OSCON

[denise]

So, when Mark first brought up that OSCON was going to be around the time I was going to be out here, I thought, huh. I've always wanted to go to a tech/open-source conference, but I wondered if I'd get anything out of it. It made sense for Mark to go, because he could get useful things out of all the tech talks and network with all of the various people on the tech side of things. (And wait until you guys see what he learned there...) But under the theory of "nothing ventured, nothing gained" -- and especially once I heard that damned_colonial was going to a). be there and b). be talking about Dreamwidth -- I went ahead and registered, too.

I'm incredibly glad I went. I went to a lot of interesting talks, and had some great conversations with a bunch of really smart people who are doing a lot of really cool things, but the most awesome part of it was how so many people had heard about Dreamwidth. People who wanted to talk about the success we've had in encouraging new developers. People who wanted to hear about the lessons we've learned about what to do to keep people enthusiastic and active on the project. (And what we've learned about what not to do!)

It's easy for me to remember that Dreamwidth is a group project -- it's hard not to remember it, in fact, when every day I'm confronted with the evidence, in the form of a bunch of active, enthusiastic, committed people spending an incredible amount of time and energy to improve the code and the site -- but it's hard, for some reason, to remember that Dreamwidth is an Open Source community development project, no matter how much mark and I studied other OSS projects (both successful and less than successful) to see what lessons we could learn. I'm just not used to thinking of things like that; LiveJournal was always on the very periphery of the Open Souce movement, and up until now I've been approaching DW from the business end, more or less, because we agreed that was going to be my half of the contributions to making DW a successful business. I never intended to be sucked into the development end of the project!

So being used as an example of a successful Open Source project -- not once, not twice, but several times even! -- is surreal. And yet, awesome. It all doesn't seem quite real yet! There's a part of me that can't stop waiting for it all to fall apart -- for people to get bored or decide that they have more important things to do or find another project that they'd like to contribute to more than they want to contribute to us -- and another part of me that can't wait to see what it's going to look like in another year. If we're already doing this well, what else could we do?

Looking back at the Dreamwidth development process, and how we got from there to here, I have to say that one thing we did really, really well was actually not "us", but Mark: the fact that Mark took so much time in February-April to do code review, tutoring, and commit work (instead of hacking on his own projects) is what's gotten us here today. The people Mark spent time mentoring back in February are the people mentoring others now. And those people, the ones just starting out with us now, are going to be the ones teaching others in another six months or another year. I know Mark was frustrated at how slowly his own development was going back then, but he said to me, multiple times, that no matter how frustrated he was about not having as much hack time as he'd like, he knew it was going to pay off in spades.

(Which it has, and I am so, so incredibly lucky to have mark for a partner in this venture, because he gets it. I am thankful for Mark daily. He's a fabulous programmer and a great sysadmin, but what really makes him worth his weight in gold is the fact that he writes incredibly readable code, he comments his code appropriately, he writes clear and useful documentation, and he has good social skills. I can't imagine trying to do this without him.)

Even after the past few months of all my dev work, I still don't think of myself as a developer. damned_colonial interviewed me for a documentary on women in open source, and she made me say it out loud: "I am an Open Source developer." Apparently it didn't sound convincing enough, because she made me say it a few times until I really meant it!

I am an Open Source developer. This week has taught me that. I'm not "just dabbling" or "just doing a few things" or "just doing some cleanup". I'm helping to build something that thousands of people are using. I'm helping to run a project that's getting considerable community attention and interest. I'm encouraging other people to contribute to the project, and to learn with our project, so they can sharpen their skills and contribute to a project they feel passionate about.

I am an Open Source developer.

Maybe by next OSCON, that sentence will come a lot more naturally to me. I guess I can spend the next year practicing it. :)

Comments

[mackiedockie]

You are, indeed, an open source developer, and looking at the end product purely from a consumer's point of view, a very successful one, indeed.

[denise]

That's so thrilling to hear, really! Because we could be having a hell of a lot of fun doing this (which we are), but if you guys didn't find the end product useful or valuable, we wouldn't have gotten anywhere near this far. *g*

[sara]

I am an Open Source developer.

*chokes* Yes, hon, we've noticed.

[denise]

I'm not used to thinking of myself in those terms! And the reasons why are a long and boring story, but basically, I've always been the one providing support (both technical support and managerial-type support) for the people doing the development, not doing it myself. It's going to take me a while to learn to think of myself as one of the people doing the developing too!

[sara]

In other news, the sun rises in the east, the sky is blue, cats are pushy, and I have a nice bottle of cold sake. *snerk*

[yvi]

*points at http://www.dreamwidth.org/shop/gifts.bml*

*points at http://www.dreamwidth.org/site/suggest.bml*

Does that help?

[princessofgeeks]

*cheering*

[denise]

It's great to be able to look at something and say "I made this!"

[kareila]

Me too!

[denise]

It's a fantastic feeling! I never thought I'd be at a point where I could stand up and say that, but I can, and it's fucking awesome. *g*

[damned_colonial]

I was telling denise about that post right before I made her say that ;) I have to say, I got a little choked up reading about you realising it for the first time. Amazing stuff.

[kuwdora]

You are made of awesome.

EDIT cause I hit enter too quickly! (I blame my low bloodsugar!)

and Dreamwidth is made of awesome. EPIC awesome.\o/

[mark]

We'll be even more awesome in an hour or two.

[lone_lilly]

I am dying to know what this awesome thing is. XD

Like refusing to go to bed so I can see it, I AM THAT CURIOUS.

[mark]

We're almost ready. 20-30 minutes.

[lone_lilly]

I can make it. :D

[mark]

dw_news

[stultiloquentia]

I am brimming with happy. I've been noodling around on the OSCON site all week, and pouncing on twitter updates about y'all. :)

Someday I'll learn how to code for real, but meanwhile I'm glad I can help out with copyediting and stuff. I love that you're learning to call yourself a dev, and I love that I've been made to feel like I can be part of this enterprise even though I'm not a coder. There's just -- zero snobbery around here.

[damned_colonial]

Someday I'll learn how to code for real

What's keeping you? ;)

[stultiloquentia]

Weeell, I took a Java course in college and nearly flunked out. But there was something about it, so I took the same damned course the very next semester out of sheer stubbornness, and...did better, but never really grokked it. So I just figured, "Okay, at age 20, I have finally found something I'm awful at," and moved on. But I'm beginning to think it might have been the course, not me. I gnaw on the tutorials on w3schools whenever I have time, and those are totally grokkable. So. It's something I'd like to try again. But there's that itch, and there's the novel-writing itch, and the one to learn a martial art, and the calligraphy, and the drawing book I got for christmas, and and and....! *g*

[mark]

99.9% of people's "this stuff is hard" can be contributed to a bad course layout, a mismatch between the professor's teaching style and your learning style, a bad environment where you can't actually focus freely on the material, or one of a host of other problems that tend to plague CS education (IMHO).

I hear you about wanting to do a zillion things, and having to choose is difficult sometimes. But seconding what damned_colonial said, if you ever want to take some time and work on Dreamwidth, we'd love to have you! (And IMO Perl is a lot more forgiving than Java.)

[damned_colonial]

Oh man, Java. See, lots of people are put off by Java. Perl and Java are kind of diametrically opposite when it comes to programming style, so if you love one, you'll probably hate the other. People say that Perl is more expressive and freer, while Java kind of constrains you more. So I'd definitely recommend having a go at Perl, because I think you'll find it very different. Working on an existing codebase is also very different from taking a class, where they mostly make you write small programs out of thin air.

I do sympathise/empathise with the too many itches thing :) Definitely not enough hours in the day.

[lone_lilly]

I know I've gushed before but I absolutely love this site, love being a part of it in a way I've never felt about any other social network, and only wish I knew how to contribute to it in addition to monetarily.

Thanks for being so awesome. :)

[denise]

If you're interested, we'll teach you! (I actually have a post about to go up about how to get more people into developing with your project, heh.) dw_dev_training has some information, and the Dreamhack service is open for registration, so you can get started hacking quickly...

[lone_lilly]

Oh my stars, you might just be talking me into giving it a shot. I've been curious but not sure it's something I'd be good at. Still! Curious!

Yikes, now I regret volunteering to work all weekend instead of staying home and playing with DW. XD

[denise]

Be careful. That's how we rope people in. ;)

[amethystfirefly]

(My question is how basic does your knowledge have to be to learn? 'cuz my web development experiment stopped at basic HTML. -lol- But I'd love to learn!)

[damned_colonial]

That's plenty! Like I said, you can teach programming, but you can't teach passion. And if you love DW and want to learn, then you will be able to.

Take a look at these surveys/interviews of DW and AO3 developers, here and here. Lots of people there who either hadn't programmed before, or hadn't programmed in the relevant language, or were really rusty. Both projects are great at teaching and supporting people who want to learn.

This is my favourite quote from the survey responses:

"Deep down, I had always assumed coding required this kind of special aptitude, something that I just didn’t have and never would. It lost its forbidding mystique when I learned that people I had assumed to be super-coders (surely born with keyboard attached!) had only started training a year ago. People without any prior experience! Women! Like me! Jesus! It’s like a barrier broke down in my mind." (lian, here.)

[amethystfirefly]

Ooh. Interesting. I'll have to take a peek at those. Thanks for the links!

[denise]

If you're willing to commit the time necessary to learn, we'll teach people of any skill level :) Half of our developers have never touched perl before they started with us!

[amethystfirefly]

Oh, I have nothing but time. I'm disabled and basically just sit on the computer and poke it all day. -laughs-

[cesy]

I've just put up a post in dw_dev_training for basic questions, so do get stuck in and ask if there's anything that doesn't make sense.

[amethystfirefly]

whoot!! Thank you. :D

[gchick]

Look at you, all techly and developerish!

[zarhooie]

It never occurred to me that you couldn't possibly *not* be a dev. You've been a dev to me for as long as I can remember (even if it first started as "ok this is bugging me so I'm going to learn to code so I can fix it" sort of stuff).

Go you!

[samvara]

You Open Source developer you!

And yes, your project and product are looking awesome :)

[ravan]

Damn, I missed seeing you. I was prowling the Expo floor Wednesday afternoon. I live in San Jose...

[yvi]

I am an Open Source developer.

*cheers*

Oh my God, I think at some point, but I might be able to say that of myself, too *is scared*

*loves DW so much*

[azurelunatic]

You're submitting patches and all?

[yvi]

Yeah, but only small ones...

Now I sound like Denise, don't I?

[damned_colonial]

Ha! YOU ARE AN OPEN SOURCE DEVELOPER.

[yvi]

I am an Open Source Developer!

(who breaks her Dreamhack almost every day :) *looks at current error message*)

[damned_colonial]

\o/

[azurelunatic]

Gosh, what makes you say that?

[reddragdiva]

"LiveJournal was always on the very periphery of the Open Souce movement"

That said, they gave the world memcached. Very important piece of plumbing.

[damned_colonial]

I recall LJ seeming to be very much in the open source movement/community back around 1999 when when Advogato.org was the cool thing. Every second person there seemed to be hacking on LJ. But that was a long time ago, and certainly by the time I joined LJ in 2002 I wasn't seeing that any more.

[amethystfirefly]

Yes, you're a developer. And we're ecstatic that you made this place for everyone. It's made of win and awesome!

[topaz119]

I have been skimming the OSCON pictures, looking for a bald chick in a hot pink wheelchair, but so far have not seen you. *g* I did see a pretty good write-up on O'Reilly that mentioned DW (and OTW), to which I quietly waved my invisible pom-poms.

And someday, when I am not swamped, I have notes for you and your tech writing team about FLOSS, with whom I chatted briefly at the STC Summit earlier this year, and who focus on coordinating and creating documentation for open source projects. I know you have a good team, but this might be something they could use in addition to their own efforts on DW.

[damned_colonial]

Is this connected to the Writing Open Source project/conference/thingy? Emma Jane Hogbin, one of the founders of that, was at lunch with denise and mark and me the other day. Wish I'd thought to connect them on that level.

[topaz119]

Yes! I think they were planning on doing book sprints at that conference using the Floss process/strategy. At the very least, Janet from Floss was presenting.

[denise]

Oh, absolutely! I would love to get our development docs and install docs whipped into better shape.

[chris]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^ *points upward at those who have left comments before me*

Developers, developers, developers, developers...

Like this, only Open Source. *angelic choir noise*

[aquaeri]

You're so encouraging! I'm in a trying-to-figure-out-what-I-want-to-do-with-the-rest-of-my-life phase, and I know it has to feel like DW, if you know what I mean.

Which part? "Open source" or "developer"?

[asheesh.org]

Hi Denise! What a great post you wrote.

I'm wondering which part of "I'm an open source developer" you had the most trouble with? Is it hard to believe you're a programmer? Or hard to believe Dreamwidth is part of the "open source" world?

From how I read your piece, it seems to be the second one. I read it as you feeling disconnected from the community of people you see referred to as "open source." But I thought I'd double-check!

Again, thanks for sharing this viewpoint!

Re: Which part? "Open source" or "developer"?

[denise]

For me, it's hard to believe I'm a programmer. I did a lot of work for LJ, but it was always in the support/documentation roles, not development -- LJ's open source efforts weren't very inclusive, and if you didn't know what you were doing already, nobody wanted to hear from you. It's just so weird to be thinking of myself as someone who does the programming instead of someone who supports the people who are doing the programming!