Open Stack

OK,  Here goes.

Many newbies, especially ones whose communication culture varies from that of the "traditional open source contributor," try to start small, learn the way the community works, then expand their participation as they feel more comfortable in their understanding of the community.  That often translates into:

1. Start following mailing list(s)
2. Read specs and/or blueprints
3. Read patch reviews
4. Try to comment on reviews
5. Join IRC meetings/channels for more interactive discussions

There are variations, of course, but you can get the idea.

Now, take people who are in technology at corporations and you have:

+ Most people have windows laptops or desktops
+ Those that are familiar with Linux/*nix either have separate workstations, dual boot, etc. but don't use the Linux "productivity" toolsets as they need to interface with all those other employees on windows.
+ Most start interacting with OpenStack from their company laptop/desktop as that is where their mail is, so the mailing lists come through windows.

What would make their transition to OpenStack participation "easier" or "friendlier"?  How about:

+ a short, concise document that will get them their logins to launchpad and review.openstack.org *from a windows environment*.  Important:  It should just work.  This includes keys, so instructions on cut and paste that does the right thing is also important.
+ a concise document with instructions to find and install one or a small selection irc clients for:  Windows, IPhone, Android. Keep these simple. Again, these need to *just work*.  Also a *very short* tutorial of finding the right channels and joining them.

Once they are commenting on reviews, participating in IRC channels, the next step is submitting a patch.  Again, the first ones will likely be specs or docs or calendar, or other non-project code submissions, so what is needed here is:

+ a concise document with *easy* tool(s) for getting a working git/gerrit install on their Windows environment.  It should all be in one document rather than scattered through three or more.  A place (sandbox?) where they can test to see if they can do it is really useful.  Be prepared for all sorts of questions about proxies and firewalls.  If you are up front about "do this from a public network to see how it works before you try it from your company's network," you will likely have both fewer questions and less frustrated people.  Again, a simple tutorial with submitting a first patch, finding it on review.openstack.org, and pointers to simple tutorials on git amend and rebase will help a lot.

In general:

Every time critical keys are changed/updated (due to security patches, moves, etc), a *large* banner should appear on the related websites with a pointer to instructions on how to update the git/gerrit configuration.

Does this provide enough detail to be actionable?

Thanks for keeping this discussion going to a place that will help newbies of all sorts.

--Rocky Grober

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeremy Stanley [mailto:fungi at yuggoth.org] 
Sent: Friday, September 04, 2015 11:41 AM
To: foundation at lists.openstack.org
Subject: Re: [OpenStack Foundation] [Women-of-openstack] [OpenStack][Women of OpenStack] Kick-off Meeting Info

On 2015-09-04 11:22:14 -0700 (-0700), Stefano Maffulli wrote:
[...]
> I don't think one needs to join an in-person meeting to continue this
> conversation. I think email is good enough, even better than IRC to
> share deeper thoughts as we're doing on this thread.

That would also be great. I'm just unsure how many people likely to
have implementation-specific insight are also subscribed to the
foundation ML (probably fewer than I hope but more than I expect).
I'll make sure to point some more participants at the thread.
Thanks!
-- 
Jeremy Stanley

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