A Message To Sprint Organizers

DjangoCon US 2017 will soon be upon us. If you haven’t already thought about organizing a code sprint for your favorite project, now is the time! With that in mind, we have a few reminders on how to make the most of the sprints.

• DjangoCon US offers one of the best opportunities to expose your project to a large number of potential contributors. Be as prepared as you can to help developers of all levels get started making contributions.
  • Do you have a contributor’s guide?
  • If so, does it have a section for new contributors?
  • Does your issue tracker have labels for issues that are good for beginners, or that specify the type of help wanted? If you were new to your project, would you know where to start?

If you’ve answered “no” to any of the above points, now would be a good time to start working on them. The better prepared you are for new contributors, the more new contributors you’ll find.

We’d also like to put a little extra focus on the various types of beginners you’ll encounter during the sprints. These include novice developers and more experienced developers who are novice open source contributors.

• Sprint Leaders and Volunteers, be sure to take extra care and be kind to beginners of all types. Making your first open source contribution can be nerve wracking, even for experienced developers. Do your best to make their early experience as positive as possible.
• Remember, onboarding beginners is the best way to grow the contributor base for your project.
• If beginners can’t get things to work with your contributor documentation, that documentation may need improvement. Consider a sprint as a rare opportunity to test the quality of your new contributor documentation “in production.”

Details about announcing your sprints will be made available at the conference. Happy Sprinting and we look forward to seeing you at DjangoCon US!