Google Season of Docs: CHAOSS Project under The Linux Foundation — Week 1

6 min readAug 24, 2020

Introduction

👋Holla everyone!

I am Jaskirat Singh, an open-source research strategist, and tech diversity community management specialist, developing new and improving existing, computer-based technologies, systems, and solutions in advanced open source ecosystems. I have been working quite a while with various communities in the open-source, helping them maintain good relationships with external communities and projects, organizing meetups and events generating FOSS ecosystem, supporting the community in the outreach, creation of tools, and process with good relationships.

I hold a great experience in mentorship spends most of the mine time mentoring and administrating young-minded people across the globe such as an administrator in Google Summer of Code and in Google Code-In for Terasology Foundation(Codeuino), Google Season of Docs Administrator for Open Collective, Mentor at Rails Girls Summer of Code and MLH League Summer program and recently administrating for Codeuino Mentorship project under The Linux Foundation CommunityBridge mentorship platform

I help organizations understand, use, release, and contribute to free and open-source software in a way that’s good for both their end-users and for the community.

Exciting news! I am accepted into the Google Season of Docs program where I would be working on a CHAOSS Project under The Linux Foundation.

How did I get to know about this opportunity?

Well, due to my involvement in the Google Sumer of Code program 2018, I had the opportunity to travel to the most exciting part of this program, i.e Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit which was held at Google complex, California, USA.

There, I got to connect with one of the Google Tech Writer who conducted a session of open docs alongside, introducing the launch of the program “Google Season of Docs”. I am the research and the product person who is always keen to grasp new understandings in the technological ecosystem.

2019 was the launch year of the Google Season of Docs program and at the same time, I was within the Open Collective documentation team. I was able to convince the core team of Open Collective for GSoD; explaining them how this can be beneficial for their product and the community. So I had a wonderful time with one of our tech writers who worked with us for 3 months in this program.

Documentation can be written by anyone, but the way of background research required to write, understand, and architect the documentation for any project/community is interesting — This is what made me exuberant to go and apply for Google Season of Docs 2020

The CHAOSS project under The Linux Foundation fascinated me because I always wanted to go behind the scene and research on the project — measuring the health of the community and contributors, and that's what the CHAOSS project is focused on creating analytics and metrics to help define community health. I also knew that I can learn and understand the concept by participating through docs as these are vital for commencing any research.

I joined the CHAOSS organization around April 2020 and applied for the Google Season of Docs opportunity alongside as a result I got accepted into it. In these tough times when most of the for-profit companies are laying off people and rescinding offers, Google planned to sustain the Google Season of Docs program and has doubled down on their efforts to help tech writers and open source organizations. 😊

What’s it likely to be a part of……

The CHAOSS Community is very welcoming and beginner-friendly. The CHAOSS community has many sagacious and like-minded people who are enthusiastic about helping any newcomers. The best part of this community is the hierarchy and organizational structure where they have defined the involvement of various leadership roles. Though I have been in touch with the community since past 3 months, attended the weekly CHAOSS community meeting calls(which are wonderful!)but It been a week since I officially started with my Google Season of Docs project which is “Create a CHAOSS community-wide-handbook”

I am glad to share that I had a good beginning with learning stuff needed to build this project and do research around.

I think mentors play an important role in the learning process and I feel blessed to have such great and pragmatic mentors who are knowledgeable, easy to communicate with, makes me feel comfortable, encourage me to ask questions, clarify doubts and give me enough hints that I could get the job done without ruining the fun of figuring out things on my own. They check up on me frequently if I am stuck somewhere. 😊

We have a community meeting call every week which is open to community members, mentors, and program aspirants where we discuss what everyone is working upon currently. This is really a good practice for me to be updated and keep others updated.

Let’s check upon the work done by me in this weak

Day 1

Attended the CHAOSS community weekly meeting and had a welcoming day for getting selected in GSoD 2020
Requested to schedule a meeting with other mentors and student in order to sync up the work and discuss possible approaches for the working

Day 2

Explored the already existing community handbook on the github and understood the various insights into it
Researched on the “General Values” for The CHAOSS community way section.
Wrote an email to Georg and Matt asking for the references or contexts if available for the CHAOSS community, where I could read it and understand it which would be useful while drafting the “General Values” which is being followed within the community
Tried to figure out the values — Sustainability, Openness, Diversify & Inclusive, Transparency, Resilience

Day 3

Read some articles which refer to sustainability
Research around chaoss project — understanding through the website how sustainability can be achieved
Started writing within the gitbook about Values
Researched and wrote about Sustainability, Openness, and Transparency within the handbook. Link to the page
Started a thread on the chaoss community mailing list with a subject: “ Do we follow any community values — context for Community Handbook “

Day 4

Research around chaoss project — understanding how Diversity & Inclusion is being practiced within the community
Wrote Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging in the Handbook
Wrote Community Guidelines — Be welcoming and open-minded, Be honest, Be respectful, Be collaborative, Be mindful and stay on topic, Be inclusive, Be focused, and Share the love
Started a thread on the chaoss community mailing list with a subject: “ What happens if someone breaks the rule? — context for Community Handbook “

Day 5–6

Research around chaoss project — understanding the values being lived out apart from the ones I mentioned within the CHAOSS handbook
Had a conversation on the chaoss mailing list and tried to retrieve some inputs from the community members and brainstorm on the contents needed for the “social currencies”
Researched around consistencies, merit, trust, and utility while understanding how it is being followed within the community

Day 7

Wrote consistencies, merit, trust, and utility in the community handbook
Sent the email to the mailing list for the review of written values
Wrote the blog post

There is more exciting ahead in the coming weeks! 😊

Once again, I am very much grateful to my mentors and the community members for being so supportive.

Feel free to connect with me on Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn

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