Qt Contributors Summit 2019 - Contributor Experience

See JIRA task: QTBUG-74429
Getting started as a new contributor requires a list of steps
Experience is that this is rather hard, esp for people that come from a github-experience
Even consulting companies working with Qt for customers are often not contributing their changes upstream
People using Qt at work will address issues that impact them - turning such local hacks into a proper upstream fix (with test etc) is a huge effort

the problem might be more social than technical; if you don’t know anyone, it is hard to get someone to look at your change
our requirements makes us geared towards professional contributors; hard for inexperienced developers to meet expectations
we expect people to come to us, we are not present where people spend their time (own code review; own blogging page), people have to learn stuff for which they already have a routine
documentation (on the wiki) is not geared towards new-comers; lots of guidelines, but nothing that supports the journey
the Qt Project seems to have little visibility; things are dominated by the Qt Company (e.g. web site), which focuses on companies and customers
we are not present as a project and don’t seem to actively try to find new developers - meetups, conferences
other projects are discussing how to improve - Python, KDE; should learn from that

recognizing first contribution, thanking, welcoming, pointing at helpful stuff
keeping contributors motivated, “gamifying” things
some of this can be automated, but we do need humans to recognize contributions, help on-boarding
regular (monthly) blogging to recognize first-time and regular contributors
developing the experience is a job - community manager is gone, so there is no point of reference for people outside TQtC
can we use the Qt account to design the experience? -> Qt Company internal discussion to follow up
label issues in JIRA as “good for new contributors”
move contribution guidelines into “documentation proper”, where it has a greater chance to be groomed
pick the brains of people that recently joined the Qt Company, identifying things that you can only learn when you are part of the company
establish a channel for newcomers (dedicated IRC channel; Qt Forum)
make sure that maintainers (and others) pick up incoming code reviews
make a Qt Project “landing page” as an independent site

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