Top reasons to get involved from a recent talk by former core contributor, John O'Nolan.
- Learning: Get taught how to code using best practices by core contributors for FREE.
- Recognition: Your name will be associated with WordPress, the most popular content management system on the planet. Whether you're trying to get a new job, land bigger projects, or find clients willing to pay you more money, being able to say that your work is used by millions of people to manage content on 23% of the web is kind of awesome.
- Competitive Advantage: Get to know what's going in to core before anyone else.
The short answer is that you should contribute whatever works for you. If you only have 1 hour a week to contribute, that's fine. If you have more, great! The key is to try to be consistent with your contributions so that other contributors know when they can count on you. The WordPress project can always use your help.
Head to https://wordpress.org/support/register.php and register yourself a ".org username". This is your key to the castle. Your .org profile is the canonical resource for the history of your involvement with the WordPress project. You can view your profile (or the profile of anyone else at http://profiles.wordpress.org/)
At last year's WordCamp in San Francisco, Matt Mullenweg announced the move from Internet Relay Chat (IRC) to Slack. In the simplest terms, Slack is an interface to an IRC like method of communication that is more approachable than IRC. Every contribution group has a channel where they can discuss matters relevant to their group. As an example, the community group discusses things like Meetups, WordCamps, and general community relaations.
Once you've gotten your accounts in order, it's time to dive in and pick a group that you're interested in. You can join as many groups as you want, and participate as much or as little as you want. In addition to slack channels, each group has a corresponding site where the publicly publish recaps of meetings, topics for discussion, and other useful information. http://make.wordpress.org is the jumping off point for each of these sites, and are often referred to as things like "Make/WordPress" or "Make/Community".
Each team holds regular meetings where contributors to that specific group can come together and "talk" in real-time. In my opinion, this is the best place to start. Get on slack at the time that your team is meeting and just sit and watch. You're watching for a few things:
- Who are the team leaders?
- What are the team dynamics?
- How do you volunteer for things that interest you?
Lurking during team meetings will help you learn the etiquette for joining the global conversation. Remember, every group is made up of people from all walks of life, so be respectful of everyone else. The easiest way to get on the naughty list is to not show respect for other volunteers.
- http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20150610T2000
- Find the Team Handbook, it will teach you a lot about alot