. For about two of those hours, we'll do 
lecture and exercises to get you up-to-speed on tools and details of open 
source software development. Then, for about four hours, you'll identify and 
work on a task that will make you a contributor to an open source project! I'll 
be there to help you as you have questions.

You and I will meet up in a neutral, welcoming space such as Noisebridge or an 
Internet cafe, either for one weekend day, or two weekday evenings.

Afterward, you'll tell me how things went, and I'll use that feedback to 
improve our teaching plan.

== What kinds of projects I could help you work on ==

I'm aiming to help people get involved in sizeable, collaborative projects, 
like LibreOffice, WordPress, Firefox, the Audacity audio editor, the GIMP image 
editor, and others.

If you happen to already have an idea for a project you want to work on, that'd 
be great!

If not, it's quite okay -- part of what I want to test is the process by which 
I help people select which projects they will work on.

== Why I'm doing this ==

Starting in about three weeks, I'll be visiting a few different colleges 
to run "Open Source Comes to Campus" events. I want to make it as good as 
possible, which means practicing the current curriculum and revising it. 
To make it as good as it can be, I have to watch people learn. People like 
you.

== How to sign up ==

Compose a new email (preferably don't hit "reply") to me personally 
<asheesh at asheesh.org> with the following information:

* Your name

* One sentence about how you learned about this teaching opportunity

* One sentence about your involvement in open source (e.g., "never heard of 
it", "run Ubuntu", "wrote most of the Linux kernel")

* One sentence of something you're excited about learning

For now, this offer is only good in the San Francisco Bay Area.

-- Asheesh.