Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

Tag
Advice

04 Apr 2017, 12:37 p.m.

How to Teach And Include Volunteers who Write Poor Patches

You help run an open source software community, and you've successfully signalled that you're open to new contributors, including people who aren't professional software engineers. And you've already got an easy developer setup process and …

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16 Mar 2017, 17:37 p.m.

What Does An Award Do?

I posted on MetaFilter about the new Disobedience Award that MIT Media Lab is starting (nomination deadline: May 1st). And in the comments there, I stumbled into talking about why one might found an award, …

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15 Oct 2016, 13:55 p.m.

New Zine "Playing With Python: Two of My Favorite Lenses"

MergeSort, the feminist maker meetup I co-organize, had a table at Maker Faire earlier this month. Last year we'd given away (and taught people how to cut and fold) a few of my zines, and …

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12 Oct 2016, 11:00 a.m.

Rough Notes for New FLOSS Contributors On The Scientific Method and Usable History

Some thrown-together thoughts towards a more comprehensive writeup. It's advice on about how to get along better as a new open source participant, based on the fundamental wisdom that you weren't the first person here …

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04 Aug 2016, 15:51 p.m.

Advice on Starting And Running A New Open Source Project

Recently, a couple of programmers asked me for advice on starting and running a new open source project. So, here are some thoughts, assuming you're already a programmer, you haven't led a team before, and …

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29 Mar 2016, 20:01 p.m.

Tips To Increase Your Conference Talk Acceptance Rate

This year I submitted talks to several tech conferences and got a higher acceptance rate than I had been used to. For instance, this year I will speak for the first time at OSCON and …

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21 Mar 2016, 16:58 p.m.

What Is Maintainership?

Yesterday, at my first LibrePlanet conference, I delivered a somewhat impromptu five-minute lightning talk, "What is maintainership? Or, approaches to filling management skill gaps in free software". I spoke without a script, and what follows …

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19 Feb 2016, 17:50 p.m.

What Should We Stop Doing? (FLOSS Community Metrics Meeting keynote)

"What should we stop doing?": written version of a keynote address by Sumana Harihareswara, delivered at the FLOSS Community Metrics Meeting just before FOSDEM, 29 January 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. Slide deck is a 14-page …

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02 Nov 2015, 6:53 a.m.

Ways to Toss Your Stuff in NYC

I've been on a house-cleanout kick recently. Thus I am grateful for the New York City Compost Project, this list of food banks & food pantries in New York City, SAFE (Solvents, Automotive, Flammables, and …

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02 Oct 2015, 18:01 p.m.

Preserving Your Old Art Or Activist Videotapes

These notes on a panel about digital preservation of fanvids spurred me to note down some links in a comment, and I figured it was worth publicizing further here. I myself put vids on Critical …

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