Tag Archives: Open source

Kickstarting your tech writing career with open source

After graduating from University in the midst of a pandemic, I knew that I wanted to be a tech writer, but I wasn’t sure how to start. Google Season of Docs was the perfect way to launch my career; it let me work on my own terms and led to me starting my own business and to subsequent tech writing jobs in open source. I am currently working as a tech writer at Google and volunteering for documentation-related open source projects.

Should you join an open source project?

The charm (and challenge) of open source is that the line between creators and users becomes blurred. Do you wish that your beloved tool had that one feature you really need? You can add it yourself! Other users might support your feature request and may even help you build it. Before you know it, you’re part of a wonderful community bound together by passion.

People join open source projects for many reasons:

  • They believe in the vision of a project and want to help build it
  • They want to build professional and technical skills
  • They are motivated by the possibility of hundreds—or even thousands—of people using their work

Life in open source as a tech writer

Many contributors in open source come from a software engineering background. They are great at building software, but they sometimes struggle with documentation. Through Google Season of Docs, open source projects can hire technical writers to help them create much-needed content. These technical writers are likely the first person in the project working exclusively on educational content—which comes with ups and downs.

The fun parts

As an open source technical writer, you will often be in close contact with your users. Through researching user needs, technical writers develop more empathy for the struggles of the users. Many tech writers (myself included) find that this closeness helps them write better.

Contributing to open source also allows you to create documentation in different contexts. For example, you might have authored content in a CMS in the past—diving into an open source project gives you the opportunity to explore a docs-as-code workflow. Another circumstance could be that you wrote documentation in a different industry and you want to see what it’s like to document software. Changing up your writing routine helps you find more creative ways to tackle problems for the next project you work on.

The hard parts

Documentation quality can be quite variable in open source. While some pages might be really useful, others might be outdated, don’t follow the user workflow, or cover way too much information on one page. Making sense of the existing documentation landscape can feel like a daunting task.

Most open source projects suffer from gaps in the documentation. Since open source developers are so enmeshed with their code and the project, they have a lot of context, and suffer from the “curse of knowledge”. It’s hard for contributors, or anyone who has held a position for a while, to remember what it was like to be a beginner or new to a project. When developers write documentation, their brain auto-completes what is missing on the page.

Because many people work on open source for personal satisfaction, you might experience pushback from people who are protective of their documentation. I find it helpful to view pushback as an act of caring about documentation. Take a closer look at why you are receiving pushback:

  • Do the developers have concerns about your technical understanding?
  • Are they not ready to let go of their document?
  • Do you have different ideas of who the user is and what their goals are?

Understanding developer concerns can help you reach the shared goal of improved documentation.

Succeeding in Google Season of Docs and beyond

These tips helped me make the most of my Google Season of Docs experience.

Gain clarity

Take time in the beginning of the project to really understand the software, the user’s needs, and your docs landscape. (I allocated one third of my entire project timeline to gaining clarity.) Talk to your project mentors, do user research, and perform a content audit—this will help you understand the current structure and identify weaknesses and gaps in the content.

Keep your community in the loop

Open source communities attract contributors from all over the world—which means communication is usually asynchronous and in writing. Transparent communication is a must to keep your users (and potential co-creators) engaged. When they know what’s going on, it’s easier for them to chip in.

Deal with pushbacks

Transparent communications and a solid documentation plan go a long way towards addressing concerns. It’s easier to receive support if your team knows what you’re doing.

Build a professional support network

Find other tech writers to geek out with, especially if you’re the only technical writer in your project. Groups like Write the Docs and The Good Docs project are good places to find like-minded people to brainstorm and learn with.

I hope you find a project that interests you and the bandwidth to participate in Google Season of Docs. It was a worthwhile experience for me, helped me advance in my career, and I hope the same for you.

P.S. You can find a detailed write up of my work for Season of Docs ‘21 on my website.

By Tina Luedtke, Technical Writer – Google

Kickstarting your tech writing career with open source

After graduating from University in the midst of a pandemic, I knew that I wanted to be a tech writer, but I wasn’t sure how to start. Google Season of Docs was the perfect way to launch my career; it let me work on my own terms and led to me starting my own business and to subsequent tech writing jobs in open source. I am currently working as a tech writer at Google and volunteering for documentation-related open source projects.

Should you join an open source project?

The charm (and challenge) of open source is that the line between creators and users becomes blurred. Do you wish that your beloved tool had that one feature you really need? You can add it yourself! Other users might support your feature request and may even help you build it. Before you know it, you’re part of a wonderful community bound together by passion.

People join open source projects for many reasons:

  • They believe in the vision of a project and want to help build it
  • They want to build professional and technical skills
  • They are motivated by the possibility of hundreds—or even thousands—of people using their work

Life in open source as a tech writer

Many contributors in open source come from a software engineering background. They are great at building software, but they sometimes struggle with documentation. Through Google Season of Docs, open source projects can hire technical writers to help them create much-needed content. These technical writers are likely the first person in the project working exclusively on educational content—which comes with ups and downs.

The fun parts

As an open source technical writer, you will often be in close contact with your users. Through researching user needs, technical writers develop more empathy for the struggles of the users. Many tech writers (myself included) find that this closeness helps them write better.

Contributing to open source also allows you to create documentation in different contexts. For example, you might have authored content in a CMS in the past—diving into an open source project gives you the opportunity to explore a docs-as-code workflow. Another circumstance could be that you wrote documentation in a different industry and you want to see what it’s like to document software. Changing up your writing routine helps you find more creative ways to tackle problems for the next project you work on.

The hard parts

Documentation quality can be quite variable in open source. While some pages might be really useful, others might be outdated, don’t follow the user workflow, or cover way too much information on one page. Making sense of the existing documentation landscape can feel like a daunting task.

Most open source projects suffer from gaps in the documentation. Since open source developers are so enmeshed with their code and the project, they have a lot of context, and suffer from the “curse of knowledge”. It’s hard for contributors, or anyone who has held a position for a while, to remember what it was like to be a beginner or new to a project. When developers write documentation, their brain auto-completes what is missing on the page.

Because many people work on open source for personal satisfaction, you might experience pushback from people who are protective of their documentation. I find it helpful to view pushback as an act of caring about documentation. Take a closer look at why you are receiving pushback:

  • Do the developers have concerns about your technical understanding?
  • Are they not ready to let go of their document?
  • Do you have different ideas of who the user is and what their goals are?

Understanding developer concerns can help you reach the shared goal of improved documentation.

Succeeding in Google Season of Docs and beyond

These tips helped me make the most of my Google Season of Docs experience.

Gain clarity

Take time in the beginning of the project to really understand the software, the user’s needs, and your docs landscape. (I allocated one third of my entire project timeline to gaining clarity.) Talk to your project mentors, do user research, and perform a content audit—this will help you understand the current structure and identify weaknesses and gaps in the content.

Keep your community in the loop

Open source communities attract contributors from all over the world—which means communication is usually asynchronous and in writing. Transparent communication is a must to keep your users (and potential co-creators) engaged. When they know what’s going on, it’s easier for them to chip in.

Deal with pushbacks

Transparent communications and a solid documentation plan go a long way towards addressing concerns. It’s easier to receive support if your team knows what you’re doing.

Build a professional support network

Find other tech writers to geek out with, especially if you’re the only technical writer in your project. Groups like Write the Docs and The Good Docs project are good places to find like-minded people to brainstorm and learn with.

I hope you find a project that interests you and the bandwidth to participate in Google Season of Docs. It was a worthwhile experience for me, helped me advance in my career, and I hope the same for you.

P.S. You can find a detailed write up of my work for Season of Docs ‘21 on my website.

By Tina Luedtke, Technical Writer – Google

Configure your private clouds using the Google Cloud VMware Engine IaC Foundations repository

Introduction

Google Cloud VMware Engine is a Google-managed VMware platform that customers can use to run their VMware workloads on Google Cloud. VMware Engine private clouds consist of VMware ESXi clusters that are managed by Google. Customers manage the virtual infrastructure of private clouds using VMware vCenter and VMware NSX-T for software-defined networking. The GCVE IaC Foundations code guides customers to automate the configuration of several layers of the infrastructure and virtualization stack, using infrastructure as code. This includes the integration of platform logging and monitoring with the Google Cloud Operations Suite, configurations such as VM folders, permissions and VM deployments in vCenter and network configurations in NSX-T, including subnets, firewalls, and load balancers.

The use of infrastructure as code for a VMware Engine Private Cloud offers multiple benefits, including:

  1. Providing consistent and repeatable deployment templates which can be reused across SDLC environments to reduce human error and shorten configuration times.
  2. Enabling continuous integration using GitOps workflows to improve collaboration between engineers and increase reliability in the release process.
  3. Offering version control of configuration templates to track changes in the infrastructure and a simple method to revert changes to a previous configuration.

Technical Details

The Google Cloud VMware Engine IaC Foundations Github repository contains Terraform modules and sample code for maintaining VMware Engine, vCenter and NSX-T configurations using infrastructure as code. The repository is structured as follows: 

├── examples
│   ├── nsxt-gateway-firewall
│   ├── nsxt-load-balancer-pool
│   ├── nsxt-load-balancer-service
│   ├── ...
├── modules
│   ├── nsxt-gateway-firewall
│   ├── nsxt-load-balancer-pool
│   ├── nsxt-load-balancer-service
│   ├── ...
└── stages
    ├── 01-privatecloud
    ├── 02a-nsxt
    ├── 02b-vcenter
    ├── 03-vms
    └── 04-load-balancing

The modules directory contains the Terraform IaC modules for GCVE (vCenter & NSX-T) resource types. Each module has a corresponding example in the examples directory. Modules and examples are meant to be discrete and function as the building blocks for managing GCVE at scale.

The stages directory contains sample deployments composed from modules for each of the different stages of the foundational deployment. These stages should be executed in the order they are listed. Stages may also be delegated to different teams within an organization depending on organizational roles and responsibilities. As an example, there may be a team that manages vCenter, while a Networking team manages NSX-T and each team has their own code repository for configuration management.

The individual stages deploy the following components:

Stage

Deployed sample Component(s)

01-privatecloud

  • Google Cloud Monitoring & Logging integration for GCVE

02a-nsxt

  • Virtual machine network segment

  • North / south firewall (gateway firewall)

  • East / west firewall (distributed firewall)

02b-vcenter

  • vCenter resource pools & folders

  • vCenter role assignments

03-vms

  • Virtual machines

04-load-balancing

  • NSX-T Load balancing

Deployment Walkthrough

To deploy the sample stages you will need to clone the gcve-iac-foundations repository and have Terraform 1.3.x or later installed.

To deploy the stages proceed in order in the stages directory from 01-privatecloud until 04-load-balancing. In each directory perform the following:

  • Copy terraform.tfvars.example to terraform.tfvars and customize any values as necessary
  • Run `terraform init`, `terraform plan` and `terraform apply`

Each of the stages and examples contain reference terraform.tfvars files which can be used in the initial stages to test deployment and later customized to meet specific requirements.

As an example, the following Terraform configuration can be used to configure the NSX-T distributed firewall: 

dfw_policies = [
  {
    display_name    = "dfw_allow_policy"
    sequence_number = 1
    rules = [
      {
        action             = "ALLOW"
        destination_groups = ["10.123.1.0/24"]
        source_groups      = []
        direction          = "IN_OUT"
        display_name       = "dfw-allow-ssh"
        logged             = false
        services           = ["SSH"]
      },
      {
        action             = "ALLOW"
        destination_groups = ["10.123.2.0/23"]
        source_groups      = ["10.200.1.0-10.200.1.128"]
        direction          = "IN_OUT"
        display_name       = "dfw-allow-dns"
        logged             = false
        services           = ["DNS"]
      },
    ]
  },
<…snip…>
]

Apply the Terraform configuration from a terminal using 

terraform init // initialize the provider and modules
terraform plan // validate the expected Terraform configuration on the console
terraform apply // deploy the configuration in NSX-T

Try it yourself

Whether you consider using VMware Engine for your VMware workloads or you actively use the service already, give it a try and clone the repository into your environment and go through the provided deployment examples and stages of the repository. Review if you can automate any processes that you perform manually today using infrastructure-as-code and improve your VMware operations using the content from the foundations repository.

We would like to get your feedback! If you encounter any issues or you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement, create an issue directly on the repository on Github. We would also like to encourage you to create pull requests to the main branch if you like to become an active contributor. To get started, review how to contribute on Github.

By Konrad Schieban and Jason Steenblik – Google Cloud

Acknowledgments:

Thank you to the following team members who made this solution possible: Kumari Renuka, Ashwin Naik, Leandro Carracedo, Eric Danan, and Umesh Kumhar from Google Cloud.

Google Dev Library Letter: 17th Edition

Posted by the Dev Library Team

We are highlighting the best projects developed with Google technologies that have been shared on the Google Dev Library platform. We hope this will spark some inspiration for your next project.


Android - Content of the Month



Transformers by Daichi Furiya

See the Android transformation library providing a variety of image transformations for Coil, Glide, Picasso, and Fresco.



Camposer by Lucas Yuji Yoshimine

Learn how the camera library in Jetpack Compose which supports taking photos, recording videos, flash modes, zoom ratio, and more.

Read more on DevLibrary




ChatGPT Android by Jaewoong Eum

Integrate ChatGPT on Android with Stream Chat SDK for Compose.

Read more on DevLibrary




Continue reading →

Mentor organization applications are open for Google Summer of Code 2023!


We are excited to announce that open source projects and organizations can now apply to participate as mentor organizations in the 2023 Google Summer of Code (GSoC) program. Applications for organizations will close on February 7, 2023 at 18:00 UTC.

As 2023 begins, so does our 19th year of Google Summer of Code! Last year, we had a few updates to the program that will continue for the 2023 program year. Our most noted change coming in 2023 is that we are expanding the program to be open to students and to beginners in open source software development. We are also continuing our increased flexibility in the length of the projects—offering 175 and 350-hour projects—and the ability to extend the program from the standard 12 weeks up to 22 weeks.

Does your open source project want to learn more about becoming a mentor organization? Visit the program site and read the mentor guide to learn what it means to be a mentor organization and how to prepare your community (hint: have plenty of excited, dedicated mentors and well thought out project ideas!).

We welcome all types of organizations and are very eager to involve first-timers with a 2023 goal of welcoming 30+ new orgs into GSoC. We encourage new organizations to get a referral from experienced organizations that think they would be a good fit to participate in GSoC.

The open source projects that participate in GSoC as mentor organizations do all kinds of interesting work in security, cloud, development tools, science, medicine, data, media, and more! Projects can range from being relatively new (about 2 years old) to well established projects that started over 20 years ago. We welcome open source projects big, small, and everything in between.

One thing to remember is that open source projects wishing to apply need to have a solid community; the goal of GSoC is to bring new contributors into established and welcoming communities. While you don’t have to have 50+ community members, the project also can’t have as few as three people.

You can apply to be a mentor organization for GSoC starting today on the program site. The deadline to apply is February 7, 2023 at 18:00 UTC. We will publicly announce the organizations chosen for GSoC 2023 on February 22nd.

Please visit the program site for more information on how to apply and review the detailed timeline for important deadlines. We also encourage you to check out the Mentor Guide, our new ‘Intro to Google Summer of Code’ video, and our short video on why open source projects are excited to be a part of the GSoC program.

Good luck to all open source mentor organization applicants!

By Stephanie Taylor, Program Manager – Google Open Source Programs Office

Useful Android projects from Google Dev Library to help you #DevelopwithGoogle

Posted by Swathi Dharshna Subbaraj - Project Coordinator, Google Dev Library

Android offers developers a rich set of tools and SDKs/APIs for building innovative and engaging mobile apps. Developers can create applications for a large and growing user base of over 2.5 billion devices worldwide.

Google Dev Library curates open-source Android libraries created and contributed by developers from around the world. Developers can easily leverage the vast array of useful code samples, GitHub repos, and libraries featuring Compose, networking, data storage to user interface design and image processing to build your own Android apps !

In this blog, we are sharing 7 popular projects by android contributors. These projects are some of the highest viewed projects on the platform and we hope these will give you a sneak peak into the type of interesting and innovative projects found on the platform. Let's dive into the list:

Coil by Colin White
Image loading for Android backed by Kotlin Coroutines

Coil is designed to be lightweight, efficient, and easy to use, and it offers a number of features such as automatic image caching, support for various image formats, and integration with popular image loading libraries like Glide and Picasso. If you are working on an Android app and need a reliable way to load and display images, this repository is definitely worth checking out !

LitePal by Lin Guo
An Android library that makes developers use SQLite database extremely easy

If you’re looking to streamline your database management processes, LitePal is an open source library for Android that helps developers with database management in your app development.

Tivi by Chris Banes
Tivi is a TV show tracking app that uses some of the latest Android libraries

Tivi showcases modern development practices, including the use of Android Jetpack and other libraries. This TV show tracking Android project is helpful for developers to learn more about interesting and fun practices for Android development.

Showkase by Vinay Gaba
Showkase is an annotation-processor based Android library

Showkase helps you organize, discover, search and visualize Jetpack Compose UI elements. With minimal configuration it generates a UI browser that helps you easily find your components, colors & typography.

Pokedex by Jaewoong Eum
Pokedex follows Google's official android architecture guidance

Pokedex demonstrates modern Android development with Hilt, Coroutines, Flow, Jetpack (Room, ViewModel), and Material Design based on MVVM architecture. The repository includes the app's layout, features, and functionality, as well as documentation on how to implement and get resourceful.

Resource for learning about the Android Jetpack Compose framework.

If you are looking to learn or improve your knowledge of Jetpack Compose, Learn-Jetpack-Compose-By-Example contains a collection of example code and accompanying explanations for various components and features of Jetpack Compose. This repository aims to show the Jetpack Compose way of building common Android UI that we are accustomed to building.

Material Dialog by Shreyas Patil
MaterialDialog library is built upon Google's Material Design library

The author, Shreyas Patil, goes into detail about how to use the MaterialDialog library and provides code examples to demonstrate its capabilities. The library allows developers to easily create dialogs with a variety of customization options, such as adding buttons, selecting the theme, and setting the title and content. Overall, the MaterialDialog library is a useful tool for Android developers looking to implement Material Design in your apps.

We hope these projects will inspire and help guide your own development efforts. Join our global community of Android developers to showcase your projects and access tools and resources. To contribute, submit your content.

Announcing Google Season of Docs 2023!



Google Season of Docs provides support for open source projects to improve their documentation and gives professional technical writers an opportunity to gain experience in open source. Together we raise awareness of open source, of docs, and of technical writing.

How does GSoD work?

Google Season of Docs allows open source organizations to apply for a grant based on their documentation needs. If selected, the open source organizations use their grant to directly hire a technical writer to complete their documentation project. Organizations have up to six months to complete their documentation project. At the end of the program, organizations complete their final case study which outlines the problem the documentation project was intended to solve, what metrics were used to judge the effectiveness of the documentation, and what the organization learned for the future. All project case studies are published on the Season of Docs site at the end of the program.

Organizations: apply to be part of GSoD!

The applications for Google Season of Docs open February 15 for the 2023 cycle. We strongly suggest that organizations take the time to complete the steps in the exploration phase before the application process begins, including:
  • Creating a project page to gauge community and technical writer participant interest (see our project ideas page for examples).
  • Publicizing your interest in participating in GSoD through your project channels and adding your project to our list of interested projects on GitHub.
  • Lining up community members who are interested in mentoring or helping onboard technical writers to your project.
  • Brainstorming requirements for technical writers to work on your project (Will they need to be able to test code, work with video, or have prior experience with your project or related technologies?).
  • Reading through the case studies from previous Season of Docs participants.

Organizations: create your project page

Every Google Season of Docs project begins with a project page, which is a publicly visible page that serves as an overview of your documentation project. A good project page includes:
  • A statement of the problem your project needs to solve (“users on Windows don’t have clear guidance of how to install our project”).
  • The documentation that might solve this problem (“We want to create a quickstart doc and installation guide for Windows users”).
  • How you’ll measure the success of your documentation (“With a good quickstart, we expect to see 50% fewer issues opened about Windows installation problems.”).
  • What skills your technical writer would need (break down into “must have” and “nice to have” categories. “Must have: access Windows machine to test instructions”).
  • What volunteer help is needed from community members (“need help onboarding technical writers to our discussion groups”) and links to where the community can discuss the proposal.
  • Most importantly, include a way for interested technical writers to reach you and ask questions!

Technical writers: reach out to organizations early!

Technical writers do not submit a formal application through Google Season of Docs but those interested in working with accepted open source organizations can share their contact information now via the Google Season of Docs GitHub repository; or they may submit proposals directly to the organizations using the contact information shared on the organization project page. Check out our technical writer guide for more information. We suggest that interested technical writers read through the case studies from the previous Season of Docs participants to get an idea of the kinds of projects that have been accepted and what organizations have learned from working with technical writers.

General timeline

February 15 - March 24 Open source organizations apply to take part in Google Season of Docs

March 31

Google publishes the list of accepted organizations, along with their project proposals and doc development can begin.
May 10

Technical writer hiring deadline
June 14

Organization administrators begin to submit monthly evaluations to report on the status of their project.
November 6 - 21

Organization administrators submit their case study and final project evaluation.
December 5

Google publishes the 2023 case studies and aggregate project data.

May 1, 2024 Organizations begin to participate in post-program followup surveys.
See the full program timeline for more details.

Join us

Explore the Google Season of Docs website at g.co/seasonofdocs to learn more about participating in the program. Use our logo and other promotional resources to spread the word. Check out the timeline and FAQ, and get ready to apply!

By Romina Vicente and Erin McKean – Google Open Source Programs Office

More voices = More Bazel

Takeaways from the BazelCon DEI lunch panel

In front of a standing-room-only lunch panel, Google’s head of Developer X strategy Minu Puranik asks us, “If there is one thing you want to change [about Bazel’s DEI culture], what would it be and why?”

We’d spent the last hour on three main themes: community culture, fostering trust, and growing our next generation of leaders. Moderated by Minu, our panel brought together a slate of brilliant people from underrepresented groups to give a platform to our experiences and ideas. Together with representatives and allies in the community, we explored methods for building inclusivity and sought a better understanding of the institutional and systemic barriers to increasing diversity.

Culture defines how we act, which informs who feels welcome to contribute. Studies show that diverse contributor backgrounds yield more and better results, so how do we create a culture where everyone feels safe to share, ask questions, and contribute? Helen Altshuler, co-founder and CEO of EngFlow, relayed her experience regarding some best practices:

“Having people that can have your back is important to get past the initial push to submit something and feeling like it’s ok. You don’t need to respond to everything in one go. Last year, Cynthia Coah and I gave a talk on how to make contributions to the Bazel community. Best practices: better beginners’ documentation, classifying GitHub issues as ‘good first issue,’ and having Slack channels where code owners can play a more active role.”

                    - Helen Altshuler, co-founder and CEO of EngFlow

Diving further, we discussed the need to make sure new contributors get positive, actionable feedback to reward them with context and resources, and encourage them to take the risk of contributing to the codebase. This encouragement of new contributors feeds directly into the next generation of technical influencers and leaders. Eva Howe, co-founder and Legal Counsel for Aspect, addressed the current lack of diversity in the community pipeline.

“I’d like to see more trainings like the Bazel Community Day. Trainings serve two purposes:

1. You can blend in, start talking to someone in the background, and form connections.
2. We can give a good first educational experience. It needs to be a welcoming space.”

                     - Eva Howe, Legal Counsel – Aspect Dev

    In addition to industry trainings, the audience and panel brought up bootcamps and university classes as rich sources to find and promote diversity, though they cautioned that it takes active, ongoing effort to maintain an environment that diverse candidates are willing to stay in. There are fewer opportunities to take risks as part of a historically excluded group, and the feeling that you have to succeed for everyone who looks like you creates a high-pressure environment that is worse for learning outcomes.

    To bypass this pipeline problem, we can recruit promising candidates and sponsor them through getting the necessary experience on the job. Lyra Levin, Bazel’s internal technical writer at Google, spoke to this process of incentivizing and recognizing contributions outside the codebase, as a way to both encourage necessary glue work, and pull people into tech from parallel careers more hospitable to underrepresented candidates. And Sophia Vargas, Program Manager in Google’s OSPO (Open Source Programs Office), also offered insight regarding contributions.

    “If someone gives you an introduction to another person, recognize that. Knowing a system of people is work. Knowing where to find answers is work. Saying I’m going to be available and responding to emails is work. If you see a conversation where someone is getting unhelpful pushback, jump in and moderate it. Reward those who contribute by creating a space that can be collaborative and supportive.”

                         - Lyra Levin, Technical Writer

    “Create ways to recognize non-code contributions. One example is a markdown file describing other forms of contribution, especially in cases that do not generate activity attached to a name on GitHub.”

    An audience member agreed that for the few PRs a positive experience is critical for community trust building: And indeed, open source is all about building trust. So how do we go about building trust? What should we do differently? Radhika Advani, Bazel’s product manager at Google, suggests that the key is to:

    “Make some amazing allies. Be kind and engage with empathy. Take your chances—there are lots of good people out there. You have to come from a place of vulnerability.”

                        - Radhika Advani, Bazel Product Manager

    Vargas also added some ideas for how to be an “amazing ally” and sponsor the careers of those around you, such as creating safe spaces to have these conversations because not everyone is bold enough to speak up or to ask for support since raising issues in a public forum can be intimidating. Making yourself accessible and providing anonymous forms for suggestions or feedback can serve as opportunities to educate yourself and to increase awareness of diverging opinions.

    An audience member stated that recognizing an action that is alienating to a member of your group—even just acknowledging their experience or saying something to the room—can be very powerful to create a sense of safety and belonging. And another said that those in leadership positions being forthright about the limits of their knowledge, gives people the freedom to not know everything.

    So to Minu’s question, what should we do to improve Bazel’s culture?

    Helen: Create a governance group on Slack to ensure posts are complying with the community code of conduct guidelines. Review how this is managed for other OSS communities.

    Sophia: Institutionalize mentorship; have someone else review what you’ve done and give you the confidence to push a change. Nurture people. We need to connect new and established members of the community.

    Lyra: Recruit people in parallel careers paths with higher representation. Give them sponsorship to transition to tech.

    Radhika: Be more inclusive. All the jargon can get overwhelming, so let’s consider how we can make things simpler, including with non-technical metaphors.

    Eva: Consider what each of us can do to make the experience for people onboarding better.

    There are more ways to be a Bazel contributor than raising PRs. Being courageous, vulnerable and open contributes to the culture that creates the code. Maintainers: practice empathy and remember the human on the other side of the screen. Be a coach and a mentor, knowing that you are opening the door for more people to build the product you love, with you. Developers: be brave and see the opportunities to accept sponsorship into the space. Bazel is for everyone.

    By Lyra Levin, Minu Puranik, Keerthana Kumar, Radhika Advani, and Sophia Vargas – Bazel Panel

    Season of Docs 2022 program results

    Season of Docs is a Google program that provides support for open source projects to improve their documentation and gives professional technical writers an opportunity to gain experience in open source. We’re delighted to announce the 2022 program results!

    From April 14 to November 14, 2022 selected open source organizations worked with their chosen technical writer to complete their documentation project.

    • 30 open source organizations finished their projects
    • 93% of organizations had a positive experience
    • 90% of organizations felt their documentation project was successful

    Take a look at the list of completed projects to see the wide range of subjects covered!

    We’d also like to share that the 2021 case study report has been published on the website. The results are based on the three post-program followup surveys sent to the organizations to determine whether or not their initial metrics had been met. A few highlights from the report include:

    • A diverse range of open source projects participated in the 2021 program: languages, Python ecosystem projects, education, climate, machine learning, fintech, robotics, developer tools, documentation tools.
    • Most projects focused on creating documentation to reduce maintainer burden through reducing issues and questions, and/ or increasing project participation either by project users or contributors.
    • 18 projects reported they were still working with their technical writer (four technical writers are participating in a paid role).

    Looking forward to Season of Docs 2023? Stay tuned and watch for posts on the Google Open Source blog and sign up for the announcements email list. For organizations and technical writers interested in applying for next year’s program, check out the guides, the FAQ, and the accepted project proposals from 2022 and previous seasons.

    If you were excited about participating, please do write social media posts. See the promotion and press page for images and other promotional materials you can include, and be sure to use the tag #SeasonOfDocs when promoting your project on social media. To include the tech writing and open source communities, add #WriteTheDocs, #techcomm, #TechnicalWriting, and #OpenSource to your posts.

    By Romina Vicente and Erin McKean – Google Open Source Programs Office

    Google Announces OpenChain ISO/IEC 5230:2020 Conformant Program

    Google is proud to be an OpenChain Governing Board member. As an early adopter of the first generation of OpenChain, we are announcing formal adoption of ISO/IEC 5230, the International Standard for open source license compliance.

    The OpenChain Project maintains ISO/IEC 5230, the International Standard for open source compliance. This allows companies of all sizes and in all sectors to adopt the key requirements of a quality open source compliance program. This is an open standard and all parties are welcome to engage with the OpenChain community, to share their knowledge, and to contribute to the future of the standard.

    Google has been at the forefront of open source development and the compliant use of open source from its earliest days. The Google Open Source Programs Office prides itself on bringing the best of open source to Google and the best of Google to open source. Responsible use of open source includes respecting developers through compliant use of their code. Google’s participation in the OpenChain project is an important part of supporting industry maturity and predictability in open source compliance.

    Google previously announced its conformance with OpenChain 1.2 and collaborated with the OpenChain Project on the creation of both open source compliance program standards.

    By Hilary Richardson and Sonal Bhoraniya – Google Open Source Programs Office Licensing & Compliance Advisors