Backstory
I usedĀ DjangoĀ for an independent study project during my senior year of college to develop a web app. Then one of my classes required students to do an ethnographic study of an online community. Looking for a way to add a technical aspect to the course, I chose to study the Django community. I was fairly new to Django and Python but there were a lot of small documentation tickets that I contributed to as part of my research for the course. Iāve been hooked on contributing since then.
After about eight months of submitting documentation patches, I got an invitation to join the Django team as a documentation committer. I accepted the invite and continued contributing exclusively to the documentation for several years. In the summer of 2013, I wanted to get more involved in Django development, so I started reviewing and merging pull requests in areas besides documentation.
The idea of aĀ Django Fellowship, where theĀ Django Software FoundationĀ would pay someone to shepherd Djangoās development, had been floating around for some time. The work I did as a volunteer showed the ideaās merit enough to inspire the DSF board to start a three-month pilot program.
The pilot started in October 2014 and the program was renewed on a āfundraising-permittingā basis shortly thereafter. I've full-time as a fellow for a little over two years now.
Daily tasks
You can readĀ my retrospective of 2016Ā to learn more about what Iāve done recently, including:
- TriagingĀ new ticketsĀ that were created since I last looked at the ticket tracker
- ReviewingĀ pull requestsĀ from the community
- Interspersing work on Djangoās infrastructure servers such asĀ djangoprojects.comĀ orĀ djangoci.com, or author a patch to fix a ārelease blockerā ticket such a regression in Django.
- Coordinating Djangoās release process, whether thatās a major feature release every eight months, a monthly bug fix release, or an as needed security release.
Rewards
The Django community is a group of smart and caring people. Iām blessed to work with them (everyone else, a volunteer). The last three years, an annual trip to Amsterdam for theĀ Django: Under the Hood conferenceĀ has been a social highlight that recharges my enthusiasm for the project.
"The Django community is a group of smart and caring people. Iām blessed to work with them."
Challenges
Patch reviewers. Everyone loves to write code but reviewing code is less glamorous. I think many contributors feel that code reviews from anyone not on the Django team donāt make a difference but this is not true. I created aĀ patch review checklistĀ so that reviewers can follow the same process that I use. Anyone is welcome to review a patch and mark the ticket as āReady for checkinā if it looks good to them.
Favorite moments
One member of the Django team, LoĆÆc Bistuer, gave up on contributing to Django after several non-trivial pull requests he sent went unreviewed. Fortunately, that was around the time when I started reviewing patches. He was extremely responsive to my review comments and we merged his initial contributions and later, many more patches followed. This year, he gaveĀ a talk about his work on validationĀ at Django: Under the Hood. I was proud to see him on stage.
Good advice
Donāt do it alone. Your interests may change or life may get in the way and youāll risk burnout if you donāt form a team to shepherd your project when youāre unavailable. Moving a projectās ownership from āmeā to āweā might be a step outside your comfort zone, but in the long run, most successful projects navigate this transition, as Django did.
"Moving a projectās ownership from 'me' to 'we' might be a step outside your comfort zone, but in the long run, most successful projects navigate this transition."
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