The Journey So Far

The Open Source Experience

My first open-source activity was last year, a program organized by SCA. I was happy to have my PRs merged and happy to be contributing my quota to a large existing project, and since then I have been expectant.

When the call for Contributhon came in, I couldn’t wait to get in, I missed the interview and requested a reschedule. The program started on the 1st of April and this has been my experience so far:

1. My Activities

I contributed to the layer5 Community handbook. The Community handbook is documentation of existing projects and repositories, it serves as a guide to newcomers and contributors. The Handbook offers details of each project in Layer5, links to official sites, and repositories. The Community Handbook is an updated and consolidated document of the various existing documentations.

I started off working on the Table of Content. I re-organized, reviewed the content, and introduced the layer 5 color pattern to add aesthetic to the pages. View page here

Next, I worked on content for the layer5 Teams and Maintainers. These tasks involved listing out the existing teams in Layer5 Projects and its maintainers. The goal was to make it easier for contributors to identify existing teams and possibly reach out to team members if they need help. I worked with Anita Ihuman ; the mentor, to decide on the best layout for presenting the content. Ruth Igkeah reviewed it and suggested we list only the maintainers. I successfully completed the content for these tasks. View draft here

Lastly, I worked on the Layer5 Repository Overview. This is a summary of Layer5 projects divided into Frontend Projects, Backend Projects, and other Special Projects. I listed out each of the projects, gave a brief description, and attached a link to its repository and live site, as the case may be. View draft here

I completed my tasks and added them to the main content for final review. We had our last review meeting on Friday to propose the best formatting style for the documentation.

2. Challenges faced

Being my first time working on documentation, some of the projects were alien to me. For example the Meshery projects, I didn’t understand the idea behind Meshery so I struggled with developing content for it. I reached out to the mentors and they understood my stances and advised me to use the existing content.

3. Experience gained

I am happy to have contributed to theLayer5 Community Handbook. I learned how to set up documentation to guide people on how to contribute to projects. I appreciated the experience of collaborating with the mentors and colleagues to build working documentation.

4. Improvement Suggestions

From my experience, I would say the existing structure is effective.

5. Next Steps

The next step for me is to

• Use this knowledge learned to help set up documentation for open-source projects out there.
• Actively engage in open-source activities, contribute to projects and build new skills.
• Mentor upcoming techies interested in Open Source.