User groups
How will you contribute to your community?
Les Pounder on the virtues of paying it back with interest.
As long-time LinuxFormat readers will know, I was once the Chief for Oggcamp and every year my team of volunteers would ensure that those coming to Oggcamp would have a fantastic experience that weekend.
So we just turned up on the day and looked cool, right? Of course not – it’s never that easy and there were many weeks of conference calls, venue visits, to-do lists and so on. Then we looked at crew skills: were there any first aiders, who could drive, or spoke French or German. The organisation was endless, whereas the available time was not.
So why did we do it? Well, I wanted to give something back to the community that had nurtured me for so many years, and that sentiment was shared with those who volunteered their free time, and spent their own money to come to the event and help out. Sure, they got a T-shirt and a mug for their help, but the richest reward was helping their community to be the best that they can be.
For many people, the idea of contributing to a community – be it Raspberry Pi, Python, BASH or Perl – is via code. But for those who can’t write a line of code, there are many more ways to help grow what you love. Organising events such as bug-squashing parties or talks at your local user group meeting is one great way to start giving back with coding! If you have a journalistic flair then helping to document an open source project is a worthwhile exercise and it could even lead to a career!
The moral of this story? Give back to your community. It’s the greatest expression of gratitude we can make to those that give up their time.