What you do matters: Making one thing better for open source (#97)
What kind of work do you want to do?
What work do you do that is most urgently your responsibility? What are the consequences of your work? What has the power to move you?
Compassion, collaboration. These are my touchstones. But I feel more overwhelmed than ever these days, with many things competing for my attention, time and emotional resources. A certain urgency.
It’s a feeling echoed by many of my colleagues. That urgency is underscored by changes in our political landscape, our environment, and our professional landscape. “Each day, our work is changing — more quickly than it ever has before,” Ethan Marcotte said to developers and designers last month. “Here’s the question we have to ask ourselves: what do we want that change to be?”
What is the work you must do?
In 2011, Jeff Eaton described moving up the open source ladder of engagement, from consumer, to contributor, to the “ponies and unicorns level of nirvana” of collaborator, engaging with others who have similar needs and actively working on a shared solution.
If you work with open source software, you know one thing remains true: its strength, security and resilience comes from its community of contributors and collaborators.
Does contributing or collaborating feel urgent to you? Does inclusive design, documentation, code, and mentoring others in more diverse, inclusive teams have the power to move you? If so, you’re in luck! The open source community needs you, urgently, to move its strength, security and resilience intentionally, in responsible directions.
Musician Leonard Cohen said that to cut through the "chattering and meaningless debate that is occupying most of my attention, I have to come up with something that really speaks to my deepest interests.” Only a song that has “a certain urgency” could do that for him.
Open source isn't about rock stars; it's about drilling holes in sheet metal. It's habit, built in the service of urgency for the work you must do. It’s work that matters. Because design matters, and how things are coded matters, and what you work on matters, and who does this work matters.
So I invite you to get started. Find the Drupal issues queue, or grab a friendly tool like CodeTriage and jump into a Github repo’s issue queue for a project doing important work. Join a group doing work to build more diverse, inclusive teams and conferences. Make one thing better.
