On developing thingsToms Bauģis, 27.07.2012

Me

● 1999-2007 - Riga - Tieto Konts

● 2007-2011 - Galway, Ireland - Digital Enterprise

Research Institute (DERI)

● 2012 - Parse.ly

What i'll talk about

The Hamster story

Open Source

● take apart

● modify

● use

GNOME

● desktop environment (just like windows / apple)

● core applications - file manager, calculator, clock, etc

Project Hamster

http://projecthamster.wordpress.com/

● Focused

● Cheap

● Awesome

GUADEC (GNOME User and Developer Conference)

How can i contribute?

6 days after the conference

Work on hamster is going on. I've mastered Glade basics, and how to connect to SQLite, and now i'm learning how to install/distribute

files

+4d"i was bending my brains yesterday trying to make it all look object-oriented but i hope to

have a first version really soon"

I kinda fixed dependencies and some other things so it should be possible to install it

now

+11d - patient zero

Started blog another 4 days later

Fast forward 4 monthsfirst serious contributions

From there

● Patryk pushed us to get in shape for inclusion in GNOME

● That meant exposure and translations● As a result hamster is now translated in 65+

languages and used by 50k+ people around the globe

Managed to make something actually useful

Few personal takeaways

enjoyed every bit

Beginnings can be slow

Few personal takeaways

Sometimes the hardest part is to take the plunge

Few personal takeaways

So how hard can it be?(without any prior experience in the field)

● 3 hours to draw a rectangle

● +2h to make the chart

it's about the result

Don't be shy about how you do it

Few personal takeaways

If somebody thinks they can do better - let them

Don't be shy of the result

Few personal takeaways

There are lots of people out there

but recruiting matters

Few personal takeaways

Use the source it's open

Few personal takeaways

Release early, release often

Few personal takeaways

What excites me about open

source

Screw moneymoney talk is boring

What excites me about open source

Free tutoringfrom patch reviews to patches and feedback

What excites me about open source

Fix it

You are in control

What excites me about open source

Everyone is in control

What excites me about open source

Parse.ly Dashhttp://parse.ly/

Right now

● 12 people on team (7 devs)● some of our customers

○ mashable○ thenextweb○ ars technica

● 55 million hits a day (~600/s)● 70 rackspace servers; moving to colo

How I became employee #4

"First off... we want to thank you for Hamster - I

use it every day..."

Luckily turned out to be not that different from

OSSapart from being full-time

Not that different

● can be wherever internet is● working in a small, focused and diverse

team● lot of the communication is async● flat[-ter] structure - parsely is me● meeting in person roughly every 6 month

Practicalities

Communication

● IRC/Jabber

● yammer (fenced facebook)

● email

● google docs

git & github for version control

● comment on commits & commit lines

● notifications of commits in IRC

● unit tests fired off via web hooks

Work organization

● pivotal for stories

● lighthouse for bugs

● monday is bugday

○ winner gets a hackday for next bugday

Observations

Lead

Observations

Learn

Observations

Pivot

Observations

Surrender Control

Observations

Flow

Observations

To wrap it up

Share your workand release often

Do it yourselfor whatever floats your boat

Start smalland iterate

Yes - now is good!in case you were wondering

Check yourself

before you

wreck yourself

Thanks!http://tiny.cc/tm-techhub