Community Contribution Stories

Written by Ilham Boulghallat

You have probably heard us sing the praises of active community members. We are always humbled by their passion and dedication, and can experience firsthand the impact of their active involvement. This, we believe and hope, has been clearly stated. What might not have been so clearly presented is how they go about their contributions and how they maintain their high level of motivation. We believe that we've all got so much to learn from them. That’s why we recently created a dedicated section on Our with inspiring contribution stories - all brought to you by our beloved community members. Find out all about it:

Stories are powerful. They can help us better understand, relate, and more importantly, see things through the eyes of the storyteller.

For a process like contributing to an open-source project where intrinsic motivations play an essential role, sharing experiences might be just the way to get a glimpse into what a contributor does.

So when we were asked questions such as “how much time should I (or my team) dedicate to contributing to Umbraco?”, we could not think of a better way to answer than to let the contributors themselves share their input.

Their stories might not be presented in the form of a typical storyline with beginning, middle, and end. But we like calling them stories as they are told by the contributors themselves, raw, unedited, and with the sole purpose of demystifying the contribution process and inspiring others.

The what, why, and when

To get started, we reached out to five community members who are involved in different ways such as speaking, organizing events, submitting pull requests, or leading a community initiative.

We asked what they are contributing to, what motivates them to get involved, how much time they allocate to contributions, and if they could recommend any productivity tools that can help new contributors.

Their answers, as you will read through, showed that what they all have in common is a true passion for the Umbraco community and the rich learning experience they get out of contributing. Each, however, has their own setup, schedule, and priorities. And that’s precisely what makes their stories so exciting and motivational - the community members come from various backgrounds, yet they still find ways to contribute towards their passion.

For those who are involved in one of the Community Teams, we had a few additional questions covering how they got started with the team, how they work with the other team members, and if they have any advice to those who would like to join.

A dedicated space on Our.umbraco.com

The contribution stories are now live in the Get involved section of Our. Making them available on our.umbraco.com, which is the community hub, can help potential new contributors easily find them.

To start, these five active community members have shared their stories:

👉 Rachel Breeze

👉 Emma Garland

👉 Kenn Jacobsen

👉 Marcin Zajkowski

👉 Lotte Pitcher

We can’t thank them enough for their time and valuable content, which is on its own another contribution to be added to the list.

We would love to hear from many more in the future. Reach out and share your story!