Stuart Jarvis

A while ago I asked “what’s stopping you from joining KDE?”. It was really a rhetorical question but, thinking about it, it is something I’d be interested to hear answers to.

There’s an interesting blog post (thanks to Lydia for sharing this on Identica) that points to some possible reasons. It seems the top ones are:

1. Not enough time
2. Not sure where or how to contribute
3. I’m not confident enough in my own skills

What stopped me?

Thinking back, there were a few things that delayed my own involvement with KDE. Time was a big one: I didn’t want to be that guy who turns up, makes some suggestions and promises but never delivers, so I waited for when I might have more time. I knew where I would start (Dot articles) but there was a bit of a lack of confidence in my own knowledge too – that I’d get found out writing about stuff I don’t understand as well as all you guys. I still get that , but hopefully it just makes me do my research a bit better

There is never a good time

Eventually, I realised that I will probably be busy for the rest of my working life. Actually I realise now that I had far more time when I thought I was too busy than I have now. The result is that I am that guy who turns up, makes suggestions and promises to do things but doesn’t deliver Most of us are. But the thing I realise now is that a lot of people doing some of the things that need doing some of the time can achieve quite a lot. It really is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.

You don’t know enough, but then – who does?

When you start contributing, you’ll likely realise you don’t really know what you’re doing and chances are you will screw up (but people are nice about that, generally). But you will be bringing in some skills that others don’t have. Perhaps you’re a native speaker of a language we need to use for a press release (so you can instinctively see when something doesn’t sound quite right) or you have language skills that allow you to translate useful information or act as a bridge to KDE communities around the world. Perhaps you have useful contacts in education, among artists or in science that allow you to put (potential) users in touch with developers.

Start where you want to start

The possibilities for contributing to KDE are vast. Jos (and us other promo peeps) would like your help, but there are plenty of other options too. There can be few application teams that wouldn’t welcome more developers and we always need artists. Whatever you want to do, you can get involved.

So, why not contribute?

If you would like to help out, but there is something holding you back then why not tell us? We need people and if there are things we can do better to make contributing easier it would be great to know.

Tags: busy, community, get invovled, help needed, promotion