Community is a large part of open source. After all, Open Source projects can't thrive without a strong network of people (community) who contribute towards it, either through code contributions, design, documentation, financial contributions, advocacy, or adoption.

This article covers why community is important in Open Source, what a community manager role involves, and how to get started. I’ve also included additional resources, and some real life experiences from the Open Source Community to help you get started.

Table of Contents

1. Why Community?
2. Why are Open Source Community Managers Important?
3. Skills to have as an Open Source Community Manager
4. Roles of an Open Source Community Manager
5. How to Get Started as an Open Source Community Manager
6. How to Find Open Source Projects to Contribute To
7. Additional Resources

Before we head into the nitty-gritty of what an Open Source Community manager does, let’s take a look at the essence of community in open source.

Why Community?

The heart of a community is that it's a place where people gather, exchange thoughts, and collectively create something greater than the sum of its parts.

In the open source realm, this concept takes a digital form. Communities form around shared interests and the desire to build, refine, and improve software collaboratively. It's not just about the code – it's about the people behind it. A vibrant community enhances creativity, accelerates learning, and fosters an environment where innovation thrives.

Open source is a community project. It never happens in isolation, and it grows because of the communities that form around it. Whether you interact with open source as a user, contributor, or both, you're part of a community, and the community is better for it.

There are a variety of reasons why people join open source communities. A large number of people join because they are required to work on the software as part of their job. Maybe their organizations recruited them to develop it or maybe the project is essential to their jobs.

Some participate in communities in order to have a direct influence on the software development process that produces the essential functions for them and their businesses. Some join because communities provide them with chances to collaborate with and learn from others, which helps them hone their abilities.

Some people sign up because it enables them to work with others to solve a problem they're having. Some sign up because they think it's important to add to a shared resource that benefits everyone. And others sign up in order to socialize, or for a sense of identity and belonging.

So it's important to nurture the community, support its members, and find a way to reach a sustainable outcome.

Why Are Open Source Community Managers Important?

As community projects grow and become more complex with multiple product owners and contributors, they need to have a community manager.

Open source community managers act as the conductors, bringing together developers, users, and contributors to create a masterpiece. They are the bridge between the project and its community, ensuring that everyone's voice is heard, questions are answered, and collaboration flows seamlessly.

Skills to Have as an Open Source Community Manager

So, what makes a good community manager in the open source world? Here are some key qualities, encompassing both soft and hard skills:

• Communication Skills: A community manager must be an excellent communicator. Whether it's responding to GitHub issues, moderating discussions, or providing updates, clear and concise communication is key.
• Empathy: Understanding the needs and concerns of community members is crucial. OSCMs should have a high level genuine interest and concern for teaching others, engaging a range of stakeholders and balancing tensions as they arise.
• Adaptability and Inclusivity: Open source is dynamic, with contributors from diverse backgrounds. An effective community manager adapts to different communication styles and cultural nuances.
• Technical Understanding: While not mandatory, having a basic understanding of the technical aspects of the project can be immensely helpful. It facilitates better communication with developers and enhances problem-solving.
• Organizational Skills: Juggling multiple tasks, from handling forums to managing events, requires organizational finesse. Keeping things structured ensures that no message gets lost in the noise.
• A good command of English is a requirement for most jobs.

Recommended tools to learn as a community manager

Knowledge of all or some of these tools are 'nice-to-have'. You can check out job descriptions of OSCMs in job openings, and try to develop some or all of the skills that appear frequently.

Here are a few of the core skills you should learn:

• Git, GitHub, GitLab, and other version control systems for collaborative work.
• How to use Discord, slack, Discourse, and other communication tools.
• Markdown for documentation

Roles of an Open Source Community Manager

OSCMs work at the intersection of Developer Relations, Evangelism, Marketing, Engagement, and Advocacy. In fact, the majority of these responsibilities overlap so greatly that they are practically indistinguishable from one another.

Often times, the role of an open source community manager may be tricky to define, as there are many different aspects to it. Let's take a look at some of the responsibilities of OSCMs:

• Community Engagement—an open source community manager facilitates engagement by moderating, engaging, and supporting users in forums including Discourse, GitHub, and Reddit, Discord, Slack and Github discussions.
• Community recognition—when everyone feels like they have a home where they're appreciated, they’ll be encouraged to stay engaged. Impactful and meaningful recognitions such as celebrating community successes, sending swag, and recognizing top contributors is a great way to encourage a sense of belonging among contributors and build trust.
• Creating and managing new community and outreach programs—this could involve organizing meetups, events, hackathons, advocacy, and content (articles or newsletters, for example)
• Coordinating with other departments—such as product, engineering, and content marketing—to support community initiatives.
• Partner Management—keeping up to date with the various stakeholders and partners involved in the project
• Creating a good open source project—making the project discoverable, making the project easy to use, communicating feedback to project to maintainers, keeping documentation up to date and readable, spotting areas where the project could use more help.

How to Get Started as an Open Source Community Manager

Credit: John Cameron

Because of how vast and evolving the roles of OSCMs are, I sat down with three Open Source Community Managers to learn about how they started, and what their roles entailed. Each of these experiences differed in how the role was defined, the hiring process, and in their goals.

I spoke with Fiberesima Ibi, an Open Source Community Manager at Gnome Africa, whose journey started with an email and a desire to find the right open-source community where she could apply her skills.

“After exploring a few communities, I felt lost. Then, I stumbled upon GNOME Africa through Regina's tweet, and it clicked instantly.

What drew me in was GNOME's commitment to crafting an intuitive, accessible desktop environment. The African community was set up towards exposing Africans to contribute to GNOME projects and other open-source technologies.”

Fibi reached out to Gnome via mail, expressing her interest, which opened doors to becoming an Open Source Community Manager for GNOME Africa.

Speaking of her current role since joining the community, she has this to say:

“Reviving the community was a challenge I embraced. I've been focused on crafting strategies to boost engagement and contributions, and creating a welcoming space for everyone.

We recently started an X-series on “Recognizing your value as a contributor in the open source ecosystem” with the aim to empower contributors to leverage their open source journey to advance their career and personal growth.”

It's been an incredible journey of learning, empowering contributors, and advocating for GNOME's growth for Fibi. The main lesson she learned?

“Taking that first step, reaching out, and not underestimating the power of asking.”

Justin Dorfman (Open Source Community Manager at Sourcegraph) also shared his story:

“Starting in high school, I wanted to be a software engineer. The only problem was I wasn’t good at it. I would screw things up and sometimes create more work for senior engineers.

One of my mentors saw that I was very passionate and knowledgeable about open source and convinced me there were other ways to contribute.

At first, I was skeptical, but as the months and then years passed, I found I was making more impactful contributions to open source than I ever could have imagined. A non-code contributor as some say.”

“In my current role, I work with our community to get questions answered, I work with our engineering team to get content created, I recruit talented community members to join our company, and I make sure the open source dependencies we rely on are funded. From time to time, I update our docs or about the page, but the bulk of my time is spent out of an IDE.”

For Uriel Ofir, Community Manager at Ma'akaf, he recognized the challenges faced by Israeli programmers to connect with open source projects, and he built a community to address that.

As a community manager at Ma'akaf, my role is centered around creating an inclusive environment where Israeli programmers can seamlessly connect with open-source projects.

From overseeing our dynamic Discord server to facilitating knowledge-sharing through WhatsApp groups, every aspect of my work aims to foster collaboration within our community.

We provide valuable opportunities for members to network and learn by organizing physical and online meetups. Ultimately, my journey involves empowering individuals to engage, learn, and contribute effectively to the world of open source.

Many OSCMs perform their roles as volunteers, but sometimes communities hire for community managers. If you’re contributing on a voluntary basis, you’ll have a delicate balance to strike with regards to the community’s needs and your own commitments.

Open Source Community Manager Roadmap

Regardless of how you joined, it might still be intimidating to start as a new community manager, so it's better to approach the position similarly to any other development project. You'll need to identify your goals, define your idea of success, and then plan every step of your journey.

Here’s a simple getting started guide for new OSCMs:

• Choose an open source community that aligns with your goals.
• Join in—attend their events, join relevant groups, and connect with peers
• Contribute—read their documentation, check out the product features, make a contribution
• Volunteer—let the maintainers see your work, and approach to community management.

There are other ways to get started. In my case, I started my journey to Open Source Community Management through the Github Social Impact Digital Public Goods Open Source Community Manager, where I currently volunteer with Open Terms Archive as an Open Source Community Manager.

My role as a community manager involves various responsibilities. I help ensure that everyone collaborates in an effective way with less friction, I onboard users and contributors, I help improve our documentation, and I review and collaborate on pull requests.

How to Find Open Source Projects to Contribute to

I recommend starting with products, tools, and communities you already use or are a part of when looking for open source projects you want to contribute to. Since you are already familiar with the technology, there won't be much need for you to learn about it.

• Utilize your social media connections: Search for announcements on Twitter and LinkedIn.
• Use search engines to search with keywords such as "open source community manager"
• Send a pitch to maintainers of open source communities you're part of.

Additional Resources

Ready to dive deeper? Here are some resources to fuel your open source community management journey:

1. Building leadership in Open Source Communities by Linux Foundation
2. [Becoming]: Open Source Community Manager by Mary Blessing
3. The significance of a community manager in your Open Source project by Mary Blessing
4. How to Use Git and GitHub – Introduction for Beginners by Segun Ajibola
5. Community Management Resources by Amarachi Johnson-Ubah

Thank you for taking the time to read. I hope this article has been helpful, and if you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to me via Twitter.

This year I had the honor of speaking at VueConf US 2022 and I thought I would share my experience.

Part of this article will cover my personal process, part will look at VueConf specifically, and the rest will be about the conference at large. I hope you enjoy it.

How to Get into VueConf

Call For Papers

Let's start at the beginning, as that's a good place to start. As soon as VueConf announced the Call for Papers (CFPs), I submitted my talks. I had submitted a few, and the one they selected was called, "Maintainable & Resilient Projects Through Internal UI Libraries".

I submitted other talks that I thought had a better chance, but they selected this one, which turned out really well.

The submission process the conference uses is a Google Form. There's nothing wrong with that, but I've noticed that some other conferences use Sessionize or PaperCall which I prefer because you can have an account with your details that pre-fills the forms. With the Google Form, I had to re-type a lot of the same data each time (my life is so hard).

It's not a huge deal, but I mention it in case you're a conference organizer. Those dedicated platforms are pretty sweet. :)

After several weeks, maybe a month, I got the email that I'd been selected. Yay! That gave me plenty of time to prepare.

If you're thinking about speaking at a conference, here's my advice:

• Submit several talks. You're not limited to just one.
• Find out who the organizers are and connect with them. They don't only pick their friends, but it doesn't hurt if they recognize you.
• Try giving your talks ahead of time at meetups. It'll get nerves out, works out kinks, and gets you some good feedback.
• Make your talk stand out. Probably the most important thing is that you need to take time to create a title, pitch, and description that will get the attention of the organizers AND the audience. Communicate the value succinctly.
• Do it! It's a great way to connect with people and potential future employers.

Also, shout out to Wes Bos and Scott Tolinski for giving some good tips on a recent Syntax.fm episode.

After being selected, there was the matter of convincing my boss that our company should sponsor my trip.

How to Convince Your Boss

Some conferences will actually cover flights, accommodations, and even pay speakers. I think it's far more common to cover all the expenses yourself, minus the entry. This means either paying for everything out of pocket, or having your company sponsor your trip (heck yeah!).

Convincing your company to send you to a conference can be tricky because it has to be worth it for them. That's not always easy to prove. If you're presenting, it's better because that could provide an opportunity to promote the company or engage with your community.

Of course, this is going to vary greatly based on your company, their budget, the nature of your role, your team, and your workload.

As a developer advocate, it's a lot more typical for me to go to conferences now, but there's a greater expectation for me to speak, run a booth, host some sort of gathering, and create content (ahem).

Some companies are really good about conference policies, others not so much. One cool thing VueConf does that's really cool is provide folks with a "convince your boss" template that you can copy and fill out with your own details.

I didn't use the template, but they do cover some things that I recommend. In particular, doing the research ahead of time for how much it's going to cost (tickets, flight, accommodation, meals, other travel, and so on) is a good idea.

Something else that helps is arranging to create content or a presentation that you can bring back to your organization. That can help spread your knowledge around and get more value for your employer.

How to Write the Dang Thing

Once you know for sure that you're going, you have to also prepare your talk. If you've never written a presentation before, they're a LOT of work.

I don't even want to tell you how much time went into this presentation in case my boss reads this post (only kind of joking). That's another unspoken cost of sending someone.

You have to come up with a main concept, write an outline, write the script, find funny GIFs, come up with a new but more relevant title and hope no one notices, start wondering why they even picked you because it's not that good of subject after all, consider calling out sick, IMPOSTER SYNDROME, decide you don't care what people think and do it anyway because even if you fail you can always be a goat farmer, practice the talk, realize it's way too long, cut out half of the work you've already done, practice again, halve it again...and this all has to happen the night before your talk because you procrastinated.

And even if you don't you'll still be fiddling with your slides up until 5 minutes before you have to give your talk.

It's exhausting (but worth it).

How to Write a Conference Talk

If your curious about my process for writing a talk, I've been working on it for a while now, and have come up with this little system:

1. Start the content as a blog post.
2. Create a high level outline.
3. Shift concepts around into an order that works.
4. Fill in the gaps for a rough draft.
5. Copy the content into a markdown file.
6. Use Slidev (awesome project by Anthony Fu).
7. Come up with a story arch to make the content a little more interesting.
8. Fill in text.
9. Fill in helper graphics (code, charts, img, gifs)
10. Create speaker notes.
11. Practice reading through.
12. Practice reading through with timer.
13. Practice speaking through.
14. Practice speaking through with timer (camera optional).
15. Practice speaking it to Nugget.

I like this approach because in the end, I have a nice presentation as well as a rough draft for a blog post I can continue with later on. And Slidev is great because I can keep one main theme and reuse it for most of my presentations.

What VueConf is Like

The Check-in Process

I arrived on the first day to help Jessica Sachs give her workshop, "Stress-free Testing for Vue 3" (she's great and you should take her workshop some time).

The check in process was smooth, and one unique thing they had was a nice color-coded sticker system to communicate peoples preferred greeting: wave, hand-shake/fist-bump, hug. So you could stick it to your name tag to let other folks know your preference.

There wasn't much discussion around COVID protocols, but it's worth mentioning in case any of you are concerned about it. There was around 10 of us wearing masks, which I think goes for most events. It's mostly up to individuals, so if you're still uncomfortable in large groups, it's probably good to stick to the virtual events. I did hear of someone testing positive.

The People of VueConf

Ok, on to some more fun stuff – the people. This is one of my favorite parts of events, you get to meet so many great folks. And Vue folks are among the best!

I was happy to see greater diversity among the attendees than in the past. Like most tech events, it was still mostly men from the same few majority groups, but the gap didn't feel as stark as past events.

It felt like a larger distribution of people across the different race, gender, age, and experience spectrums. It was also represented in the speakers. It's working, people – more colors for our kick-ass rainbow!

How to meet people at a conference:

• Don't hang out with the same people. It's easy to fall into chatting with the same people you know, but it's fun to meet new people and you never know what you'll learn.
• People want to meet you. Some people have a harder time initiating a conversation, but are still eager to participate. Keep an eye out for folks and invite them in.
• Follow the Pac-Man rule. If you find yourself in a circle of people chatting, always leave a gap for someone to step into. So your circle should look more like a Pac-Man.
• Unless you need to recharge, during meals, sit at tables with people you don't know and strike up a conversation. It's great to see the variety of folks around you.

Vendors at Conferences

I don't spend a lot of time at the vendor booths, but they are super important for supporting events, and it's a good place to see who's taking care of your community. For that reason, I always like to swing by and talk to each vendor at least a little bit.

One thing I would really love to see from vendors is less wasteful swag. There's always so much stuff they give away for free that I'm sure just ends up in waste bins.

Some swag is super effective and a great way to get a brand name out there, but less garbage would also be awesome :)

VueConf Content

I thought the talks were well-selected, but they definitely leaned very heavily towards testing. I didn't mind that because each testing talk brought it's own perspective, and it's an important subject.

Not every talk was specific to Vue, which I always appreciate. It's cool to see a broad range of talks, both in the topics represented and in their target experience level. There was also a good range of talks from broad concepts to very specific, personal experiences.

This year I got to experience a workshop as well (as an assistant). I really liked the experience because workshops give you much more time on a single topic to really dive deep and get your hands dirty. And there's way more opportunity for one-on-one time between attendees and instructors.

HOT TIP: if you know someone putting on a workshop, ask them if they need any help. It got me into a workshop for free, got my friend some extra help, and it got the attendees more individual attention. Triple-win!

VueConf follows a single-track system which means every single talk happens in order, in the same room. This is different than other conferences that do the multi-track approach where there are multiple tracks running simultaneously, with a more dedicated focus.

They each have their pros and cons:

• Single-track: You know where to go for each talk. You never have to choose between two talks. There's plenty of opportunity to follow the "hallway track" and just chat with folks. You inherently get a little bit of everything.
• Multi-track: There's usually way more content to choose from. There's more content for each specific topic. It's less likely to have time slots with nothing that interests you.

I don't know if I have a preference, but it's something I thought about.

As mentioned above, one of the presentations was done by yours truly. It was a lot of fun. And despite the overwhelming feeling of impostor syndrome, I felt like I did pretty well.

There were a few points that I could have improved upon or just missed, but I don't think it showed on stage. Some folks even told me it was their favorite talk.

That was really nice...( ˘ ³˘)♥︎♥︎♥(°◡°♡)

It's published on Vue Mastery now. You can find it here: https://www.vuemastery.com/conferences/vueconf-us-2022/maintainable-and-resilient-projects-through-internal-ui-libraries/

Would love to hear what you think.

One last little tip/trick I might start doing is to ask organizers if I can give my talk on the first day. I'd rather get it out of the way so I can actually sleep at night and really enjoy the rest of the conference.

In-Person Conference Extracurriculars

In case you've never been to an in-person conference, you should know that post-conference events (parties) are going on probably every night. And it's great! Most of the time it's around grabbing drinks at a bar, but some conferences focus more on networking events.

At VueConf this year, I went to a few events.

• The first night, after the workshops, there wasn't much because it was technically still before the conference. It was a great chance to catch up with Bart Ledoux.
• The second night there was no official event because the organizers were hosting the speaker dinner. This consisted of drinks at the hotel pool beforehand, some swimming, and then walking over to a Thai restaurant with amazing Massaman curry. I also got Alex Kyriakidis his first Thai tea.
• The last night of the conference was spent once again at the hotel pool for swim and drinks, then there was a hosted happy hour with some food and drinks. After everything, we found a karaoke bar for some songs and drinks (there was some drama finding a place, but in true VueConf fashion, we found it).

In case it wasn't obvious, a lot of the external events revolve around drinks and/or bars. Which is fine for me because I don't mind a few drinks and can keep myself under control. However, I wish there were more events that focused less around alcohol. It would be more inclusive for folks that prefer not to drink.

Anyway, regardless of the venue/activity, I think it's worth going to as many extra events as you can. They're usually a lot of fun, and are a great way to connect with folks, both professionally and to make new friends. There's so much value there.

Two tips, though:

1. Don't forget to bring your badge to after parties (learned that one the hard way).
2. Try not to get trashed. Some folks did, and it's a bad look for you and possibly your employer (learned that the easy way).

In Closing

Conferences are great, and VueConf was no exception. If you haven't been to a conference, you should go. If you've been to a conference, you should go again. I find they are a good way to recharge my battery.

From this lineup, my favorite talk was probably "How we migrated our HUGE app to Vue 3" by Alex Van Liew. It was very informative from hands-on experience, but it also wasn't so subjective that it wasn't useful. Alex did a great job putting it together and delivering it (and I think he said it was his first talk ever).

One last minute tip for the whole event. Be active on Twitter before, during, and after. Put the conference name in your Twitter name. Use whatever hashtag is associated. It makes it way easier to find other folks.

And if you're not already on Twitter, you should get on it because everyone uses Twitter (right Adam?).

Thank you so much for reading. If you liked this article, please share it. It's one of the best ways to support me. You can also sign up for my newsletter or follow me on Twitter if you want to know when new articles are published.

With the help of GitHub, you can create, manage, and collaborate on projects with multiple other team members. You keep the project folders and files in a store (file system) on GitHub. This store is called a repository.

A repository may contain multiple folders and files

A repository may contain multiple folders and files. Your GitHub account may have multiple repositories. You can create a repository and set it to public (visible to everyone with the repository URL) or private (visible only to you and the few you want to have access).

And if you have public repositories, you'll want to read on.

In this article, you will learn about 10 essential tips to make your public GitHub repositories more visible to people in the developer community. This will help you:

• Get more engagement with your repos
• Find more code contributors
• Gain acknowledgment for your work (like stars and sponsors)
• Build up followers on GitHub

But before we start, do note:

Git != GitHub

These two tools are not the same. Git is a version control system that you use to manage and track your files and folders by maintaining a history of changes. GitHub is a powerful tool to help you do all that with ease.

Alright, let's dive into these 10 tips.

If you like to learn from video content as well, this article is also available as a video tutorial here: 🙂

1. Set Repository Metadata

Create the repository with a clear description and intent. The description tells a user about the work being done in the repository. It is where you create the first impression that helps anyone take an interest in your work.

Always opt for adding a README MD file. The readme file is the face of your repository. You need to add all the relevant details to this file (and we will see how to do that in a while).

Next, select a LICENSE type. If you are unsure what license type to select, this link may help you with it.

After creating the repository, add your website/portfolio link (if any) and relevant keywords. These keywords can help people find your repository based on a search.

2. Design and Document the Readme.md File

After the source code, the readme file is the most crucial artifact in your repository. If source code is the heart of a repository, the readme file is the face of it. You use the markdown format to document information in this file.

At a minimum, you should include this information in the readme file:

• Project name, logo (if any).
• An introduction to the project (if possible with an image)
• How to run the project locally. Provide all the steps after you've tested it out.
• Demo link (if any)
• What kind of features does the project support? Provide a list of them.
• If possible, list down the upcoming features at a high level.
• Describe the technologies used in the project.
• Provide deployment information. Here you have an opportunity to add deploy buttons to deploy your project on services like Vercel, Netlify, and more.
• Provide stats about the repository. You can use shields to create intuitive buttons to show the stars, forks, licenses, and many other details.
• Provide clear information on how to contribute to your project.
• Thank all the Stargazers (people who have starred your repo).
• Feel free to use emojis in your readme file, but don't overdo it.

Are you looking for an example? Here is an example readme where most of the points are captured:

3. Build Your Community Profile

A community profile helps the open-source repository maintainers review your work and learn how to help it grow. Doing it right will capture people's interest, contributions, and help build trust.

To get started, go to the Insights tab and select the Community menu item from the left navigation pane. Now you should see the Community profile.

If you do not see the green tick for all the options, it means it is incomplete. Let's COMPLETE it.

4. Establish a Code of Conduct

A CODE of CONDUCT(CoC) document helps define the standards for engaging with a project or community. As the community grows, you have people joining from different geographies, cultures, and mindsets. As the owner of the repository, it is your responsibility to set some guidance for how contributors should behave.

GitHub provides a couple of options to select from. You can also choose to write your own or take inspiration from a few existing ones. Here are a few examples,

• Twitter CoC
• Angular CoC
• Rust CoC

Do NOT forget to mention the email id of the person/org responsible for listening and taking care of any concerns.

5. Create a Contributing Guide

Next is the CONTRIBUTING guide. You may want to set some expectations for contributors to the repository. Here you can explain how to create an issue or pull request, under what circumstances a pull request (PR) may get rejected or accepted, and so on.

Create a Contributing.md file from your Community profile. Unlike the Code of Conduct file, you will not find any suggestions for the content of the contributing file. But there are plenty of templates available online to get started, like this one.

Again, do not forget to provide the email id of the repository owner in the document under the Enforcement section.

The best part is that anyone who attempts to open issues or pull requests on your repository will be asked to read these guides first. That's cool, right?

6. Decide on the Issue Templates

It can be frustrating to see an issue raised with a one-liner. You may want the contributor to explain it more thoroughly to the community.

The best way to manage this is to direct your contributors with pointers while tackling bugs and creating enhancements on the repository.

To do that, you can use GitHub's template and create your own custom issue template.

These templates will be placed inside the .github repository by default. Once you create the templates, it appears while creating the issue on the repository.

Here is an example of a custom template.

7. Create a Pull Request (PR) Template

Like the issue templates, you should also guide your contributors by creating a Pull Request (PR) template.

To do that,

• Click on the Add file dropdown.
• Click on the Create new file option.
• Add the template file name as pull_request_template.md (I prefer keeping it under the .github folder)
• Add your PR template content.

That's it! Next time someone tries to create a PR, they will be given this template to fill.

Great, now check back your Community profile. Congratulations! It is COMPLETE.

8. Go Social – Add a Social Image

You can add a social image to your repository so that it looks better when you share on social media or embed it in your articles. It conveys an important message about your repo early on to consumers and future contributors.

To do that,

• Go to the Settings tab of the repository.
• Click on the Options menu and move to the Social preview section.
• Now upload an image of your choice. Just make sure to maintain the required dimensions of the image as mentioned on the page.

9. Activate GitHub Sponsors (if you want)

You can activate the Sponsors button for your repository if you'd like people to be able to support you financially. People may like your work and decide to sponsor you by contributing a certain amount.

To enable sponsorship,

• Go Settings
• Check the Sponsorships checkbox
• Follow the instructions to add funding links.

You can also add custom funding links like the image shows below:

10. Make the Repo a Template So It's Reusable

Did you know you can make your repository a template so that others can create their repositories based on yours?

• Go to Settings
• Check the Template repository checkbox

Now everyone will see the Use this template button in your repository when they're creating theirs.

A Model Repository for You

I hope you will use these tips to showcase your work.

I have created a template repository with all the points we have discussed so far. You can use this as a template to create a repository with an MIT license, README structure, Code of Conduct guide, Contributing Guide, Issue, and PR templates, and funding.yml file.

After creating your repository from the template, you can make further modifications to make it your own. Feel free to use/modify/contribute to it.

I shared these 10 points briefly as a Twitter thread a few days back. Please check it out for any additional comments/discussions if interested.

Before We End...

That's all for now. I hope you've found this article insightful and informative.

Let's connect. You can follow me on Twitter (@tapasadhikary), My Youtube channel, and GitHub (atapas).

Are you looking for some side-project ideas? Here are a few I've been working with that all are open source projects:

In it, I will show you why you should share your coding expertise by looking at five extraordinary benefits.

I have always enjoyed sharing content online and helping others. But today, as a software engineer, I can tell you that it helps me even more.

Recently, I started asking myself about the benefits of doing sharing knowledge. That's how I found five reasons that will motivate you to start today.

Let’s discover them!

You'll gain a deeper understanding of what you’re learning

One of the main benefits of sharing what you know is that you will deep dive into the subjects you want to share with everyone.

This means that you will repeat your learning process in order to best write your technical content. By doing so, you strengthen your knowledge of the subject, and you may even learn something new.

For example, when I'm creating new content, I like to read similar resources before I start writing. This helps me to understand the concept better and write something more accurate and useful.

Then when I publish my content, sometimes I receive feedback that gives me better ways of solving my issue.

This happens to me often when I'm sharing articles about JavaScript, and it's super useful in my own learning process.

You’ll help others

Always remember that you're not alone! Many developers encounter the same issue as you and will benefit from your specific way of explaining that issue.

In the beginning, you might feel like you're writing only for yourself. But one day people will start finding your content and they'll learn from and enjoy it.

I recommend using an open publishing platform like Hashnode, Dev.to, or Twitter if you want to get started. These have significant developer communities built around them. People there will support you and give you feedback on your content. It can be an excellent motivation to start!

And once you've done some writing, you can apply to publications like freeCodeCamp's and share your knowledge with the large community they've built as well.

One side note: even if there is plenty of content about a particular topic, please write your own article about it. There is considerable potential that your article will complete or complement what's already out there. Everyone explains things and brings value in their own way.

You’ll have fun and discover new opportunities

Creating content takes time, but it's a fun way to learn. You will improve your skills while building an audience of people with the same interests as you.

I've seen a lot of great stories from developers sharing content on Twitter. The good thing is that the Tech community is generally supportive, and everyone helps each other.

Also, building an audience, or at least sharing content online, can bring you new opportunities. For example, it can help you find and apply for a new job, create a side-project, and even more.

You’ll create a piece of knowledge for your future self

Sharing your knowledge is like writing documentation for your work. It helps others – but it also helps you! You can refer later to what you documented and shared if you can't remember how you solved a bug or issue.

As an example, I like to take notes whenever I repetitively search for something on Google. And I know that others are probably searching for the same thing.

So later, I often write an article about that search. It allows me to refer to my content when I need a reminder.

It’s very gratifying when you find your article on Google, and at the same time it helps you and others.

You should give it a try :)

You’ll be more motivated

Last but not least – creating content will help you stay motivated. Sharing your journey as a developer can help you feel like you're making progress in your learning.

I think this is the case because:

• you will have concrete pieces of content based on what you learned, tested, and built (it helps to keep track of your progress)
• you will help others and have their support
• you will have fun (enjoying the process = motivation)

Ready to start?

Hopefully, this article can motivate you to start sharing your knowledge. Start today by sharing your learning journey with the community.

I have primarily written up these benefits based on my experience. I'm pretty sure you can find even more. In any case, you'll have a lot of fun getting started.

If you're interested, follow me on Twitter 🐦! I'll help you to improve your skills as a web developer.

Alone, we can do so little; together, we can do so much. Helen Keller

It’s true – when you lend someone a helping hand, you feel a lot better about yourself, and you will likely learn something new.

Helping others feels so rewarding because you know that you have contributed something very important to humanity. And what better way to help your fellow developers than to join one of the many developer communities out there?

What are Developer Communities?

Over the past few years lots of developer communities have come together with different goals and missions. But you'll probably agree with me that they all have several things in common:

• They help you learn,
• They share ideas
• They offer support to newbies, and
• You can freely interact with them and within them.

There are many different types of developer communities out there – front-end focused, back-end focused, and specific language-based. We also have general communities which include all of the above under one platform.

What are the benefits of developer communities?

The benefits offered by these communities are 'on another level' as I would say. They have helped people start from scratch and eventually land jobs in big tech companies like Google and Microsoft. They have also developed mentors and have helped improve their code writing and reviewing skills.

In other words, being part of a developer community can really help you learn how to code.

How Do You Pick a Developer Community to Join?

I want to help those of you who are looking for a good community to join according to your interests and skills. So I've gathered a few of the top communities that focus on the front-end, back-end, blogging, and more to help you get started and meet your fellow developers.

I may have not included all the communities out there because we have a ton of them. So feel free to message me with any others that you feel are really helpful and important.

Web Development & Design Communities

The freeCodeCamp Forum

The good thing about this community is that you can not only ask questions and get programming tips, but you also get career advice and learn how to get started coding.

The forum is divided into different sub-forums, where you can participate according to your interests – HTML & CSS, Career Advice, Motivation, a general group where you meet other developers to have a chat, and so on.

The community does not require any membership fee. All you need to do is sign up using your email and you can be part of the community.

Web Developer Forum

The Web Developer Forum is a simple site focused on learning web development and programming. It's categorized into sections where web developers and designers learn and share how to design websites, build mobile applications, create WordPress themes, write HTML and JavaScript, and more.

It is easy to use, and it covers almost all questions you might have about the sections. It is a great place for developers starting out with web development.

To start a discussion all you need to do is sign up and you are good to go.

The SitePoint community

On SitePoint, you can find answers to questions about CSS, HTML, marketing, PHP, JavaScript, design and UX, databases, web hosting and more.

The good thing about this community is that it does not only talk about finding solutions, it also has books on web development, articles on these topics, and more (but some of these features are only available under the premium subscription).

The community has two plans, free and the premium. With the free plan you get limited resources in the community, but with the premium you get unlimited access to courses, books, featured tech talks, and more.

To be part of the community all you need is to sign up by either your email, GitHub, or Facebook.

Talk Grapics

Just as the name says, this is a community of graphic designers and 3D artists.

The forum is divided into different sub-forums to make it easy for new members to find their category of design, whether it's web or graphic.

Here you will find the latest and trending topics at the top of the list for modern web designers and graphic artists.

In order to be part of the community you will have to register with your email and it's absolutely free of charge.

CoffeeCup

CoffeeCup was started back in 1996 with a simple HTML editor inside a coffee shop.

This community helps designers create better sites. Their main goal is to make life easier by providing customers with great yet affordable software.

Just like most communities, it's in the forum where you get to post different questions and find solutions to other questions.

To join an ongoing conversation or be part of the community all you need to do is to create an account by signing up with your email.

Bootstrap

Bootstrap is a popular HTML, CSS, and JS framework for UI components and interactions. The community focuses on and discusses the latest trends and tips ragarding development using Bootstrap.

This framework is good for building responsive sites with the help of popular front-end component libraries.

To join, use the slack channel or subscribe to their official blog.

IndieHackers

IndieHackers is an emerging online community of developers. It's a platform where the founders of successful startups share their stories and experience with others.

It's main aim is to help those who want to begin their tech startups and side projects by providing guidance and outlines on how to. You get advice from successful tech entrepreneurs.

It is an open forum where each member is able to share experience, explore ideas, and offer support to upcoming developers.

It is an invite-only platform for now, meaning to join you have to have a invite code for signup.

Daily UI

If you want to be a UI & UX Designer, this platform is for you. Daily UI is a series of UI challenges that, as the name suggests, are posted every day to help designers improve and perfect their skills.

You'll find design inspiration and when you complete projects you get rewards. All this is to help you become a better designer within a period of 100 days. The amazing support from the community will motivate you to keep learning.

It is absolutely free, all you need to get started is to sign up with your email.

Blogging Communities

Dev.to

If you are trying to start writing and publishing tech-related articles and do not have your own domain, this is where to get started. You'll also get to meet a community of passionate writers starting out.

It is an open source community of more than 600k developers who share, learn, and stay updated with latest technology trends. It has resources like podcasts, articles, videos, real-world examples, hackathons, and more.

To get started join by either signing up with email or GitHub account. You will get your own dashboard to post your article, like this https://dev.to/larymak

freeCodeCamp

freeCodeCamp is a non-profit platform where you can learn and practice coding for free – and they also have a blogging platform where developers contribute by sharing knowledge through writing articles.

The community also has a forum where you can meet other developers and share ideas, ask questions, solve problems and figure out errors, and enhance your knowledge.

The freeCodeCamp publication is not an open publishing platform. But if you are accepted as a writer, the editorial team will carefully review and edit your articles, and then publish and publicize them to a large audience.

If you want to apply to write for freeCodeCamp's publication, this article will show you how: Article

Hashnode

Hashnode is a global community of developers where you can share ongoing projects, ask questions, suggest ideas, and help others solve their problems.

It is a free platform that helps you stay connected with the latest tech trends.

You can publish blogs, get your own sub-domain like this one https://larymak.hashnode.dev/ or add your own, follow your favorite authors, and even back up your blog on your GitHub. You can also participate in hackathons and win prizes.

To join you will need to create an account with Facebook, LinkedIn, Google or GitHub and you get you subdomain for free.

Hackernoon

Hackernoon is a site where you can read, write, and publish articles. It's a community of 15k + writers and over 3 million readers. Top tech companies use this platform to share their expertise.

Code Newbie

Code Newbie started out as a weekly twitter chat providing helpful support to people learning to code.

Since then it has grown into a supportive community of developers where you can publish articles, too.

Blogging for Devs

This is a private community for developers, freelancers, and tech creators who want to grow their audience through writing online.

The only thing is that it's not free – you need to pay a fee to be a part of it.

General Tech Communities

Remember earlier I mentioned that there are some communities that have all these features under one roof? Well, in this section we will have a look at some of them.

Once you're a registered member, you'll just need to choose your category and you will be good to go.

Stack Overflow

For anyone who is into programming, Stack Overflow is a great resource. You can join the community to learn, share, and build your career.

It hosts developers from around the globe who come to seek answers to their coding challenges and ask questions about their errors.

And here is the amazing part: according to their analysis, a question is posted every 12 seconds, and it is always answered by developers who already know how to solve it.

Stack Exchange

Stack Exchange was launched in 2010 by the Stack Exchange network. It's made up of 173 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow which we just discussed.

Reddit

Reddit is a global community with a lot of sub-groups or sub-reddits, and there are endless conversations going on.

It has threads about nearly all trending topics, opportunities for meet ups, how to debug your code, and job listings, among many other things.

Now to help you get started on the right path, here are some of the common sub-reddits where you can subscribe and get notified on updates:

WebDev, ReactJS, Python, Javascript and more others.

GitHub

GitHub is a very popular site amongst developers. The Community Forum is the place where you as a developer can share ideas and follow up on discussions.

You can also easily share your code, as well as collaborate with others on their code. This feature makes it both a very useful and interesting programming and coding community.

Digital Ocean

Digital Ocean is a place where developers can find or lend support and contribute to the community. The community provides guides, tutorials, trends for developers, a Q/A section, and much more.

Code Project

Code Project is a community for computer programmers with articles on different topics and programming languages such as web development, software development, C++, Java, and other topics.

DevRant

devRant is a fun community for developers to share and bond over their successes and frustrations with code, tech, and life as a programmer. DevRant has an iOS and Android app for the community.

Discord

Just like Reddit, Discord is organized into groups called servers. These are organized into topic-based channels where you can collaborate, share, and just talk about your day without clogging up a group chat.

Tech Communities Specifically for Women

Over the past few years many organizations have been founded that advocate for women's empowerment in tech. They call for equal opportunities among all genders.

The main aim of these communities is to offer support and create a environment where women can feel comfortable to learn.

Women Who Code

Women Who Code is an international nonprofit organization that provides a global community for women in tech through events, coding resources, jobs, mentorship, and more.

They aim to inspire, support, and help women develop technical skills and excel in their careers.

Women in Technology

Women in Technology is a safe, confidential space for women who work in technology to chat and support each other. They welcome both those who already have significant programming knowledge as well as those just starting out so they can help each other grow as a community.

Girls who Code

Girls Who Code programs work to inspire, educate, and equip girls with the computing skills to pursue 21st century opportunities.

The organization helps hundreds of thousands of women get into the education sector of computer science. The goal is to provide computer science education to more than 1 million young women.

DjangoGirls

Django Girls is a non-profit organization and a community that empowers and helps women to organize free, one-day programming workshops by providing tools, resources, and support.

Rails Girls

The Rails Girls community is similar to that of Django Girls, and strives to provide self-hosted events that can help young and adult women to get into the game of coding, with the knowledge that there is support and advice available at all times. Otherwise, the journey can sometimes seem a little bleak.

Pyladies

The name says it all:

WE ARE… …a group of women developers worldwide who love the Python programming language. We write code by day or night. Some of us hack on Python projects on the side, while others work full-time on Python development. But it doesn’t matter. We all just like writing Python code, and that’s what brings us together.

PyLadies is a straightforward community of women Python developers. It aims to provide a friendly support network for women and a bridge to the larger Python world. Anyone with an interest in Python is encouraged to participate!

Language-Specific Communities

Python

This community is run by the Python organization, and its main aim is to help Python developers boost their skills.

Their aim is to be open about how transparency can be improved, provide the community with opportunities to interact with the organization, and be responsive to any suggestions community members ask.

If you want to specialize in Python and stay up with the language's latest features, this is the right community for you to join.

Java

The Java community is millions of members strong, and there are many ways to get involved.

You can join their different sub-forums and get to interact with other developers, or you can share technical articles related to Java (which, by the way, you can get paid for sharing).

C/C++

This community's mission is to make the C++ programming language accessible and useful to anyone who wishes to learn and apply the language.

The community gathers users of C++ from around the world into the same place so they can all learn from each other.

In order to be part of the community you need to have an invite code, which you can request upon signing up for the community.

C#

This is a community of C# and .NET developers, sharing tips on how to get started and how to use the language.

The community is also divided into sub-forums, where you are able to ask questions, follow up on conversations, and also share ideas and any issues you've encountered while working.

To join, you need to sign up either with a Google, Facebook, or Microsoft account, and it's absolutely free to get started.

PHP

This is an active and vibrant community of programmers that has grown up around an affinity for the PHP programming language. The community is all about friendship and helping each other become better at PHP.

Kotlin

You can be part of the Kotlin community by either joining their User movement groups, planning a kotlin event, or joining an existing one. You can also contribute to the language and ecosystem.

In the community you can learn the essentials and best practices of Kotlin in Android, the Google Cloud Platform, and multi-platform development.

Swift

In the Swift forums, which are public by the way, public conversations are encouraged, and active developers of the Swift language are encouraged to monitor the relevant forum categories.

Lua

The main aim of the Lua community is to get together and meet new developers and talk about the Lua language, its uses, and its implementation.

Another goal is to help spread the word about Lua to the tech industry and academia.

iOS Developers

This community has around 30k+ members. Their main aims are being open, helping each other, and sharing knowledge.

You can either join by email, Google, or Apple ID. When you join, you get to ask for an invite and in no time you will be a member.

Mobile Developers

This group was founded by developers, for developers. It is a valuable resource for people who want to make the most of their mobile devices, from customizing the look and feel to adding new functionality.

It is open for all kinds of mobile app developer from Android, iOS, games and so on. It is divided into sub-forums where you get to join according to your skills

Conclusion

“Volunteers don’t get paid, not because they’re worthless, but because they’re priceless.” – Sherry Anderson

These are the kind of people you'll find in all the above listed communities, ready to help you move up to the next level.

Through participating in developer communities, many devs have landed their dream jobs and created lasting friendships. These communities have changed lots of peoples' lives.

Are you a part of on ? If not, what are you waiting for?

True community requires commitment and openness.

Do share your valuable opinion, I appreciate your honest feedback!

Enjoy Coding ❤

"It's not about what you know, it's about whom you know."

"70-80% of jobs are found via someone's network."

Most of us have heard cliches and stats like the above. And I think most of us intuitively know that having a network of people that can help us find opportunities is a good thing.

Using the spray and pray approach and applying to as many jobs as possible doesn't work very well anymore.

But this can be one of those vague, nebulous concepts that we all know is a good thing to do and have – but actually going about it is difficult.

If you want to grow a successful career and keep your job opportunities open, you need to learn how to network.

There are two main obstacles when trying to successfully network as a developer.

1. It has a bad connotation and reputation
2. It's hard to do right

These two things are related, so let's tackle the first here then get into some practical ways to do it right.

Networking Has a Bad Connotation

We associate networking with irritating events and transparently fake attempts to make friends and get stuff.

Or at a slightly less horrible level, reaching out to a bunch of random people on Twitter, having awkward conversations, and trying to find something in common with them out of thin air. Maybe you'll get a response if you're lucky, and then it fizzles out from there.

But real, effective networking isn't about any of this.

You don't have to constantly pester people asking for stuff, attend awkward events, or initiate fake conversations.

Because of modern technological miracles, it's as simple as interacting with people on Twitter and sending some emails. And it doesn't have to be awkward.

Now, I say simple, but simple doesn't mean easy.

How in the world are you supposed to strike up a conversation with some random person you don't know, and then if you have a hard time with that, how can you possibly leverage that relationship into a job?

The thing to keep in mind is that networking is a long game. If you approach networking selfishly or with short-term goals in mind, it will not work.

If you approach networking as a way to make new friends, build real relationships, and add value where you can, it will create a snowball effect.

This doesn't mean it can't benefit you – it can and should. Networking should be mutually beneficial to each person involved. The reason networking has a bad connotation is because when networking is done right it doesn't feel like networking. It feels like making new friends and helping each other out where you can.

The ultimate goal is to create a strong enough network that you don't ever have to worry about finding work. You have built enough of a reputation with enough people that you can simply put a call out to your network and you'll have opportunities coming to you.

Long-term networking pays off because you have built enough social capital with enough people that you can ask for opportunities when you need them. And that social capital you've been investing will be returned.

This, however, takes a long time. So you need to approach this genuinely and patiently.

Now, there are ways to use short-term networking to stand out and get jobs, but it's a very specific strategy that needs to be handled directly and honestly because it has a stated, specific goal that you are trying to achieve. When done right this can be very powerful. We'll get into both long-term networking strategy and short-term networking strategy in this article.

You can do all your long-term networking these days indirectly by simply interacting with people on social media and maybe sending some emails.

Because of the power of the Internet, we can begin to build relationships with people with nothing but an email address and a few social media accounts.

I have my issues with social media, but it is a tremendously valuable tool when it comes to networking, specifically Twitter.

Every day I see people posting stories of how they started simply building relationships on Twitter and now they have freelance work, have received job offers, and generally are building very successful careers on the back of social media.

Now let's get into some practical ways to actually go about doing this.

How to Network Effectively

Let's dive into specifics for how to actually do this. We'll be using two main tools: Twitter and email.

Side note: LinkedIn is underrated as a platform for landing a job, but it can be very valuable. I wanted to focus on one social media tool here, but if you are interested in using LinkedIn to land your first job, I highly recommend this video series from Danny Thompson.

We'll focus on social media for our more generalized, long-term networking, and then dive into a specific tactic using email to make yourself stand out to potential employers.

You won't have to cold call people, attend events, or send awkward, desperate emails/DMs asking for stuff.

Just genuine connection and relationship-building with people you admire.

Long Term Networking with Twitter

The goal here is very simple: to increase your visibility. After you've constructed a good online presence, consisting of complete Twitter profiles, a complete and active GitHub profile, and a good portfolio site, you need to get people to actually see it.

This is the kind of networking we're going to be focusing on: utilizing social media platforms to increase your visibility.

Over time, people on Twitter will start to become familiar with you and your skillset and personality. Then, people will start approaching you for different opportunities as you naturally show your skills and personality.

How do you do this?

By liking and commenting on stuff, following people, and connecting with people.

Yes. It is that simple. People try to overthink social media and come up with some crazy system or hack. But if you talk to the people that actually succeed with it, they all treated it as just genuinely sharing their thoughts, what they were working on, posting thoughtful replies to Tweets when relevant, and just being a human being.

The really cool thing about Twitter is that their algorithm works off of spreading content. So when you like or comment on someone's post, their network will see that, or at least some of it.

People try to come up with the best systems and hacks to gain followers and grow their network. But I recommend just using the platforms as they were designed to be used. It really can be that simple.

Don't underestimate the power of this because it is simple and obvious. Everybody wants some sort of step-by-step system or hack to do things, but the most effective way to network is by just being a genuine person.

This is the most effective way to start because everyone can do it. It doesn't require spamming peoples' inbox, making cold calls, or talking to anyone in person.

All you are doing is using social media as it was intended to be used, by genuinely interacting with people.

This is real networking at its finest: simple, genuine, and something you can do every day.

Don't try to overcomplicate this. Once you get started with this simple step, you'll gradually start learning how to effectively interact with people over time and naturally get better and better and building relationships and connections.

Now, with that said, it can be difficult to come into this having never done it before and be able to do anything. So here's a starting point of a few simple things you should do every day.

Start with this template, and naturally grow it into doing your own thing.

These steps assume you are already following a decent number of people in the developer community. So if you aren't, look for some first. If you've been on Twitter any amount of time, you likely are already following some people.

A few general tips before we get into the specific steps:

• All of this needs to be genuine. No spammy, "Awesome job!" or "Nice!" replies. Only tweet if you have something of value to add to the conversation.
• If you are able to, getting to a conversation earlier is usually better
• Don't target accounts with too large of a following. If you are just getting started, accounts with less than 15,000 followers are a good goal to engage with and then you can scale up as you start to grow.
• Experiment with schedulers, but don't feel tied to them. I tried one for a while and found I was able to be more consistent when I tweeted thoughts or realizations as they occurred to me

• Try to set aside engagement time. It can be easy to get lost in Twitter, so try to set specific engagement time each day so you don't kill your productivity

• Reply to 5 tweets from people that you admire with relatively large followings

• DM one person you admire thanking them for something and telling them why you like it
• Try to tweet out 3-5 high-value tweets per day. High-value can mean something insightful, a specific method for doing something, an update on what you are working on (working in public is a fantastic networking strategy), or even simply an honest thought that you don't hear very often

I can't give you formulas for what to Tweet because that will defeat the purpose. There are plenty of those floating around and they may get high engagement but they are generally annoying and people are getting sick of them.

Be honest, be genuine, and start now. It will get easier and you will get better as you go.

Start with these three simple steps and scale from there. But start small and simple because consistency is what is important here.

Short Term Networking with Cold Email

Alright now we're going to get into a somewhat controversial method of networking. But it's one of my favorites not only for networking, but for directly landing a job.

The cool thing about this method is that the primary goal is to make yourself stand out to land a job, but it's an indirect networking tool as well.

Because even if you don't land a job directly from it, you have placed yourself in someone's mind as unique and willing to go the extra mile for something they care about.

Basically it comes down to these steps:

1. Finding a few, say 5-10, companies you really admire and want to work for
2. Finding the best contact person at the company
3. Finding their email address (Twitter DMs and LinkedIn messages could also work if you can't find an email)
4. Figure out something small of value you could contribute and build a small mini-project custom for them that demonstrates that thing of value
5. Send in a video pitch introducing yourself, talking about why you love that company in particular, and talking about why you would be a great addition to the team

These are just the basic steps broken down, and there is a lot to this process. But you can learn a lot more about the specifics from the company I learned this from, Crash.

They have a software, book, and course that go into this stuff in great detail. It's a game-changer because nobody is willing to put in the time to do this because everyone gets so trapped in the traditional permission-based routes like job boards and applications.

By showing you are willing to step outside those comfort zones, you will be extremely attractive to potential employers and build a valuable network in the process.

There are three critical components of this that make it so effective:

1. Showing you are capable of thinking outside the box and taking initiative despite perceived roadblocks
2. Showing your skills by building something real, instead of just talking about your skills like you would on a résumé or job application
3. Facilitating human connection by recording a short, personalized video of yourself

We covered the first one above, so let's talk about the other two and get into a few specifics of how you can pull this off. Again, I learned this from Crash so check them out if you want more details. All credit for this technique goes to them.

One of the most powerful aspects of this strategy is that you are taking the time to build a small custom project that is relevant to this particular company.

Keep in mind this project doesn't have to be anything crazy – an hour or two worth of work – and the company doesn't ever have to necessarily use it.

The goal is simply to show that you know enough about the company to build something somewhat relevant to them, prove that you have the skills you say you do, and stand out by showing that you are willing to put in that much effort to that company.

Free work gets a bad rap, and when free work is specifically requested from a company, like some companies that ask someone to build an entire functioning application as a sample project for an interview, that's crap.

But choosing to take the initiative to build something like that on your own is a great use of your time.

Facilitating human connection is the third really big benefit of this. When you are recording your pitch video, the goal is to communicate who you are very briefly, talk about why you admire that company and want to work for them, talk about the skills you have, and then talk about why those skills would be valuable to that company.

This combined with the custom project is insanely powerful. Try to keep it short, around 2 minutes, smile, breath, and write some bullet points.

Don't write a script, as that will come off as robotic. Just jot down some bullets to cover so you don't get off track.

My favorite way to do all this is to create a custom page on your portfolio site dedicated to the company.

Then you can put your custom project on there, embed your video, and send out a simple cold email to the right contact person.

I'm a big fan of writing extremely short, direct cold emails.

Let's see what this might look like in practice.

Imagine I'm a React developer with a strong affinity for design. So I want to be able to combine my React skills with my design skills and do some front-end development with a heavy focus on implementing great design.

Side note: This is an excellent example of skill stacking, combining two different but complimentary skillsets to make yourself more unique and valuable to companies.

Say I want to work for a company called Paperize. They take peoples' handwritten notes and digitize them. This is a fictional company I just made up, so any resemblance to a real company is purely coincidental.

I found the Lead Developer and decide they would be the best person to reach out to, since based on my research of the company on their website, LinkedIn, and content they have written. This person seems to be heavily involved in the hiring process but more easily accessible than the CEO.

So I take a detailed look at their website and notice a couple of things:

1. They talk a lot about flexibility being important for employees on their website. This is extremely important to me as well, so I jot that down as something to mention in the video. However, I also know being effective at a remote job with asynchronous schedules requires a certain amount of discipline to be productive, so I want to make sure I say I have experience doing that
2. There's a form on their website that's a little clunky, so I can spend an hour or so rebuilding that form in React to function better and make a better UX for it.

So now I'll build that and record my video saying something along the lines of:

"Hey Paperize! I'm Ken, I'm a React developer looking to contribute my development and UX skills to an amazing company. I've been following Paperize for a while and really admire your focus on taking something that's mundane but that everybody does and that's important, and turning it into something extremely easy.

I was looking at your website and noticed that there is a form on your contact page that could use a little love, so I went ahead and coded a new one up in React for you that has a nice, smooth UX for the user. The code and lie demo are below.

I love Paperize and think that my combination of React skills with my love for clean UX would make a great addition to the team.

Thanks so much for taking the time to watch this! You can email me at email@example.com or give me a call at 123-555-1234 so we can get to know each other more and I look forward to hearing from you!"

Something like that would work great.

Then I would set this up on a page on my website dedicated to Paperize and send the Lead Developer a super short email like:

Subject: I want to work for Paperize

"Hey Dan,

Big fan of Paperize and your work, so I made you something.

[link to it]

Thanks!

Ken"

Keep it super simple. Your goal here is not to get a job, it's to pique their interest enough to click the link in the email, and then pique their interest enough to follow up with you.

Wrapping Up

There is a lot more to networking than what I covered here, but often the hardest part is just having a concrete starting point, so I wanted to give you that here.

If you are looking for a concrete, step-by-step plan to land your first job as a developer, along with support from myself and community of peers, I think you'd love being a member of my combination course/community, Lever.

Thanks so much for taking the time out of your day to read this, and good luck on your networking journey!

"What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?" - George Eliot

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and many people started losing their jobs, I wanted to help in any way I could. And mentoring other women trying to get into tech was one way.

I had just landed a new job after having been laid off, so my experience being a female interviewing for engineering roles was fresh.

By personally sharing this and my prior experiences, I provided these women hope while they navigated their job search, college, and new roles. My biggest realization mentoring this year was that I didn’t need to have it all figured out myself to start helping others.

I hope that by sharing the little ways I was able to help, it encourages someone to lend a helping hand. I truly believe mentoring is a small step forward towards gaining and retaining women in tech.

Why I Started Mentoring

I started mentoring in 2019, a couple of months after landing my first software engineering role, because I wanted to help others.

Getting into tech was a long journey for me and the people that helped me along the way were invaluable. I wanted to be that person for someone else.

I want to lift others up as I advance in my career. My long term goal is to build an organization that helps underrepresented women find a career they will love.

How to Start Mentoring

You don’t need years of experience to start helping someone. I started mentoring a few months after landing my first dev role.

I don’t always have the answers, but I can share my experiences, what has worked for me, and what hasn’t. It's never too early or late to start helping.

Here’s how I started mentoring and how others might to:

• I created a profile on CodingCoach.io
• A friend asked if I wanted to give career advice to someone in their network
• I answered thoughtful emails from students who had read my blog posts
• At work, I communicated with my boss that I was interested in mentoring

How I Supported My Mentees

“A mentor empowers a person to see a possible future, and believe it can be obtained.” – Shawn Hitchcock

Support came in many ways. It was easy to empathize with them because I had just finished going through the job interview process and started a new role remotely.

I supported my mentees by:

• Giving them career advice from the perspective of a female minority in tech
• Sharing tech resources (like upcoming virtual conferences, events, books, and so on)
• Offering words of encouragement
• Doing résumé reviews for them
• Doing practice mock interviews to help them prepare for actual interviews

I continue to meet with most of them biweekly for 30 minutes during my lunch breaks.

The Need to Shift Negatives to Positives

Many of my mentees had negative thoughts and feelings which seemed pretty natural given the nature of this year.

I didn’t want to let the negativity overtake my mentorship experience so I shifted the negatives to positives:

2020

How we shifted our perspectives

Here are some tips to help you turn negativity into positivity:

How Mentoring Has Been Valuable to Me

Mentoring has been valuable to me in so many ways. It has:

• Helped me understand what others who have a similar background are struggling with
• Kept me in the loop of how new engineers are being onboarded at other companies
• Reminded me where I’ve come from especially as a woman in tech
• Allowed me to give back to the tech community
• Helped me manage my time and energy
• Kept me humble

A Warm Welcome to These Resilient Women

"Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being. “ -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Finally, I want to share what my mentees were able to accomplish at the start of the pandemic. I hope they have been able to celebrate because we are raising a toast and are excited to have them join the world of tech.

These women were dealing with the extra uncertainty that the pandemic caused, and the constant chaos around us hasn't seemed promising.

Through their hard work and resilience they were able to land their first full time developer roles or continue their education through this tough job market and drastic life changes.

Stephanie Aurelio - (Frontend Developer) Recent Bootcamp grad

Stephanie graduated from the UCLA Extension bootcamp in March and started job searching during the pandemic.

New to the world of tech and its interview process, she asked me for some guidance on what to expect and how to possibly prepare.

She studied extremely hard, worked on side projects, and kept pushing through the interviews to land her first frontend developer role soon after graduating!

Kaya Chou - (Software Engineer) Recent Computer Science grad

Kaya graduated from undergrad this spring from Simmons University. She asked for my help to review her résumé and wanted to learn about my experience with job interviewing.

I remember one early Saturday morning when we reviewed her résumé and she was quick to update it. She even designed and built her own template and shared it with me! Kaya immediately landed her first full time software engineering role.

Maitri Shah - (Software Engineer) NerdWallet new college grad employee

Maitri started her first full time software engineer role at NerdWallet after graduating from UC Berkeley this spring. I had the pleasure of onboarding her in May.

She has been extremely adaptive, focused, and proactive. It's been exciting seeing her excel at work during her first couple of months at NerdWallet and she's already taking leadership in so many different ways.

Yesenia Galindo - Computer Science student

Yesenia recently transferred to California State University - Dominguez Hills from a community college. The transition this year of going virtual was challenging but she has been resilient and staying proactive in getting prepared for the job search once she graduates next spring.

She has been working on her personal website, keeping up with her résumé, and we have been doing mock interviews to get her familiar with the new grad interview process.

What's Next

I am so grateful to have been able to mentor these women in 2020. And I just used the extra time I gained from not having to commute to work with them.

Next year my focus will be on:

• Learning from my mentees. How has mentorship helped them? What hasn’t been working?
• Exploring ways I can expand my mentorship to a larger audience
• Mentoring a new engineer at work
• Mentoring people from different backgrounds outside of work

Let’s Continue Leading the Way

As women in tech, we still have work to do to continue building the path for future generations. Even mentoring one person can make all the difference in the world.

We’re on our way to gender equality. To see Kamala Harris become the first woman and woman of color as vice president in 2020 is something to remember and fuel us.

Just as we all have something to learn, we all have something to teach.

Let’s be friends on Twitter. Happy Coding :)

“There is strength in numbers and the numbers representing women in tech are not currently in our favor—yet. Every unique challenge brings an opportunity to do something about it. Being a woman in tech is a badge of honor. Wear it proud, loud and continue to do the hard work to help lead the way for others." Even if you're uncomfortable inciting change at your own company, there are plenty of ways to make a difference.’ - Michelle Wingard

What impact does this have on our journeys and what can we do to make the best out of the current climate?

Living in a world of a pandemic

Most of our lives have rapidly changed. While many in the tech community are fortunate enough to be able to work from home, the pandemic has changed how we communicate and socialize.

Where previously we were able to enjoy a bite to eat at a restaurant, now we don't have that option and have to order takeout. Where we once were able to go to a monthly meetup and hear about tech over some free pizza, now we watch virtually as we… pay for our own pizza.

How does this impact us as developers?

While it’s challenging not to be able to go meet people in person at your local meetup, being quarantined has different impacts on different people.

Meetups and conferences are fun. Being able to communicate with others and build real relationships with others helps us all grow both personally and professionally. It’s a good way to network and make a friend at the same time.

Moving these events online means that personal connection won’t be the same. While a meetup would traditionally have some social time, now we get a one-way feed of the speaker’s talk with maybe an opportunity to hang out with people in the chat.

Where does that leave us?

This can be hard to cope with, but it doesn’t impact everyone the same. Some of us might be able to comfortably go meet others at a local meet up, but some of us, like myself, struggle with in-person events. Anxiety is real and it can hold us back and prevent us from being ourselves.

The fact that these events are now online opens these communities up to people who might have been too uncomfortable to attend an in-person event. Instead of feeling too shy to chat during the social time, we’re still able to hold realtime conversations, but over Slack or Discord.

What can we do to take advantage of our circumstances?

There’s two main perspectives to consider when figuring out what we can do to empower people in our communities — the organizers and the attendees.

As organizers, we should try to provide more opportunities for others to be social, whether that’s by maintaining a community through tools like Slack or Discord or inviting others to communicate during the event.

While some online meetups open up for questions or interact with the chat, some don’t, and it it feels simply like watching a video on Youtube.

As attendees, we should try to take advantage of events being held online by trying to communicate more with our peers. While it might be challenging to chat in person, sending a DM or sharing your thoughts through chat is a lower barrier of entry.

How can this help us in the long term?

Being more social can help us in a variety of ways — it helps us grow individually and helps us learn from other’s experience. But it can also help us professionally.

The fact of the matter is - if you don’t know anyone, you’re just another person on the list of thousands of applicants. Whether you meet someone at a meetup or had a quick chat with them in a Twitter DM, there’s a personal connection.

Use that personal connection to your advantage. That might be the difference between you and another candidate who hasn’t said anything at all. It might mean more opportunities in the long run when that person thinks of you for their next job opening.

But also, it can mean a new friend. It won’t always open the door to that new job, but shared experiences and common interests bring people together, and that connection brings value.

Applying these lessons to the future

Overall, we as a community need to continue to come together and help each other grow. The more we support each other, the more we can provide value that impacts the world.

When the virus one day subsides and we begin to meet back in person, let’s not forget the lessons we learned about community building.

Let’s make sure we continue to make everyone feel welcome and able to be involved, whether they’re the ones in the physical audience or the ones hanging out on the livestream.

Make sure to engage with both audiences and let the virtual attendees feel like they're included in the conversation. Answer the questions that they're sending in chat. Pull them up on the screen to ask a question.

We’re all in this together, let’s continue to build the best community we can.

Meetups are amazing! They are a great way to stay up to date on the latest technologies, dive deep into interesting subjects, ask questions, and network.

Software Craftsmen attend meetups. They take pride in writing code that is well thought out, future thinking, and built to last.

So you decide to look for a meetup, but there isn't something local that covers your passion. You might be ready to create a meetup.

I started the UtahJS monthly meetup in 2010. It's been a great success and I want to share some of the things I've learned over the years.

What makes a good meetup?

Stay consistent with time and place. Find an event host and stick with them. It could be a tech company, a college campus, or a co-working space. If you keep meetups at the same time and location every month, people can make a habit of attending. This is by far the most important piece of advice.

Consider food. A lot of times venue hosts are willing to provide dinner. If not, seek sponsors for dinner. It can be something cheap like Pizza or Subs. And if you can't arrange dinner, make sure it is clear to that attendees should eat beforehand.

Keep it free. There are lots of companies that like to give back to the community, boost their image and network with developers. Try to keep the event totally free.

Make it interesting. What keeps people coming back is interesting topics. Some people will attend only a few times a year, and that is ok. Try to cover a wide variety of topics and make each month something interesting.

Focus on community. Take a few minutes at the start of the event to say welcome. Emphasize that it is the community's meetup, not yours. Encourage attendees to take leadership roles, participate, and invite others to join. Spark participation with questions such as: "Who is hiring?" "Who is looking for a job?" and "Who is new to this topic?"

Avoid bashing. Having an "X Tech vs. Y Tech" presentation is fine but a "Y Tech Sucks" or an "If You Don't Use Y Tech You're Doing it Wrong" presentation is not appropriate. Build people up regardless of their tech background.

Be inclusive. Reach out to underrepresented groups. Make your meetup a safe place for everyone.

Make your meetup a safe place for everyone

Where do I start?

Use a meetup website. I've enjoyed using Meetup.com but there new options such as freeCodeCamp's self-hosted Chapter software and All Events. Find a platform to announce topics, get RSVPs, seek speakers, and have discussions. Give your group a name and a method to contact the organizers.

Mix up presentation styles. Most groups lean toward lecture style. Try to mix in other things such as hands-on presentations, tutorials, or seeded discussions.

Fill time with lightning talks. If you run short, ask for impromptu presentations. You can announce it this way: “Does anyone have a mini-presentation, something cool that you’ve worked on, something interesting you saw, or a question you want answered? You can come up to the front and plug in your computer. Or just talk from your seat.” Some of the best meetings are those with lightning rounds and ensuing discussions.

Have a backup plan. If you end up with no presenter, have some simple backup ideas. Pick out a video you can watch and discuss. Walk through good tutorials or blog posts that interest you.

Attend other meetups. You may get great ideas and great contacts from another meetup. Be active in the programming community.

Create an FAQ. Beginners like FAQs. Link to one on your Meetup.com group page. Provide answers to common questions and links to help understand the context of your meetup's subject matter. Use GitHub, Google Docs or something else that allows your community members to contribute changes and additions.

Partner up. Look for co-organizers to help you organize and run the meetups. A good long-term strategy involves multiple people.

Make a logo. For inspiration, check out the JS Logo Registry.

Create a Code of Conduct. I've found that the Contributor Covenant is a great place to start. It is an important step for everyone to feel safe and understand your commitment to inclusive contribution.

How do I advertise?

Tell your friends and coworkers. Word of mouth is more powerful than most people realize.

Tell Twitter. Tweet and ask others to retweet. Contact influencers and non-profits in your area that would be willing to tweet your Meetup link.

Tell your Slack workspace. Look for a Slack workspace for local programmers or software in general. Maybe something tangential to your meetup. If there isn't one, create your own workspace! Choose a general name such as X City JavaScript or X State Web Development.

Tell LinkedIn. Create a LinkedIn group and add it to your profile. Update your status with a link to your meetup. Reach out to acquaintances to tell them.

Tell your local mailing list. There are still some flourishing mailing lists with members who would like to know about your meetup.

Use these methods monthly. As appropriate, continue to announce and advertise. Some folks may be enticed by a certain topic.

My story

In 2010, my friends Kip Lawrence and Nate Pilling and I started meeting in a conference room after work once a month. We chatted about JavaScript projects we were working on. We demoed some cool web app features. We watched Douglas Crockford videos.

Our goal was not to get "big." But slowly our informal show-and-tell sessions grew into a meetup. Now various organizers run monthly UtahJS meetup events in Salt Lake City, Lehi, Ogden, and Logan.

One important takeaway from looking at our origins–start small. Even after all the planning and advertising, your first several meetups might draw only a few people. And that's OK.

Meetups start small

Small events are fine. If you think back to the original goals of your meetup, you'll likely see that a small meetup fulfills those goals pretty well.

For me those goals were:

• Stay up to date on the latest technologies
• Dive deep into interesting subjects
• Ask questions
• Network

For me, all those goals can be met in small groups.

A word on COVID-19

At the time of writing, many meetups and conferences are delayed or canceled. But I say take advantage of the opportunity for fully remote meetups. Virtual meetups can be successful and even have some advantages. For one, folks who usually have constraints on time, location, or commute may be able to attend a virtual meetup. And two, everyone can see and hear the presenter more clearly.

I've had success with Google Meet (formerly Hangouts) and Zoom. Use what you are comfortable with.

The 2020 UtahJS Conference

We've been holding conferences since 2012. The UtahJS Conference this year is on Friday, September 18, 2020. The call for proposals is currently open and runs through April 30, 2020. Tickets will go on sale this Summer. Timing is dependent on the outlook of COVID-19 social distancing policies.

If you are reading this article from the future, you can go to conf.utahjs.com to check out our latest conference.

Final Thoughts

Don't be afraid to start a meetup. The experience is very rewarding. You and your community will learn new things, gain leadership experience, and make new connections.

Communities are usually built on shared struggles of individuals learning in a particular region, and the goals of each community differ per the individual's collective needs.

Over the years, these developer communities have grown across the world with different goals and missions but still with the general aim of providing a platform for developers to learn, interact, share ideas, support each other and grow.

"If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." – African Proverb

To better help those looking out for communities to join, I have put together a list of 20 best communities in no particular order ranging from Engineering, Design, Data Science, Machine Learning, Developer Relations, Technical Writing, and more.

If you know any more communities you have found helpful, please share them in the comments section for the benefit of all :).

1. Women Who Code

Women Who Code is an international nonprofit organization that provides a global community for women in tech with events, coding resources, jobs, mentorship, and more. They aim to inspire, support, and help women develop technical skills and excel in their careers.

Join now to get exclusive access to their community, events, scholarships, free event tickets, job boards, and more.

2. Hashnode

Hashnode is an online community where developers share knowledge and grow their careers. Developers from around the world participate in consequential discussions on Hashnode. You can write stories, ask open-ended questions as well as technical questions, ask questions anonymously, and start polls. You can also ask popular tech teams and developer influencers questions or learn from stories of awesome women in tech.

Hashnode's Devblog platform enables you to create your personal blog on your custom domain in a few simple steps with everything you need to grow as a blogger. (No Paywall, Free domain, SSL, Automatic backup of posts, Markdown, AMP Support and more). Own your canonical, make your contents independent and build your domain authority.

3. Freecodecamp

freeCodeCamp is a nonprofit organization that helps people learn to code for free through thousands of videos, articles, interactive coding lessons and thousands of freeCodeCamp study groups around the world.

You learn by completing coding challenges and building projects alongside verified certifications.

4. StackOverflow

Stack Overflow is a question and answer site for programmers with tons of questions and answers on a wide range of topics in computer programming.

You can learn from already asked and answered questions, share your programming knowledge by answering asked questions or share your issues/bugs here.

5. HackerNews

Hacker News is a social news website focusing on computer science and entrepreneurship, where you can submit a link to technical content.

This is a great place to promote your contents to a wide range of viewers and find amazing contents from other technical geeks.

6. Hackernoon

Hackernoon is a tech media site that delivers stories and opinions written by real tech professionals and read by Technologists, Software Developers, Bitcoiners, Blockchain Enthusiasts.

You can write technical articles here and learn from a wide range of available unfettered technical contents.

7. SitePoint Community

SitePoint community is a community for web designers and developers to discuss everything web development from HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Photoshop, SEO, and more.

Similar to StackOverflow, you can ask and answer all web development questions here.

8. Kaggle

Kaggle is an online community of data scientists and machine learning practitioners with a vast repository of community published data and code with over 19,000 public datasets and 200,000 open notebooks. Kaggle also offers courses on Machine Learning, Pandas, Python, Deep Learning, Data Visualization, SQL alongside competitions, and discussions to help you grow.

9. Indie Hackers

An Indie hacker is "a person building an online project that can generate revenue." Indie Hackers is a global community of developers who are sharing their projects, strategies, and revenue statistics behind their companies and side projects.

You get to learn from the founders behind hundreds of successful online businesses and connect with others who are starting and growing their own companies through their global meetups, discussions, articles, and more.

10. Code Newbie

Code Newbie is the most supportive community of programmers and people learning to code. It started as a weekly Twitter chat made to provide much-needed support to people learning to code. It has since grown into a supportive, international community of people learning to code.

11. Digital Ocean Community

This is an inclusive place where developers can find or lend support and contribute to the community of DevOps and cloud computing enthusiasts. The community provides comprehensive guides, tutorials, trends for developers, Q/A sessions, and much more.

12. Product Hunt

Product Hunt is an exciting community of featured amazing products launched every day. It's a place for product-loving enthusiasts to share and find out about the latest mobile applications, websites, hardware projects, and tech creations.

13. Reddit

Reddit is global community of thousands sub communities, endless conversations, and authentic networking with tons of never-ending streams for developers like r/reactjs, r/vuejs, r/JAMstack_dev, r/Python and more.

14. DevCareers

DevCareer is a nonprofit organization that is focused on supporting upcoming developers with mentorship and resources to enable them to become world-class developers. They provide laptops, co-working space, resources, mentorship, and job placements for software developers in Africa who pass through the program.

15. The Interaction Design Foundation Community

The Interaction Design Foundation Community provides an exciting opportunity for designers to create and hone their portfolio while getting ready for a new User Experience job. They offer courses from UX experts, local UX Design Meet-ups in cities across the world, UX discussions, collaboration, and much more.

16. Daily UI

Daily UI is a free series of daily UI design challenges, design inspiration, and surprise rewards to make you become a better designer in 100 days. Their amazing daily reminders will motivate you to keep learning.

17. Dev.to

DEV is a community of software developers helping one another out. DEV provides a place for developers to collaborate and network while learning and sharing their knowledge.

18. DevRel Collective

DevRel Collective is a community of developer relations enthusiasts that exists to facilitate sharing information, resources, and encouragement among the DevRel community.

If you are actively involved in developer communities, advocacy, or event management, you should join this community.

19. Facebook Developer Circles

Developer Circles from Facebook is a program designed to create locally organized communities for developers. These communities educate and provide a forum for discussion and knowledge sharing around topics that are top-of-mind for developers in a particular market.

Find a local Developer Circle nearest to you here.

20. Google Developers Groups

GDG brings software developers with similar interests together to meet through meetups and hands-on workshops. The community welcomes everyone and anyone interested in tech from beginners to experienced professionals.``

Find a GDG chapter nearest to you here

Conclusion

"There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about." – Margaret J. Wheatley

The bond in developer communities has grown from just "technical groups" to "family groups" where everyone is passionate about sharing knowledge, giving back, and helping everyone reach higher heights.

Isn't this just amazing? Cheers to the new age where sharing knowledge and togetherness become the order of the day. ??

Dana Lewis is the founder of OpenAPS (Open Artificial Pancreas System), an open and transparent effort to make artificial pancreas technology widely available.

We interviewed her to learn more about her story. You can learn more by visiting the OpenAPS channel on Gitter.

Dana Lewis and the OpenAPS rig.

Hi Dana! Tell us about yourself and the OpenAPS project. What is OpenAPS & what’s the story behind it?

#OpenAPS is the open source movement to make artificial pancreas technology more widely available and much sooner than otherwise would be possible. The “artificial pancreas” (also considered to be a “hybrid closed loop”) automates insulin delivery using an existing insulin pump and a continuous glucose monitor for people with type 1 diabetes. Right now, there is no commercially available option available, so people are stuck using “standard therapy”, which means doing all dosing calculations themselves. This can be really hard, when blood glucose levels are changing all the time; and REALLY hard at night when people are asleep!

I (@DanaMLewis) have lived with type 1 diabetes myself for over 14 years and know how hard this is. A few years ago, instead of just saying “oh well, I can’t do anything” to improve my existing medical devices, I started looking for workarounds to problem solve for my real-world life. I first used open source code to pull data from my CGM in real time and make louder alarms by sending that data to my phone. (That piece of open source code ultimately evolved into Nightscout, a great tool worth checking out for remote CGM data monitoring.)

Our “louder alarm” system evolved into an “open loop” system with a dosing decision algorithm that we then developed. Scott and I then realized we could leverage someone else’s open source code to send commands (with the addition of a small computer like a Raspberry Pi and a radio stick) directly to my insulin pump, ultimately creating a closed loop artificial pancreas system. I first “closed the loop” for myself in December 2014, and we launched OpenAPS in February 2015. We can’t commercially distribute medical devices or full software systems, because that is activity regulated by the FDA; but we wanted to find a way to share knowledge so that if someone else wanted to build their own closed loop, they could do so until something became commercially available in the future. So that’s what we did, and why OpenAPS exists today.

OpenAPS is a number of things, but think of it as an ecosystem where you can take existing insulin pumps & CGMs and pair it with other commercially available hardware and open source software to help automate insulin delivery in a way that reduces overall risk for daily life with diabetes.

What common goals do you have as a community?

Our main common goal is easing the burden of life with type 1 diabetes. Life with diabetes is HARD. Not just physically, but also emotionally. The cognitive burden plays a big role on entire families, because whether it’s parents supporting a child growing up with diabetes, or an adult and their loved ones, diabetes impacts everyone. The #WeAreNotWaiting movement is a broader community beyond #OpenAPS that says “we can’t wait years and years for better tools and solutions, so we will do everything we can to make today easier” for people living with diabetes.

“Pay it forward” is another common goal. We are all utilizing tools and ideas donated to the community by others, so we’re all passionate about paying it forward in any way we can. This may include contributing PRs to code or documentation, or turning around and helping someone in Gitter who is asking about something you learned last week. For many of us, “paying it forward” is our first introduction to contributing to open source.

The OpenAPS Stack

What issues related to the project are you personally most excited about these days?

OpenAPS is at the point where there are at least (n=1)*127+ people worldwide utilizing DIY closed loop systems. Because these are (n=1) efforts and everyone has to build their own systems (this is for safety reasons, too), there are constantly improvements and tweaks needed to the setup process documentation available on Github. We’ve come a long way, though. When someone complains about documentation not being perfect, I laugh and point out that we originally built the first closed loop with ZERO documentation: at least some imperfect documentation is better than none! Then we work together to fix the documentation. Many people make their first pull request to the documentation repository, and it’s their first contribution to open source — but hopefully not their last!

The other common issue is time. Everyone works on this in their spare time, and we all have day jobs. So our collective work to improve code, documentation, and support others setting up their own systems takes place on nights and weekends and early mornings and break times. But with a worldwide community, there’s usually someone always online on Gitter and able to answer questions, which is great!

What progress has been made since the beginning of the project, can you share some particular success stories?

Scott and I built my first closed loop, and then worked with Ben West as he built the openaps toolkit to make it easier for others to build their own systems. The openaps toolkit in of itself is a huge success, because it is basically building blocks that anyone can take to use to build a system to read data from compatible diabetes devices.

The OpenAPS documentation is also a success, because it’s a constantly evolving, living, breathing set of documents that doesn’t necessarily have a clear roadmap for future development. It changes any time we add a new hardware option or software tool (which is pretty often), so it’s impressive that this documentation is still useful and still supporting people to get setup. And I’m pretty proud that the documentation is at a level so that someone with zero previous tech experience can use it and learn what they need to do in order to build themselves a closed loop system.

What are the main issues discussed in the OpenAPS channel on Gitter?

There are a bunch of different rooms in Gitter that is used by the community, but the most heavily used room is the one where most setup conversations for OpenAPS happen. We use Gitter primarily for people who are working through the setup process, but we also use it to host discussions about new documentation being added, and new features being tested and discussed before being incorporated into the dev branch of code.

What factors contribute to the success of your community? What are the key challenges?

The success of the OpenAPS community is a testament to the people involved. That includes Ben’s years of work behind the scenes and active support for helping many of us learn about open source and related tools (including encouraging us from the get go to use Gitter and Github); to Scott’s tireless dedication to helping me (even though he himself doesn’t have diabetes!) not only build my first closed loop but then make it an option to anyone in the world who is willing to build their own; to the dozens of people contributing to documentation and building new hardware and software tools. We wouldn’t be where we are today without all of these amazing people.

Some of the challenges involve time constraints. Others involve the fact that we are working in a grey area of regulation. Technically, the FDA regulates commercially distributed medical devices. There is no medical device being distributed in our case, and everyone doing DIY is individually building their own systems. But there is some fear by individuals in the community that they are going to get sued for personally building tools for themselves to help them manage their diabetes. So fear itself of unnecessary litigation or regulation is a challenge on the individual level.

And yes, some of the challenge is technical — even though we’ve seen dozens of people with zero technical experience work their way through the process and build themselves systems, there are also dozens who’ve convinced themselves that they can’t do it and aren’t willing to try. But, since this is not an FDA-approved system, the requirement to do it yourself will always be there — so for those who are unwilling to try or for other good reasons decide this type of system is not for them, they will have to wait for commercially approved options to become available.

Based on your experience, do you feel that the open source communities have changed and evolved over the past years? If so, how?

I’ve only been involved in open source for the last three or so years. But one of the things I most appreciate is the warm support and collaboration I’ve gotten from people like Ben, Scott, Chris Hannemann, Pete Schwamb, Oskar Pearson, and Nate Racklyeft (among many others), who are always willing to answer questions and share their knowledge. I’ve found that awesome spirit to be pretty prevalent in every area of open source, and I think it makes a big difference for evolving and growing open source communities.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to start an online open source community focused on healthcare?

Stay centered on your purpose. I don’t think it’s about starting a community, but supporting and shepherding the community that grows out of a shared project or sense of purpose. For us, that shared purpose is making life with diabetes easier and making artificial pancreas technology more accessible for all. And I also suggest using the tools that are available. One of the reasons we use (and really like) Gitter is because there is a low barrier to entry: the content is publicly accessible, so anyone can observe or lurk and learn before they’re ready to jump in or ask their first question. It’s nice to have that one central gathering place for discussion, rather than having key conversations splintered across numerous channels.

Anything else that you want to add?

For anyone interested in learning more about OpenAPS, reading the OpenAPS Reference Design is a great starting place, followed by the OpenAPS FAQs. And if you’re interested in diving into DIY diabetes and the open source communities, we’d be happy to point you to them! Feel free to drop me a note at dana@OpenAPS.org or reach out to us on Gitter.

Thank you!