Get Started Contributing to Open Source Through Civic Tech with Sara Cope

Contributing to open source civic technology is a great way to give back to a project you care about, become a better community participant, and help make a project more useful while also leveling up your own personal skills. But often those who want to contribute have a few misconceptions that prevent them from making that first pull request, including:

• I’m not a good enough programmer to contribute to open source
• I don’t know the project well enough to contribute
• I don’t write code, so I can't add value to the project

After this talk, you'll walk away with an understanding of open source and civic tech. You'll feel empowered to contribute to a project that interests you and have a guide of what to look for when searching for that project. You'll also have a set of actionable best practices to follow when making your first open source pull request so that you feel less intimidated when contributing to a project.

Sara is a software engineer working remotely for the General Services Administration where she works on Code.gov, a catalog of government open source code, and other open source projects. When Sara isn’t immersed in all things web, she can be found playing tabletop games, collecting toys, and enjoying her local park system.
https://twitter.com/sarassassin