contributing

So, here I am in a hackfest room for Zikula, actually using skills I have as a ui designer in css/html and contributing to the project.

Wait, what? I’ve just become a contributor. How did that happen?

Outsider looking in, now insider looking around.

Not being a Fedora user I came to Fudcon as a part of my research for the Fedora community (a much more in depth post on that will be coming tonight or tomorrow) in order to get to know people and understand more about the culture itself during one of the rare occasions people actually come together in person rather than their usual methods of collaborating online.

I had planned to use the barcamp day to introduce myself (which I did and will be apart of that larger post I talked about earlier), and then use the hackfest days to actually interview people. However, I realize yesterday that this time here in person amongst their peers is very very very valuable. So, rather than take up their valuable time away from this environment through in person formal interviews, its more about informal conversations. It’s just really getting to know people so that when I contact them later about participating in the research through more formal methods they know who I am, what the project is about, and will perhaps have more free time to contribute to the research rather than being rushed in this environment.

During one of these informal conversations I overheard there was a limited amount of people here who know CSS, so they weren’t sure how they were going to get the design work for this specific project done in the short amount of time they had here. Then I opened my big mouth and said, ‘Oh, I know CSS’, to which Simon responded, ‘I need you at my hackfest tomorrow’.

With that I had to learn more about what the hell I got myself into, so I attended the barcamp panel on it, got a better idea of what it was all about and realized not only could I help with my CSS knowledge, but because it was based on a nuke CMS framework I even had experience in that I could lend to the cause.

So there you go, even non Fedora users can become contributors.

Oh, and by the way, I’m working on that non part of that last statement as soon as I can. I just need someone to get the wireless working on my netbook (Dell Mini 9) in F12, as it doesn’t seem to recognize the card. I’ll even overwrite the current system if I can just get that working!