---
###### tags: `new contributors meetings`
# Matplotlib New Contributors Meeting Oct 2020-May 2023

Welcome to the monthly call for new contributors to the Matplotlib project 🎉

* Next meeting: [May 2nd, 2023 (Tuesday) @ **11AM UTC**](https://time.is/1100_2_May_2023_in_UTC/)
* Join via [Zoom](https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81285851006?pwd=Tks2QjRkNWh5NGw0TmU1RUwwOVluZz09)
* if you need a passcode for zoom MPL should work

### Code of Conduct

We want to take a moment to remind you that this meeting, like all project spaces, is meant to be open, welcoming, diverse, inclusive, and it's important for us to have a healthy community. Like all matplotlib spaces, and everyone participating in them, this meeting will follow our [code of conduct](https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/blob/main/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md). If you haven't read it yet, please take some time to do so later on as it already applies to you. For now, in short, please be kind and generous towards one another.

## Agenda for May 2nd, 2023

Present: Melissa Mendonça (@melissawm), Hendrik (@kolibril13), Martín (@martecast), Evgeni (@turnipseason), Ratna (@devRD), xtanion

please add your names (and github handle in brackets). This will make it easier to stay in touch later in Gitter and on issues and pull requests (PRs) 😉 This is optional since these notes will be recorded in our Github repository. If you’d like you can also paste your answer in the zoom chat 😉

*Feel free to add items for discussion to this agenda!*

* Introductions:
* Name
* A bit about our experience with matplotlib/python as users
* Newcomer: why are we interested to start working with the project
* Maintainer/contributor: how long have we worked with the project and what do we primarily do
* [name=Melissa] Contributor Experience Lead, she/her
* I am mostly working on documentation, and contributor experience related issues (for example organizing this meeting). I am a new contributor to Matplotlib as well! My background is applied mathematics, and I'm a maintainer for NumPy and SciPy.
* [name= ]

* Discourse link is not in the contributor guide?

## Agenda for April 4th, 2023

Present: Melissa Mendonça (@melissawm), Greg Lucas (@greglucas),
Ratnabali (devRD), Kyle Sunden (ksunden), David Sebode (@sirskillful), Rachel Hyeon (@rachelhyeon), Hannah (@story645), Zach (@zrottman)

*Feel free to add items for discussion to this agenda!*

* Introductions:
* Name
* A bit about our experience with matplotlib/python as users
* Newcomer: why are we interested to start working with the project
* Maintainer/contributor: how long have we worked with the project and what do we primarily do
* [name=Melissa] Contributor Experience Lead, she/her
* I am mostly working on documentation, and contributor experience related issues (for example organizing this meeting). I am a new contributor to Matplotlib as well! My background is applied mathematics, and I'm a maintainer for NumPy and SciPy.
* [name=Greg] Matplotlib Maintainer, he/him
* I work on satellite data processing, and enjoy working with map data and Cartopy. I've been with Matplotlib for a little over a year now.
* [name=Kyle] Matplotlib Maintainer, he/him
* Work on NASA funded grant
* Chemistry PhD (spectroscopy)
* [name=David] First time contributor, he/him
* 5th year CS student
* I have been using MPL for quite some time now and since the Uni also incentivesed us to contribute to an OS project, what better spot to do it than the MPL community? :D
* Recently submitted our first pull request with a colleague: https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/25591
* We have an issue with testing though and are in need of help. Any tips are appreciated.
In short, the implementation of the function works as expected when running it normally, but not when the pytest is executed, even though the same function is called. After align_titles is called, we call savefig to save the figure. In the tests the titles are not aligned anymore.
* I also described the issue in the gitter #incubator channel https://matrix.to/#/!WDXvBEYKsvzeYkGXlx:gitter.im/$DPMm4zHfdtqxO3XqIqyKt_4x0W7b1IAIjvtLZt--fiU?via=gitter.im&via=matrix.org
* [name=Rachel] First time contributor, she/her
* I'm a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University's Department of Statistics and Data Science.
* I've used Matplotlib for school projects and assignments and wanted to learn more about what is going on in the background and contribute to it.

### General notes
- How to submit a pull request with multiple authors: https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/committing-changes-to-your-project/creating-and-editing-commits/creating-a-commit-with-multiple-authors

---

## Agenda for March 7th, 2023
Present: Ratnabali (@devRD), Tom (@saranti)
please add your names (and github handle in brackets). This will make it easier to stay in touch later in Gitter and on issues and pull requests (PRs) 😉 This is optional since these notes will be recorded in our Github repository. If you’d like you can also paste your answer in the zoom chat 😉

*Feel free to add items for discussion to this agenda!*

* Introductions:
* Name
* A bit about our experience with matplotlib/python as users
* Newcomer: why are we interested to start working with the project
* Maintainer/contributor: how long have we worked with the project and what do we primarily do
* [name=Melissa] Contributor Experience Lead, she/her
* I am mostly working on documentation, and contributor experience related issues (for example organizing this meeting). I am a new contributor to Matplotlib as well! My background is applied mathematics, and I'm a maintainer for NumPy and SciPy.

- WIP PR: Mathtext https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/25359
- How to write an image test?
- Testing guidelines: https://matplotlib.org/stable/devel/testing.html#testing

- https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/25210
- What is the right way forward?
- Might need to be discussed at the community meeting ("needs discussion" label)
---

## Agenda for February 7th, 2023
Present: Kyle (@ksunden), Melissa (@melissawm), Greg Lucas (@greglucas), Teresa Kubacka, Ratna, Lester Jones, Tom (@saranti)

* [name=Warren (@WarrenTheRabbit)] Not a presenter; interested in becoming a contributor
* My sole matplotlib experience comes from doing a *Foundations of Data Science* subject at university. I'm a novice programmer looking to upskill and execute a career change.
* Newcomer reason: A mentor suggested I dive deep into an Open Source project and live and breath that project - both to manage my brand (and thereby attract recruiters) as well as to gain experience and contribute to something that can be meaningful and lifelong.
* My question: Is there a structured and recommended learning pathway for newish programmers to deep-dive the matplotlib library?
* [name=Melissa] Awesome - hoping to see you around!

* [name=Melissa] Kyle will be working through a PR for https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/issues/25146
* Pre-commit hooks: https://matplotlib.org/stable/devel/development_setup.html#install-pre-commit-hooks-optional

## Notes

## Agenda for January 3rd, 2023

**Present:** Melissa (@melissawm), Greg (@greglucas), Matthew Feickert (@matthewfeickert), Jessica Peters, Chahak, Mike, Ray, Hannah (@story645)

> please add your names (and github handle in brackets). This will makes it easier to stay in touch later in Gitter and on issues and pull requests (PRs) 😉
> This is optional since these notes will be recorded in our Github repository. If you'd like you can also paste your answer in the zoom chat 😉

*Feel free to add items for discussion to this agenda!*

* Introductions:
* Name
* A bit about our experience with matplotlib/python as users
* Newcomer: why are we interested to start working with the project
* Maintainer/contributor: how long have we worked with the project and what do we primarily do
* [name=Melissa] Contributor Experience Lead, she/her
* I am mostly working on documentation, and contributor experience related issues (for example organizing this meeting). I am a new contributor to Matplotlib as well! My background is applied mathematics, and I'm a maintainer for NumPy and SciPy.
* [name=Greg] Matplotlib Maintainer, he/him
* I work on satellite data processing, and enjoy working with map data and Cartopy. I've been with Matplotlib for a little over a year now.
* [name=Matthew] Occasional contributor to matplotlib CI, maintainer of libraries in the Scikit-HEP ecosystem, he/him
* I work as a postdoc at the intersection of particle physics and data science, with a focus on the Scientific Python ecosystem and the Sckit-HEP ecosystem (high overlap). I've been making small contributions to matplotlib for about a year now.

* Presentation: https://hackmd.io/@matplotlib/ncm

## Notes

- [name=Matthew] How to support students making targeted contributions
- Have student developer interns with good javascript background, is there ways for them to contribute on that?
- pydata-sphinx-theme: https://github.com/pydata/pydata-sphinx-theme
- matplotlib newsfeed: Can write some javascript that can read some CSV (avoid manually updating newsfeed)? (might be a good 1-2 week intro project)
- relevant discussion: https://github.com/matplotlib/mpl-brochure-site/pull/17
- https://github.com/matplotlib/mpl-brochure-site
- https://github.com/matplotlib/mpl-sphinx-theme
- There is also javascript backends: https://github.com/matplotlib/ipympl
- replite for in-browser mpl: https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/22634
- move inheritance diagrams to d3? (i.e. https://matplotlib.org/stable/api/animation_api.html)
- requires sphinx embedding
- Should have student developer interns join incubator [Gitter](https://gitter.im/matplotlib/matplotlib)

- [name=Chahak] Check figures equal documentation?
- Can you pass arguments to savefig()?
- Not currently, but may be an extension
- Does not respect facecolor on save?
- Raise an issue if this isn't working as expected.

## PyBind11
- https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/issues/23846

## Agenda for December 6th, 2022

**Present:** Adi Harush, Alex Sroussi, Melissa Mendonça (@melissawm), Noa Tamir (@noatamir), Chahak Mehta (@chahak13), Kyle Sunden (@ksunden), Teresa Kubacka (@paniterka)

* Introductions:
* Name
* A bit about our experience with matplotlib/python as users
* Newcomer: why are we interested to start working with the project
* Maintainer/contributor: how long have we worked with the project and what do we primarily do
* [name=Melissa] Contributor Experience Lead, she/her
* I am mostly working on documentation, and contributor experience related issues (for example organizing this meeting). I am a new contributor to Matplotlib as well! My background is applied mathematics, and I'm a maintainer for NumPy and SciPy.

- How to find good first issues to fix?
- You can look around the [good first issue label on GitHub](https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/issues?q=is%3Aopen+label%3A%22Good+first+issue%22+sort%3Aupdated-desc)
- Feel free to ask for help on GitHub or on gitter.
- You can also ask on the general gitter channel to be added to the _incubator_ gitter channel
- Shared by Teresa: https://github.com/paniterka/awesome-matplotlib
- Shared by Chahak: https://github.com/chahak13/maige
- We also talked about a possible d3 backend to mpl
- Existing work (outdated, uses a very old d3 version): https://mpld3.github.io/
- Kyle mentioned https://www.anaconda.com/blog/python-data-visualization-2018-why-so-many-libraries
- Also mentioned, for documentation: https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/24218
-

## Notes for November 1st, 2022

**Present:** Melissa Mendonça (@melissawm), Hannah (@story645), Noa Tamir (@noatamir), Marco Piani (@marcopiani), Erin Hoffman (@hoffm386), Benton Anderson (@benton-anderson), Chahak Mehta (@chahak13)
> please add your names (and github handle in brackets). This will makes it easier to stay in touch later in Gitter and on issues and pull requests (PRs) 😉
> This is optional since these notes will be recorded in our Github repository. If you'd like you can also paste your answer in the zoom chat 😉

*Feel free to add items for discussion to this agenda!*

* Introductions:
* Name
* A bit about our experience with matplotlib/python as users
* Newcomer: why are we interested to start working with the project
* Maintainer/contributor: how long have we worked with the project and what do we primarily do
* [name=Melissa] Contributor Experience Lead, she/her
* I am mostly working on documentation, and contributor experience related issues (for example organizing this meeting). I am a new contributor to Matplotlib as well! My background is applied mathematics, and I'm a maintainer for NumPy and SciPy.

- How to find good first issues to fix?
- You can look around the [good first issue label on GitHub](https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/issues?q=is%3Aopen+label%3A%22Good+first+issue%22+sort%3Aupdated-desc)
- Other issues might also be suitable, just didn't get tagged with "good first issue"
- For example: Update examples in galleries
- Hannah mentions that some of the examples in the gallery are 15 years old and use old API or non-recommended methods
- Hannah has an open Issue that lists some gallery examples that need help
- [ DOC: Add more explanatory comments to gallery examples #11654 ](https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/issues/11654)
-
- Development setup
- If you need to check for a specific configuration, you can check the [CI configuration files](https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/tree/main/.github/workflows) for a specific config/Python version

## Notes from October 4th, 2022

**Present:** Melissa Mendonca (@melissawm), Greg Lucas (@greglucas), Ugochukwu Onyeka (@onyekaugochukwu), Subba Lakshmi (@subba2048), Pavithra Eswaramoorthy (@pavithraes)
> please add your names (and github handle in brackets). This will makes it easier to stay in touch later in Gitter and on issues and pull requests (PRs) 😉
> This is optional since these notes will be recorded in our Github repository. If you'd like you can also paste your answer in the zoom chat 😉

*Feel free to add items for discussion to this agenda!*

* Introductions:
* Name
* A bit about our experience with matplotlib/python as users
* Newcomer: why are we interested to start working with the project
* Maintainer/contributor: how long have we worked with the project and what do we primarily do
* [name=Melissa] Contributor Experience Lead, she/her
* I am mostly working on documentation, and contributor experience related issues (for example organizing this meeting). I am a new contributor to Matplotlib as well! My background is applied mathematics, and I'm a maintainer for NumPy and SciPy.

> Newcomers please add items to the agenda based on your interests! What would you like us to discuss? do you want to ask something? are you already working on a specific PR? you can add a link to it ✨ Would you like to get some guidance on how to navigate some of the code? OR learn how to add a test? We will do our best to answer or help you connect you with the right people ☺️

* Where to start contributing?
* Look through current open issues because those are generally open questions that people have a desire to see fixed or implemented.
* Changing or suggesting style sheets for nicer output would be a nice contribution
* More info here -> https://matplotlib.org/stable/gallery/style_sheets/style_sheets_reference.html
* Adding aria tags and improve accessibility to the plots (either svg or other output) is also a good way to go
* Some open aria issues: https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/search?q=aria&type=issues
* How to handle multiple people working on the same issue?
* Doesn't happen often
* Generally point the second person to the first PRs and tell them to help out and contribute to the other PR.
* There is a GitHub "co-authored-by" tag in the commit message.
* Getting PR approved
* Volunteers are reviewing, so there can sometimes be a bit of a lag in response
* If you have a blocker for your work, feel free to bring it up at the weekly maintainer's meeting and advocate for it
* Two reviewers required for code changes (one for docs). Other packages only require one reviewer and a second one to click the merge button, others are single reviewer only.
* Is there a Matplotlib survey that happens once/year to get user feedback?
* Dask and Numpy have this and find it valuable.
* https://numpy.org/user-survey-2020/
* Reach out to a quantitative research class to design the survey and questions?
* NumFocus could provide the framework for it potentially and help with writing the questions

## Useful Resources

* [Our contributor Guide](https://matplotlib.org/devdocs/devel/contributing.html)
* This is where we keep past meeting notes from the new contributors meeting [on github](https://github.com/matplotlib/ProjectManagement)
* You will soon find today's meeting notes there
* You can also have a look at topics and links that were shared before 🧐
* If you are curious, here's an article about [the architecture of Matplotlib](http://www.aosabook.org/en/matplotlib.html)
* Here is a presentation on ways to contribute to Matplotlib: https://hackmd.io/@matplotlib/ncm

### Communication channels

How will we communicate asynchronously while working on the project?
* [Gitter](https://gitter.im/matplotlib/matplotlib)
* A chat platform which is useful for shorter questions
* #incubator channel, our non-public communication channel for new contributors
* Ask Noa/Melissa/Greg on chat now, or later on gitter to be invited
* [Discourse](https://discourse.matplotlib.org/)
* A forum platform which is useful for longer questions that are harder to ask on chat
* [Developer mailing list](https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/matplotlib-devel)
* We publish information which is important for contributors on this list. People from other projects might also share useful information or questions here. That said, it is also mirrored on our discourse 😉 (unless we there's a technical issue like happened recently 🙄)