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It is important to recognize that contributions can come in many forms. Contributions should not just be limited to code contributions. Think bigger. How can the project's or lab's documentation be improved? What sort of examples would be useful for people looking to contribute to the project or lab? What type of blog posts would help people who were interested in contributing to the project or lab?
Examples of possible Contribute-a-thons
- Help a project localize their documentation into multiple languages by creating a translation pathway and reaching out to community members in regions around the world.
- Help a project or lab bring in more code contributors by creating a clear pathway for how someone can commit code and expand their role to ultimately become a maintainer.
Run Duration
Option 1 : Projects can decide to do a fixed short duration event such as 2 weeks ( to align with say a 1 sprint duration) focused event, where maintainers free up their time to be able to answer queries / review the pull requests and run the event with a lot of posts/ tweets/ daily updates etc. This model can have additional rewards for "max pull requests"
Option 2 : Projects can decide to run it for over a long time , say 2 months, where anyone who contributes, gets an equivalent reward in accordance with the set rules.
Phases
At a high-level, a Contribute-a-thon would have a before, during and after phase. We'll first define the specifics of what are the possible actionable's to be done in each of the different phases. And structure it with who/which team will have to work on those actions.
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- Determine how we will recognize people who contribute during event
- Swag:
- Options include creating a project/lab specific item (such as a shirt or a poker chip) or virtual item (such as a badge) that we can give to contributors
- Physical swag items are a good option to consider for Contribute-a-thon sponsors who have some budget available and virtual items are good in situations where budget isn't available
- Shout-outs:
- There are also many ways to recognize people using Hyperledger's channels (such as posting thank yous on Twitter, creating a Developer Spotlight post for people who contributed, etc)
- For an example from Mozilla, they were regularly posting a thank you blog featuring all new contributors to a given release every time a new release came out
- Reward points:
- Would work like accumulating points that are equivalent to say a $amount. Then partnering with online partners such as Amazon that have significant global presence, where that $ value can be used to purchase anything.
- Any other Other ideas ?
- Swag:
- Establish a set of metrics we will use to track success of the campaign and contribute-a-thon and create a baseline report to show contribution levels before campaign starts so that a post event metric comparison can help define the outcomes.
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- Recognize those people who made contributions after contribute-a-thon sprint end
- Create a report on the jump/leap in the metrics post contribute-a-thon
- Write a blogpost about the entire event
- Write a report on what went well, what could have been better, or improved
- The campaign is focused on getting new contributors started on their journey with the project, but we want people to stay active and get more deeply involved after the campaign ends. Carve ideas on how can we make it possible.
Recognition
Because a Contribute-a-thon is about forming a relationship with new contributors, we want to make sure we are recognizing the participants; however, we need to be careful that this recognition does not encourage people to participate only because of a "prize". We will explore different type of recognition that may be offered for a contribute-a-thon – virtual and physical. In the case of physical, we are talking about SWAG (e.g., t-shirts, poker chips). Physical recognition is limited due to shipping restrictions (think customs and postage). We talked about using the Hyperledger store as a distribution mechanism, but it has been brought to our attention that the store does not work for all areas of the world.
Virtual Recognition | Physical Recognition |
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Shout out on Twitter | T-shirts |
Inclusion in event blogpost | Poker Chips |
GitHub Badge | Pens |
Stickers |