how to contribute to open source the right way w/ bekah weigel

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Alright, Beck, enough of me running my mouth. Just get the people what they want. Who are you? What do you do? And we'll go from there. Hey, I'm Becca. I am a career changer. So prior to coming into tech, I spent 10 years teaching college English. But since then, I've done some front-end work. I've done community building with virtual coffee and other companies. And now I am the developer experience lead at OpenSost. Woo, woo. All right, so real quick, I want to touch on virtual coffee. I think what the community you've built over there is incredible. You have been such a, you really, and I'm not, I'm not bullshitting.

I truly mean this. You have been such a, uh, uh, uh, uh, words are hard this morning. Uh, a role model, an inspiration. That's the word you've been such an inspiration to me to start kind of my own community, uh, with what you've done. Talk about virtual coffee real quick, brag on virtual coffee in case of people looking for a community to join. Yeah, so virtual coffee coffee. I can't say either. We're a community of people in tech at all stages of your journey. So lots of different roles. People, some people are developers, some people are learning, some people have their own startup. So all over, we get together a couple of times a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

We also have resources. We have small interest groups called coffee table groups, lunch and learns, newsletter podcasts. We're just trying to do all the things and support people in the ways that they need it because it's the same thing, Taylor. It started in April of 2020. So it's a pandemic thing, didn't mean for it to start. We're still going, and there's some really great people that are there. So I'm very thankful to all of our volunteers. Do you have a website again I can send them to you or something to send them to you real quick? Take them to throw it up in the yes, we are virtual coffee dot IO virtual Well coffee dot IO.

I don't know if I spelled virtual does that look right is that right? I don't see it. Where is it? Yes, virtual You got it. You got it. Is that it? All right cool. Go check out virtual coffee. It's fantastic Um, Alice is good to see you Janet. It's good to see you as well. What are we doing this week? We're doing all the things Janet. All right, so Let's talk about open source stuff, right? So, you know, I talk about networking, you know, from a very like tactical social media perspective, going to conferences, shaking babies, kissing hands. But open source, I don't talk about a lot.

So like, where do we want to start? Do you want to talk about open source? Like, where do you want to start from this, on this conversation? Yeah, I'll get started a little bit with open source, so you understand the context of the things that I do. but OpenSauce, we're a platform that really seeks to empower people who are using open source or who want to get into it. So that means people who are contributing, people who are maintaining projects, companies. We have lots of different ways for you to kind of like track the things that you're doing and to showcase what you've been doing as well.

So like your profile is a really good way to track your contributions. If you're looking for a job, it's a great way to send it to people. So they can see like, these are all the things that they've done. And so I think that contributing to open source is really great, especially if you're looking for a job, because you're doing everything very transparently and in the open. So you are contributing to a project in the open. You're making networking, you're connecting with other people. And that's one of the things, like I know a lot of people that are, hey, I'm really nervous about jumping into a community because I'm an introvert, or I don't know how to meet people.

Well, you'll definitely meet them in open source because you're adding to somebody else's project. You have to communicate in the open. And that's one of the things I love too. I think that we undervalue those communication skills a lot. And oftentimes when we're interviewing developers, we're looking at like, does this person communicate well, especially when we're working remotely, right? Like that has to be a top skill. And so this is why I think that it's really great to contribute to open source because it's essentially building in public for everyone to see and creating that network and connection, but there's a right way and a wrong way to do it.

100%. So I get a lot of people that ask me like, Taylor, where should I go to start my open source journey? I mean, would it be safe to say, go check out open source? I mean, is that a good starting point? For sure. And so check out our GitHub. So one of the things that we've deliberately done is create a contributor journey as we like to call it. So we have an intro course, which is intro.opensauce.pizza, but you can also find the repo on GitHub. So if you go to github.com slash open-sauce, you'll be able to see our intro course there. And this is a really great place to learn more about, like what is open source?

Why would you do open source? But it also walks you through getting your first contribution and then sends you to other repositories. So it's kind of like, it's really nerve-acking to contribute the first time for most people. So like if you're nervous and you're like, I don't know if I can do this. It's a really gentle way to do it. We walk you through all of the steps. And if you miss something, we have I maintain it. So does I you and Chrissy and we're all going to be really gentle in our response. If there's any kind of things that you need to update. And then from there, you can kind of move along to our other repositories.

We have another practice repository called the pizza verse. And then I think Nick Taylor is in the chat here. Nick does a lot of work on our app and he writes some really great good first issues for folks on the app repository as well. So we're trying to be really conscious about like making sure that everybody is enabled to contribute in some way. I love that. Talk about, so like what I guess, and this is from the non-technical guy, like ish, I said my technical, like what is open source? Like is it like, like the way I let, all right, let me explain how I think if it's open source and you tell me if I'm right or wrong.

Be gentle on me. So basically it's like, so it's a project, started by somebody else, and they're trying to finish it, and you like sign in and write some code for them. Is that it? Or am I like completely okay on that? That's not bad, that's not bad. Okay. So it is, you can start a project yourself. I think I have like 500 repositories that are open source. It's accidentally because my bootcamp had their curriculum open source. So it looks like I have a lot more, but there's a couple that I maintain myself and then a couple for open sauce. And so it's not necessarily trying to finish a project because I feel like in tech, nothing is ever really finished, right?

Like there's always updates and changes that need to be made or you find like, hey, we need some improvements. And some of that becomes like we do a lot of documentation updates because we want people to really understand what they're doing and how they can do it. So I like for more of a non-technical approach, I like to think about it as imagine you have a Google Doc and you're collaborating with other people. Um, everybody has access to that. Now, you can give people different permissions in a Google Doc, right? Like you can give them editing permission. They could just add whatever they want or you can give them commenting, um, privileges.

And that's kind of like open source. So you're giving everyone, the ability to add to your codebase, kind of like using comments, except we're using PRs, pull requests. If the maintainers of the open-source project say, like, yeah, this is a really great thing, then they're going to merge that in. Usually, the best way to approach it is to look at the issues that they have, don't just start like throwing up your pull requests. There's issues that say like, hey, we need help in this area or here's something that needs addressed, here's a bug. I spend a lot of time like writing bug reports or feature requests.

And so people can pick up that issue and then they can create a pull request that gets merged into the code base once it's complete and it works. I love that. Janet comes in here. So if a repo is marked as public, it's automatically open sourced? Yeah, and you know, the thing is, this is one thing that I wanna differentiate. There are some people out there that have open source projects that aren't necessarily looking for contributors. So it is technically open source, but maybe they just want their team working on it. And so their issues might be marked as a core team only, or something like that.

But if you look at those issues, there's usually labels there that let you know, is this available for taking? And if you follow the steps that are set up, usually in the contributing.md file, it will let you know this is how we take contributions. And some of the times it will say, we're not taking them at this time, or our contributions that we're looking for are people to create issues in bug reports. So if you go to that contributing.md file, think of that as your entry point for figuring out what does this project need and how can I add to it? I love that. You said a lot of words and I kind of don't understand, but for the most part, I really like it.

No, no, no, you're doing great. So talk about, so were you big on open source before open sauce, before joining them, did open sourcing lead you to open? So talk to me about your journey with all the open things. Okay, yeah, yeah. So when I graduated boot camp, one of the founders, I met with him like three weeks before I was gonna graduate. And he was like, okay, if you want a job, start contributing to open source. And I was like, okay, what does that mean? Yeah, but for me, that just sounds so vast. Like I wouldn't even know where to go. And that's the biggest problem I think for everyone, because they're like, what do I do to get started?

And so I looked around GitHub, I looked at some projects. There was this one that I was like, this is awesome. Like it has to do with mental health. I'm really big on that. And so I like talked to the maintainers and they gave me like admin privileges or something and I'm like, hold up. Like you don't want me having any kind of special privileges for your repository. I just wanted to see how I could help. And then I get too nervous. So I didn't really contribute. And then fast forward a couple of years in October of 2020, there's this thing called Hacktoberfest. is put on by digital ocean, and it's a month long push to get people to contribute to open source, and at the time they were giving out t-shirts.

Now, virtual coffee had been going on for a couple of months, and we thought in September, I guess, we were like, hey, maybe we should do something for that. And so we put on this Hacktoberfest event, where everybody got their first contribution at virtual coffee, and then I saw like how excited people were about contributing to open source, but also like how proud they were of the accomplishments that they made. It's not just people who were just getting started in tech, it was people at all stages of their technical journey. You know, I've like had people who have been founders of companies contributing to open source for the first time, you know?

And so that really kind of inspired me to continue to keep going and then also gave me access to things. If I'm using a product and I find, like I was working with TheaterJS the other day for the first time ever, And I was going through their like getting started guide. Like, okay, this is really unclear here. So I opened up a quick PR and they were really, really nice and got it merged in like two days later. So it's like also gives you the tools that you need to be able to help other people out and like fix any problems that other people might come across.

I love that. He has t-shirts on grading center. I love him. I love a good t-shirt too, Ryan. Ryan, we need to get you a gun, I hear a shirt. There is a question, hold on, where is it? Oh, talk about commenting on Doc. So I hear a lot as a recruiter slash, whatever I am. Like documentation, this documentation that, then Chris says updating, commenting Docs, what are Docs, what is documentation? I know people should read it. Talk to me about that. Yeah, I actually, I put out a YouTube short for open sauce for the first time the other day, getting out of my comfort zone.

And one of the very first tips that I gave for people contributing to open source to not burn out maintainers is to read the directions. And so we should think about docs as required reading that they are the directions for how you should use a product, how you should get started. And so if we look at docs kind of generally used, that'll be like the read me for the project. That means like, how do you get started with this project? How do you run this piece of software? Right? And then we look at that contributing.md file again. This is, okay, I know how to get started with it, but now I want to contribute to open source.

How do I do that? What is the process for that? And usually it walks you through. Here's a step-by-step guide. And if we talk more specifically about what people mean when they say docs, It usually walks you through all of the different things that you can do with the product or the software. So there might be different ways that you can utilize it. There might be guides that they have there. So it gives you all of the instructions and directions basically that you should need to be able to understand how to use the project. There you go, I love that. Did everybody get that? That was great, Becca, you're fantastic.

Talk about, so you talked about earlier, contribute to open source the right way. What does that mean, the right way? So I think, you know, there's a lot of advice out there that says get started in open source. And so then we have people flocking and they're super confused and they're not really sure like exactly what we were talking about earlier. And so we also find that there's a high rate of burnout for maintainers. So the people who are in charge of the projects, There's a lot of different reasons for that, but one of the reasons for burnout is because they're working with contributors who are maybe not the best open source citizens.

So what do I mean by open source citizen? I mean, somebody that kind of follows the rules, right? So the four steps that I talked about in that short would read the directions, okay? Go through everything and understand what you're doing before you ask a question. And that's one of the big things. Like people are always asking questions. I'm like, that information is already given to you. Anytime a maintainer has to answer your question, it takes their focus away from whatever they're doing and then it redirects it to you. Okay, so that's like not good. The other part of that is communicating clearly. Don't send maintainers DMs.

You know, it might be nice. You might feel like nervous about asking a question. I get that, but like the nature of open source is transparency. If you have a question, ask it in the issue, ask it in the PR. Don't make demands of maintainers. Don't, don't come on Taylor's live stream and ask me to review your PR. Right. That's not the appropriate space for it. That gets frustrating for maintainers when we have to deal with that all the time. Um, and the other part of that is like be a problem solver. I always tell my kids like, Hey guys, be a problem solver here.

Like, I can't find my socks. Like, did you look in the basket? Right? Like, I can't get this project started. Did you look in the read me, you know, if you get stuck, don't just stop, you know, don't just quit. You have to do the work. And if you're new and you're just getting started, it's you can definitely ask questions, but don't ask them the minute that you get stuck, right? You got to try and push your way forward because that's how you grow. It's like, I don't know, I like lifting, you know, I like lifting. So if I just stopped trying to lift that heavy weight, I'm never going to be able to lift.

it, you know, like if I want to hit a 300 pound deadlift, there you go. I stop at 200. I'm never going to hit it. You have to go work your way up incrementally and figure out how you can train those muscles to go further. I love that. There you go. Jarr giving you props. Best breakdowns open so I'm telling you, tell me, Beck is Beck is here today. Open so I'm just going to open you up 100%. Persistence. Let me ask you this, Becca. How How would you, because a lot of people get laid off still right now, right? I mean, it's nuts. And you know, you even saw some stuff this morning from some friends, I think that both you and I know and, and, and people are still getting laid off.

How would you work? Because I'm all about schedules, right? I love schedules and calendars and productivity. How would you work in open source contributions to your job search? Like, do you have any tips around that? Yeah. Okay. recently that was looking for a job and so they asked to like sit down and meet and talk about getting started. First of all, there's plenty of open source companies out there that are hiring and I think that maybe early on in my career I didn't understand that that hey open source projects open sourced has hired me and they are open source right like so they still hire people so you might look at some of those jobs if you're applying to an open source project you should definitely use use that software and you should make contributions because that will get you noticed.

So I would say, but on top of that, it allows you to develop skills. So we have a JobSeeker's Guide. I have a link to it. Nice. Here you go. I did it to me to private chat and I'll throw it in the banner. Okay. Oh, I just deleted it instead of copied it. So that's not ideal. So we have this JobSeeker's Guide to kind of walk you through it. But like one of the biggest challenges that people face is they're missing some skills, right? And you're never gonna be perfect. There's no such thing as a tech next developer, but you can always be developing skills.

So if you're looking at your resume and you say like, oh, you know what, I need more experience with tailwind or whatever, then that's a good opportunity to go pick up some tailwind issues, to take a look at how other teams are implementing tailwind because you can also learn through looking at those repositories. And that's one of the things like, I did a bootcamp again. I was working by myself. I was probably developing terrible bad habits because I didn't have anyone around me. But if you're looking at somebody else's code base and you have a team working around it, chances are they know what they're doing.

And you know, it's not perfect all of the time, but it can help you to grow. So I would say identify those skills that you're really lacking in. If communication is one of them, then pick an issue that you have to communicate a lot on. Or pick, usually have some kind of documentation issue open, do some writing for documentation to help other people understand. So I would say, find those weaknesses, grow them through your open source contributions, because when you do that, you're also growing your network and the visibility of what you've been doing. So good. Uh, did you get the job at open sauce by any open source to things?

Um, so a lot of open this. Hey, if we had a drinking game, if we had a drinking game for how many times we said the word open all of us would be asleep right now. Yeah, not not at 10 am Eastern. Right. We'll have to. That'll be the after hours. Yeah, yeah. Wait, one question. Oh, okay. How did I? Yeah, contributed. Like, did you like, does that, I mean, obviously you're very networked in. I think you do a wonderful job building community. Did open sourcing help get you connected at all? Or is it just strictly your networking? It's virtual coffee, to be honest with you.

So I interviewed for a role at GitHub a couple of years ago with Brian. And so we had been connected in that way. And then I got laid off actually like a year ago to maybe a year ago. Yeah, I don't think I've taught you since you joined OpenSaws, which is crazy. Yeah, that is wild. I know. I haven't been to as many conferences last year was big. Hoping to get to some this year though. But so we had kept in touch. He had done a lunch and learn for us at Virtual Coffee about open source. And so then we periodically had conversations and then he slid into my DMs and was like, hey, would you like a job?

And I was like, yes, I would. Thank you. That's awesome. I love that. Well, I mean, again, I mean, open source is this building in public? I mean, you, I think, really embody this building in public. What, as we wrap up here in the next five minutes or 10 slides when you have fun with friends, but I mean, what is building in public done for you? Oh, so much. You know, there are so many opportunities out there because of it, being able to connect with other people. Not only do I have this large network, and I always like to say that your network is not the people you know, it's a network of of the people you know as well, right?

And so it's so much deeper than we can really see. But it's also allowed me to grow so much because when you have so many different people, and I have a blog post called something like You Don't Need a Mentor, but it's all this idea about having community, the community as a mentor. And I think that that's really important because you learn from people who have different perspectives, different strengths who view you in a different way. And so anytime you're working in public and you have those connections, it makes it much easier to grow and to see your own strengths and weaknesses. Yep, I love that.

I love that. So we talked a little bit backstage about some leadership stuff. So you said you're kind of observing companies, maybe looking at individuals who have more leadership skills and others. Can you expound on that? Yeah, so I've known quite a few people who have been laid off in the last couple of years, right? And one of the things that I've noticed, now of course this doesn't hit everybody, right? There are definitely exceptions out there. But the people that I noticed who are getting jobs much more quickly than others are the people who are exemplifying leadership skills. They're good communicators. They are mentors to other people.

And again, I'm a firm believer that you can always be a mentor, whether it's your first stay in tech or you've been here 20 years. You can always help somebody else understand a problem. And so I think that if you do that and if you create those relationships and that networking, then it becomes much more likely that people recommend you for jobs. So it might not lead to a direct job, but I know the people in my network who I would recommend for a job. And that's mostly based on leadership skills and that good communication. Because I believe that, you know, we all can learn how to code, but we all need to be able to communicate and we need to be able to showcase that we're willing to say when we have a question, that we're willing to admit when we've done something wrong, when we're willing to help the people around us.

Yep, I love that, I love that. All right, so we're at time. I'm gonna hit you with my last four rapid fire-ish questions. One, what brings you joy outside of work? Well, lifting always, hanging out with my kids. That's always good time. Sure, I love that. I love that. Second question, if money were the same, what would you do outside of tech for your job? Like, money's the same, money was not the issue. What would you do? I would be a writer. Would you really? Yeah, yeah. My brothers and I have written a lot together. We're writing a book of short stories right now. We've done some screenplays and pilots.

So yeah. Are you serious? That's awesome. I love that. I'll never do that about you. That's fantastic. Also that I can see why now you're writing so much at open source. Yeah. Third question. I'm a master's in English. There you go. There you go. So you do good with words. When it comes to any frameworks, tools, technology, skill sets, that you're reading on, observing, anything you want to share? I mean, I definitely have used AI in my workflow to be way more efficient at the things I do. And I always tell people, like, I'm a mom of four kids. I don't have time to waste.

So every minute that I have, I need to use it to the fullest. And so that AI has become my rubber duck. It's become my brainstorming companion. It's become my editor. So all of these things to really be able to move much more quickly. That's awesome. I love that. Last question. But you asked you answer last time, but I remember your answer, so we can do it again. So shows called guidance counselor 2.0 because we had guidance colleges in middle school, high school and college, but now as adults, we don't really have a true guidance counselor to go to. What would be your biggest piece of career advice to young Becca?

I would say, don't be afraid to be vulnerable. It took me a really long time to understand that and I had to get through some really hard times to really be able to acknowledge that. But once you're, I really love one of my career advisors told me that any time we share our stories with others, it's an opportunity, we're inviting them to share their stories with us. And that's how you make connection with people and really make those meaningful relationships. I love that. That's awesome. Well, Becca, thank you my friend coming on it means a lot stay on so I can see about you backstage But y'all go connect with Becca Becca.

How I'm assuming that is your at handle right Becca Yes, we're pretty much everywhere. I love it Becca Hw go follow her. She's a wonderful fall go get involved in virtual coffee Go check out open sauce labs. I miss anything else I don't think so cool. Awesome. Well y'all have a great Monday tomorrow tomorrow. Very excited to have Render 2024 speaker on the show, Dan Mall. So we are going to talk about some leadership stuff. He also does a lot of stuff in design for me. So excited to always have a little bit of a designer bet to a show every now and then. So come check out that tomorrow, then Wednesday we have Joe on the show, Joe Pervett.

I'm going to think of Miss Pernanci. Joe, it's it's I mispronounced his name all the time. Yeah, Joe, but I don't think that's his name. Yeah, Joe, if you're watching this, we got nailed down your last names, uh, uh, uh, enunciation on Wednesday, but anyways, Joe's on Wednesday. So y'all have a good, oh, and Chris Demars, Chris Demars. I'm interviewing him Friday. He just landed the job at digital ocean. His job search is very grilling, very long. We're going to talk about how he cracked the code. No pun intended. That is on Friday. So y'all have a good one. We'll see y'all tomorrow. Peace. Hey, you did it.

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