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Build a network. Contribute to things. Cultivate friendships. Help people. Do that for a few years and then people might listen to your ideas.
by onion2k 4y ago
Build a network. Contribute to things. Cultivate friendships. Help people. Do that for a few years and then people might listen to your ideas.
- taubek 4y agoI've been contributing to various open source projects for years. Because I believe in them. I'm just one of the contributors, so I don't even know how to approach someone with "Hey, can you help me with...". I guess that I need to go out and hang out more. Thanks :)
- chrisallenlane 4y agoI'm the author/maintainer of an open-source project that receives a relatively large number of pull-requests. FWIW, if you're contributing to a sufficiently large project, it's entirely possible that the maintainers don't even read your name or look at your avatar when they review your PRs. (Unless, of course, you're _heavily_ involved in the project.) I personally seldom do. There simply isn't enough time to "get to know" contributors. PRs are business and transactional, and nothing else. Building FOSS is a team effort, but it's not a "social" activity. You can't "hang out" on Github. (I don't say this to be disparaging or discouraging, of course!) IMO, if you want to engage professionally with others in a more personal way, ~~Twitter~~ Mastodon, Twitch, and other similar platforms are the way to go. When I'm reviewing your PR, I only care about the diff. When I'm talking to you on Mastodon/Twitch/HN/etc, I care about your thoughts and opinions. It's just a different, less task-focused way to interact with someone. I wish you the best with your project!