I'm Ayu, a tech blogger, front-end developer, and open source and tech community enthusiast based in the Netherlands.
I'm participating in Hacktoberfest for the 5th time this year. In my pledge post, I mentioned that this year, I want to focus more on supporting the open-source community, especially beginners in open-source.
I never imagined that I could go this far. But this year marks the first time I become a maintainer for projects in several tech communities. Not only did I get the opportunity to maintain projects and to learn more about open source, but my wish to support beginners in open source also came true! 🥰
How the Journey Began
My open source projects maintainer journey began with the Preptember 2023 challenge at the Virtual Coffee community. After a discussion with the Monthly Challenge Team, we proposed to the Core Team to create and maintain a repository for our members to practice open source and list repositories that we can verify for Hacktoberfest 2023.
It was the first time ever I prepared a repository to be ready for contribution as an open source project from scratch! 🤩
And it was a success! 🥳
I'm happy to see the enthusiasm of our members contributing to this repository.
A repo for Virtual Coffee members to practice open source and to list VC-verified repositories.
Welcome Preptember!
This is a special repository for Virtual Coffee members to prepare themselves for Hacktoberfest by practicing open source and listing VC-verified repositories we can recommend for Hacktoberfest.
📢 Only PRs from existing Virtual Coffee members will be accepted.
You can watch our video walkthrough to learn more about this repository and how to contribute:
VC.Preptember.Repo.Walkthrough.mp4
🤝 Contributing
See our contributing guide for detailed information and instructions on contributing to this repository.
💭 Do you have questions?
Whenever you need help, you can ask for it in the #open-source or #help-and-pairing channels in Slack. You can also read our guide on how to ask questions.
We're here to help you! 💙
☕ Join Virtual Coffee Community
If you're interested in joining our community, you can learn about us through our website and join the waitlist.
OpenSauced is a platform to help engineers to expand their resume through open source contributions.
I have been contributing to OpenSauced projects, from raising issues around the app to improving documentation in some repositories. These processes make me familiar with those repositories and give me a sense of how to improve things around the projects.
I didn't think twice to say yes when OpenSauced offered to support them in maintaining some repositories. And it was an honor when they announced that I'm officially part of the Community Maintainers Team, together with @bekahhw and @cbid2.
Here are the projects that I help to maintain:
Intro to Open Source with OpenSauced
This repo contains a course designed to introduce beginners to open source and guide them through contributing to open source projects.
Empowering Your Open Source Journey: From First Contribution to Project Leadership
🍕 The Open Source Education Path with OpenSauced 🍕
Welcome to OpenSauced's Intro Repository!
This repository is the home of OpenSauced courses for people who want to learn to contribute to open source projects and for people who want to become project maintainers.
While folks are taking the Intro to Open Source with OpenSauced, they will put their skills into practice in one section by contributing to this guestbook repo.
This guestbook is a place for people who have taken OpenSauced's Intro to Open Source course to take their first steps into contributing to open source.
Getting Started
For complete instructions on how to add yourself to our guestbook, please head to the "Let's Get Practical" section in our Intro to Open Source course.
After finishing the intro course and contributing to the guestbook repo, folks can expand their open source journey by contributing to our pizza-verse, the repository for Pizza lovers!
The Pizza Lovers Repository is a collaborative project where we can come together and contribute pizza-related content. Whether you have a fantastic pizza recipe, an interesting pizza fact, or just want to share your opinions on the best pizza toppings, this repository is the perfect place to do it!
You can now add a traditional food from your hometown or country to this repository, in addition to pizza!
Share your favorite pizza recipes. Whether it's a classic Margherita pizza or a unique creation of your own, this category aims to provide a variety of pizza recipes for everyone to enjoy. Contributors can share their recipes, including ingredients, cooking instructions, and other relevant details. Feel free to include images of your pizza creations to inspire others to try your recipes!
SheSharp is a non-profit foundation based in the Netherlands that makes it easier for all women and non-binary people to enter, stay, and grow in the tech industry.
My open source journey with SheSharp began with offering my help to support the community during Hacktoberfest through answering questions about open source, supporting beginners, and/or reviewing issues and PRs.
After raising an issue to improve their documentation, I collaborated intensively with the maintainers to improve the documentation and repositories to prepare them for Hacktoberfest contributions. I also actively gave ideas around open source and Hacktoberfest for our community. From there, I am trusted to be one of the maintainers for their open source projects.
One of the projects that I help maintain:
Knowledge Hub
This repository contains a collection of resources covering different areas, from tech-related, such as software development, data analysis, product management, and quality assurance, to the general ones that can help others, such as housing in The Netherlands, supportive tech organizations, etc.
The knowledge hub provides useful resources for SheSharp community members.
SheSharp Knowledge Hub
This is a collection of resources gathered by SheSharp community.
It includes a table of contents for you to navigate to the sections that matter the most to you.
The resources collected here cover different areas, from tech-related, such as software development, data analysis, product management, and quality assurance, to the general ones that can help others, such as housing in The Netherlands, and so on.
Virtual Coffee is, and always will be, a genuine tech community that values and prioritizes supporting one another.
As Documentation Team Lead at Virtual Coffee Community, I regularly contribute to our repos to maintain documentation. However, this year is my first time co-maintain one of our repositories.
We aim to make our podcast transcripts more accessible and enjoyable to read by all audiences. At the moment, the transcripts are automatically generated, and they contain some mistakes. We need to edit the transcripts manually by listening to the episode and improving it.
One of my biggest accomplishments as a maintainer is learning to give feedback and communicate better with contributors.
For example, I walked a new contributor through resolving merge conflicts. I provided the steps as well as some necessary screenshots for better understanding in this PR.
By observing incoming contributions, I now have better eyes to see our contributors' pain points and how to ease maintainers' tasks.
For example, most contributors who contribute to the guestbook repo are beginners, and this repo has a high risk of getting merge conflicts. Facing merge conflicts is very scary and intimidating, not only for beginners but also for folks who already have experience in contributing.
So, I created an issue in OpenSauced's guestbook repo to add a section for resolving conflicts and working on the documentation update. Adding this section would help contributors resolve the conflicts and help maintainers from having to walk through the process of resolving conflicts for each contributor.
Another thing is I created my first-ever video walkthrough to resolve conflicts in Virtual Coffee's Preptember repo.
The Lows
As a contributor, I understand the risk of getting a PR not accepted whenever we don't ask to be assigned to an issue unless the contributing guidelines state otherwise.
But now, as a maintainer, I had my first experience closing a PR that didn't follow the rules. Our guidelines clearly state that contributors must ask to be assigned to an issue before they can work on changes. However, a contributor submitted their PR without asking us to be assigned. That was heartbreaking, but rules are rules.
Growth
My communication and mentoring skills have greatly improved since becoming a maintainer. I have also become much better at putting myself in other people's shoes and seeing things from their perspective.
I used to be disappointed in myself if I couldn't contribute to a project because someone beat me to it (and this happened a lot! 😂) or the issues were interesting but too difficult for my expertise. Raising an issue or getting PRs merged gives us the feeling that we do contribute because we can show them, right?
But now, as a maintainer where most of my tasks are reviewing issues and incoming PRs, I have learned that giving feedback and ideas is very valuable in open source. We cannot showcase feedback and ideas, so it may not get enough recognition. But it helps people who need them most. What is more rewarding than helping others to learn and grow?
So far, the hardest part for me is learning to say no and reject PRs when they do not follow the rules. But, hey, it's part of the growing process! 😄
Seeing contributors take or discuss feedback, learning something new, and getting their PRs merged gives me happiness. Discussing ideas and supporting other maintainers gives me joy.
I'm so much in my happy place right now because not only do I support them, but they also help me in learning and becoming a better maintainer (and contributor). 💙
Ayu Adiati
