Sandra McCann is a Linux and open source advocate. She's worked as a software developer, content architect for learning resources, and content creator. Sandra is currently a content creator for Red Hat in Westford, MA focusing on Ansible.
Sandra McCann
Authored Comments
Great intro on how to set up community calls. I do struggle with how to gain acceptance for something like this within a more traditionally-oriented organization. The community of interest would likely equate to customers, but there is a tendency in some orgs to keep customers and internal developers away from each other. That's a sizable brick wall to try to tear down for sure.
I have seen some succeed with a more rigidly controlled community - hand-picked customers and hand-picked internal people, presumably coached and trained on how to manage that vital feedback loop. Does still make me wonder, though, how much more could be gained if a more open community collaboration could happen as you describe here.
Definite thumbs up for this article! I don't have this kind of experience gaining a new job, but I can say participating in open source projects has helped me gain knowledge that I could directly apply to my current job.
And I would add, it's not just developers who can benefit from all this. Interested in being a technical writer? Try helping out on your favorite open source project documentation. Want to learn a project inside and out - volunteer for the test/QA team. I learned a ton on Fedora last year just by following the scripted manual tests they had to validate each test-candidate image. Great fun and learning to boot!