Beyond Code: The Importance of Elevating Non-Code Contributions
Talkat Open Source Summit Europe 2023 · on Wednesday, 2023-09-20· at 12:20· Room 3G (3JAUREGIA - Floor 3), Abandoibarra Etorb., 4, 48011 Bilbao, Bizkaia, Spain·
summary
Argues that non-code work drives contributor growth and retention, citing a recent documentation hackathon that brought new volunteers to stale repos and a live badging rollout — badging on GitLab — that awards profile icons for review, MR closes and hackathon work. Recommends concrete tools: Credly or Discourse badges, issue templates and tags for docs/testing/design tasks, a public champions directory, newsletters and swag, plus career-value rewards like a shadow program that lets contributors shadow executives or dev directors.
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chapters (9)
- 0:00Non-code contributions intro
- 1:05Personal journey in community
- 2:27Beyond coding contributions
- 3:29Events as key contributions
- 5:16Project lifecycle contributions
- 7:02Community management basics
- 8:49Recognizing non-code contributions
- 13:04Safe inclusive communities
- 13:26Open forum on non-code
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