I’ve read the ‘How Tos to make forum use easier’ and ‘General Discussions Guidelines’, and I think this is the most appropriate forum for this topic. If not please correct me for future reference. And sorry, this isn’t a witty post :-p
On to my topic…
First of all, hello, nice to meet you all!
I’m one of those closet developers, where I’m pretty active in the communities of the tools I use, but I don’t often visit general forums like these.
My intent is not to be rude, or to avoid giving back to the community. In fact, the reason is because I’m so busy working on open source code that I hope the community will find useful. My time is divided between writing code and documentation, research through google and various books/documents, and spending time with my little girls. Since I have so much to do and only 24 hours in the day, I feel the biggest contribution I can make, and also the most productive (other than spend time with my girls), is to crank out at much code as I can, and to work on improving my skill set so that my code contributions continue to improve.
But I’ve found that I’ve run into a problem caused by my focus. I have a project that I’m very passionate about and I want to see if I can get others involved and have fun collaborating with other folks and get a discussion going regarding design decisions and implementation. I love the social aspect of open source projects, and I’ve recently left the main community I was a part of due to lack of faith in the direction the project was going and the management style.
Now I find myself a sole developer on an exiting project with no one to share it with, and no one to get feedback from. I’m not complaining at all. I love what I’m doing, that’s what matters.
But back in the day there were more resources to find other developers that are interested in getting involved with a project. I can’t quite remember the site names of most of them, but I remember that after I finally learned enough about code to be able to do something worthwhile I would be able to go to these sites and connect with other developers and hone my chops on an existing project. Sourceforge was one of those resources.
For some reason I’ve got an over powering urge to just go running around the web announcing that I’m working on a project and if anyone is interested they can contact me, because I don’t want to promote/spam about the project, I just want to get some interest and find a few people that understand what the heck I’m talking about and have some fun creating something.
The main problem I’ve had with that is that most sites require a minimum amount of posts in order to reach out to the community in that way. I can understand that, but I really don’t think it’s fair to those communities if I around creating filler posts just to mention that I’m looking for folks to help collaborate. I’m trying to be respectful and do this the right way, or at least the way where my concience doesn’t bother me.
There are plenty of freelance sites, but this is open source, and the goal is to have fun and be proud of what we are making (not just talking about me, but the open source community in general).
Just to cut off some comments, this is how I’ve been informing folks about my project’s activity:
- It’s is on github and I try to keep issues current
- I have a project specific twitter account and tweet often
- I have a project specific fb page
- I have just created a Google+ page
- I’ve just started a project specific google group and have been posting my thoughts on some design decisions I’ve been contemplating
- I’ve got a project specific IRC channel
- An article has been written about my project on a very reputable web site
I want everyone to know what’s going on and informed about the latest developments. I also want folks to know that the project is active. I encourage everyone to leave feedback and get involved. But other than the article that’s been written, people have to know that the project exists. If you don’t know something exists, how can you be aware of any communication that project directs towards the community?
What are the best resources to let people know that your project exists and that it highly promotes feedback and collaboration? Are there any communities that I’m unaware of that is specific to developers that are actively looking for open source projects to work on, or where open source projects can announce that they are looking for collaborators? Can you suggest any resources that might help with this process?
It might seem like I’m just trying to promote my project in this thread, but I’m really not. If I’m having this issue (not really an issue per say, more along the lines of ‘I just don’t know’), then I’m sure there are many other folks out there that might be having the same issue.
Maybe sitepoint can add a forum along the lines of ‘collaboration opportunities/volunteer help wanted/looking for project help’? There is a
I’m open to suggestions and a friendly point in the right direction. Thanks!