# AUNZ Carpentries Community Call
## Meet the Maintainer community! Vini Salazar

This month Vini Salazar join us to talk about the Maintainer role: what is expected, how to become one, how the Maintainer community works and what skills you can learn.

Vini volunteers as the Carpentries Maintainer Community Lead. He is a graduate student at the University of Melbourne doing research in bioinformatics, and passionate about open source and research software. Vini has a few years of experience with open source development, and is currently a Maintainer for the Python Ecology lesson in Spanish.

###### tags: `training` `community` `networking` `maintainer` `github`

:::info
- **Location:** [Click here to join meeting](https://carpentries.zoom.us/my/carpentriesroom2)
- **Date:** Thursday 18 May, 2023
4pm NZST
2pm AEST
4am UTC
12pm AWST
[See in your timezone](https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=AUNZ+may+community+call&iso=20230518T14&p1=240&ah=1)
- **Host:** Nisha Ghatak (NeSI)
- **Zoom Link:** https://carpentries.zoom.us/my/carpentriesroom2
Passcode: 202020

## Agenda ##
1. Welcome, Code of Conduct, Checkout flags, and Introductions, (10 minutes) https://docs.carpentries.org/topic_folders/policies/index_coc.html
1. Invited presentation (15 mins)
Vini Salazar, Carpentries Maintainer Community Lead, & University of Melbourne
1. Whole group Activity (5 mins)
Go to your GitHub profile: https://github.com/<your-username> and have a look at the “Activity overview” graph. How are your contributions distributed? Are they mostly commits, pull requests, issues, or code reviews? What are the benefits of each of these contributions in a project?
3. Small group breakout sessions for discussion questions from facilitator (15 minutes)
- What do you mostly use version control for?
- Managing your own projects?
- Working on large collaborative open-source projects?
- Hosting group efforts such as workshops, sprints, or courses?
Do you think maintaining a collaborative project like a Carpentries lesson could help you become a better developer/analyst/researcher? Why?

- Do you think maintaining a collaborative project like a Carpentries lesson could help you become a better developer/analyst/researcher? Why?
3. Recap in the main room to discuss responses to questions (10 minutes)
4. Closing Q&A, recap of how to get involved with the topic being presented (5 minutes)

Communications Resource: https://docs.carpentries.org/topic_folders/communications/index.html

Link to host questionnaire to be completed at the end of call: https://forms.gle/N74pFuGkRLawpCHh7
Link to attendee questionnaire to be completed at the end of the discussion: https://goo.gl/forms/aNZhcVnq4iPAz4GE3

:::

## Sign Up

#### Use the edit button :pencil: (menu bar top left) to edit this page

Please sign up to attend this community discussion below. Sharing an upcoming or past workshop? Please add the link to your workshop website along with your name. Attending as part of the instructor checkout requirement? Please add your e-mail address and the word 'checkout' along with your name.

Participants

1. Aimee van der Reis; [e-mail]; checkout
~~2. Arindam Basu~~
3. Jorge Bonnermann
4. Victor Gambarini; [e-mail]; checkout
5. Konstantina Vasileva, [e-mail], checkout
6. James Foster, [e-mail]; maintainer.
7. Ling Hu; [e-mail]; checkout
~~8. Marc Bailie~~
9. Josh Voorkamp [e-mail] checkout
10. Bex Campbell-Redl, [e-mail], checkout
11. Liz Stokes, [e-mail]
12. Nisha Ghatak, [e-mail]
13. Cheryl Claridge

## Notes
<!-- Other important details discussed during the meeting can be entered here. -->
#### Volunteer notetaker Liz

Maintainers are the poeple who maange lesson contributions. At a practical level this means monitoring the issues and pull requests on the lesson repository in github. Also, merging pull requests and doing all the practical things involved in maintaining lessons. essentially it's an asynchronous role - you have more flexibility to manage your time than an instructor or trainer.
Responsibilities and time commitment. While the CoC exists is foster the welcoming environment for contributors, we also think about how politely declining a first contribution doens't mean that pwerson can't return with other ideas, contributions, issues.
Traffic - Python and R have a lot of traffic, as they are taught a lot.

Maintainer onboarding monthly meet ups - even moving towards teh AU/NZ which is more confortable. We have 19 new people. some stepping down too, as usually poeple come on as a 12 month volunteer posision. If you step away, we have an alumni for past people too.

The best way to start getting involved is to start with making contribtions. Any direction - whether commenting on issues or pull requests, stimulating the discussion is already a contribution. By getting involved in a practical way you can ease yourself into the community.

Resources - mailing lists, slack hannel, communities channel and maintainers handbook.

Monthly maintainers 4th Thursday of the month. 12UTC and 22UTC

Special feature! Transition to the Carpentries Worikbench. Based on R and Pandoc, is a way to practice version control in a practical sense.

## Q&A
Discuss the following questions in your breakout rooms

1. Go to your GitHub profile: https://github.com/<your-username> and have a look at the “Activity overview” graph. How are your contributions distributed? Are they mostly commits, pull requests, issues, or code reviews? What are the benefits of each of these contributions in a project?

Q: What level do you need for more code review?
A: Looking at someone else's code and udnerstanding what it is - it also depends on how complex the code is. But the Workbench makes it easier to review the markdown as it is essentially a text document.
A: Just to have someone be the outside eye and be willing to run their eyes over it is helpful!
A: You can almost smap someone's code with comments, git hub makes it reaslly easy to do this. You can save yourself a lot of time/trouble by doing the review up front, you don't need to wait for others to finish because github manages the version control.
A: Pointed out the files changed tab for commenting within the code review framework.

2. What do you mostly use version control for?
- Managing your own projects?
- Working on large collaborative open-source projects?
- Hosting group efforts such as workshops, sprints, or courses?

3. Do you think maintaining a collaborative project like a Carpentries lesson could help you become a better developer/analyst/researcher? Why?

Feels like being given the keys to a mack truck becoming a maintainer - it seems awesome and chaotic and like I need to a massive expert in code review,
A: actually most maintainers are encouraged not to spend more

## Announcements

* Next AUNZ Community Call- Thurs 20 July 10am Perth, 12pm Sydney, 2pm NZDT, 2am UTC see in your timezone :https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20230720T14&p1=22

## Upcoming local workshops

[Other Carpentries Workshops](https://carpentries.org/upcoming_workshops/)