Drupalcon mentored core sprint: part 3: what happens next?
Hi there! This is the third and final part of a series of blog posts about the Drupal Mentored Core Sprint, which traditionally takes place every Friday at Drupalcon.
If you want to read what came before, here you go:
Part one is here
Part two is here
In this blog post, I would like to show you a little of what happens behind the scenes at the Drupalcon Friday contribution sprint.
The day is completed by the core live commit. This is where one issue that was worked on during the day is committed to Drupal's git repository.
In Vienna, the issue that got committed was https://www.drupal.org/node/2912636, the contributors on Friday were gido and wengerk. They were mentored by the wonderful valthebald, who we met in part two.
This is the moment, when lauriii committed the code to the 8.5.x branch of Drupal, ably assisted by webchick:
Here's the thing about the live commit: anybody in the room could have been up there on stage. Behind the scenes, the mentoring team has been working hard with the core committers to ensure that a commit can be safely made. This is a difficult task: Drupal is a complicated system, it's interesting to see just how much thought needs to go into a seemingly simple commit.
Below is a list of some other issues that were worked on during the Friday sprint at Vienna. Some have since been committed, others still being worked on, even now. The point here is that progress was made on these issues and new contributors helped to move them forward (take a look at what happened in these issues on 29 September, 2017):
Coding Standards
DbLog erroring
SettingsTray disappearing
Add @internal to Form classes
Table drag
Batch missing title on screen
Url alias for private file uploads
Remove #size
Views DISTINCT multilingual
Toolbar uncacheable page
spelling"therefor"
The live commit is a chance for us to celebrate the success of one team, but really all those who worked on the issues above deserve to be celebrated. Our measure for how successful the day has been is whether or not the participants return to the issues after the day is over, and keep using their contribution skills.
Are you coming to Drupal Europe? Are you thinking, "maybe I have the skills to be a mentor"? That's great!
After that, you will get regular emails with instructions on how to prepare for the Mentored Core Sprint.
Don't feel that you need to know the answers to everything in order to be a mentor. You will always have other mentors around you, people you can ask for help when you get stuck.
In the Mentored Core Sprint, we are using a really well-tested process, which we have refined and improved over many years.
The key thing to remember is this: you don't need to fix the issue for the participants. Your job is to teach them how the issue queue works.
Understanding the value of finding the solution is far more important than finding the solution itself.
In the exhibition hall, there is a Mentors' Table. Go and say hello, it's a good place to hang out. We have stickers for you, and mentoring cards explaining all the different tasks on offer ...
Keep an eye out on the BoFs board during the week. There are special meetings to prepare first-time mentors, plus a meeting to do issue triage to determine good Novice issues.
Here's a clue: Novice does NOT mean trivial or easy. It means that the steps on the issue are well-defined, and actionable.
You'll be wearing the best t-shirt in town.
Here is Rachel, briefing the team before the day starts.
Every year, after it's all over, we meet at a nice restaurant for the mentors' dinner. Thank you to some wonderful companies in the Drupal Community sponsored us last September in Vienna.
There's a lot more to be said on this topic, but I'll leave it there. I hope I've been able to persuade you to give the Friday core sprint a try, as a participant or as a mentor. It's worth it.
If you're going to Drupal Europe (lucky you), then make sure you stay for the Friday as well.
Credit to Amazee Labs and Roy Segall for use of photos from the Drupalcon Vienna flickr stream, made available under the CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 licence.