Introduction and new, exploring contributors

[Jon Stanley]

On Mon, Sep 6, 2010 at 2:27 PM, Matthew Jadud <mjadud at allegheny.edu> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> My name is Matt Jadud[1], a member of the CS faculty at Allegheny
> College. Since attending a Red Hat workshop on integrating FLOSS and
> the classroom[2], I've been looking for more ways to do this in my
> teaching. This semester I am leading a course titled "Human Centered
> Design," which focuses on interface usability issues.

This is complete awesomeness.  Note that I'm *not* part of the design
team, I couldn't design my way out of a paper bag if I tried :)  But I
think I can provide a little bit of insight to some of the things on
your class whiteboard in the context of Fedora.  First, judging by the
list that you sent this to and the general gist of things on the
whiteboard, I assume you're talking about website design in
particular, and not the other design elements of the installed
distribution. With that in mind, I can answer a few of the questions
on the whiteboard. Keep in mind that these are my opinions, and others
could have other opinions :).

What tasks do folks need to accomplish?

I think that the majority of people coming to the site are going to
want to see what Fedora can do, sort of like a showcase of sorts. From
there, they should be able to easily download the distribution, and be
able to join as a contributor.

Are there usage stats available?

Not sure what you guys are looking for here, but we do maintain an
awstats instance[1] which should be of some help in this area.

Is the goal to increase the number of contributors?

Indirectly, yes. A recent study[2] of the Fedora community found that
74% of our contributors started out as users. Some salient quotes from
that also explained that these users didn't know that they could
become contributors, I think owing to the fact that they thought that
hardcore kernel development was required or something of the sort -
i.e. an educational problem that it's not widely known that we need
people other than developers to put together a distro :)

Is more support needed for the "onboarding process"?

I think that the answer here is an emphatic YES, but how to exactly do
that is anyone's guess.

> To kick things off, I had discussed with Máirín the idea that the
> students might do some lightweight testing of the upcoming F14 design.
> Mind you, they've *just started*, and so the idea with this is to
> quickly get a sense for what is involved in going through a testing
> process from start to finish. Also, we want our presence here to be
> "lightweight," as we know you're busy in the lead-up to R14. Our goal
> is to help provide some feedback and testing on the design as it is
> progressing.

I can make myself available at the two times that are green in your
whenisgood right now (Tues/Thurs at 8PM), though I'm not exactly sure
how valuable I'd be in that session not being actively involved in the
websites team :)

[1] http://fedoraproject.org/awstats/fedoraproject.org/
[2] http://www.cyber-anthro.com/beta-an-exploration-of-fedora%E2%80%99s-online-open-source-development-community/