The impact contributing to open source had on me and my career

1. Impact of Open Source
jQuery Dev Summit – New York City
October 2015
Anne-Gaëlle Colom

2. Anne-Gaëlle Colom
Senior Lecturer at the
University of Westminster,
London, UK
Documentation Lead for
jQuery Mobile
Content Lead for the
jQuery Foundation
jQuery Board of Directors

3. Current Teaching
• Web Technology
– 320 1st year students
• Advanced Client-side
Web Development
– 130 2nd year students
• Mobile User Experience
– 120 3rd year students
• Mobile Computing
Principles
– 100 2nd year students

4. 1st Computer - 1984

5. 1st Website 1995
Teaching HTML - 1996

6. 1st Mobile Application - 1997
for district nurses,
targeting the Hitachi
Possible PMC - 2000
EDEN, EROS, ADAM,
EVE, FOSSIL

7. 1st JavaScript App: HTML editor in (1998)

8. Then …
I had 2 kids! (1999 and 2002)

9. What brought me to jQuery?
• Course Leader for BSc Internet Computing /
BEng Mobile and Web Computing
• Teaching Mobile UI & Mobile Computing
Principles since Sept 2005…
• Rendering the same content on various devices
based on device capabilities and screen size
– WURFL – XML – XSLT – WML – CSS – XHTML – PHP
• In Oct 2010: “I cannot teach WML anymore
(obsolete)!”

10. jQuery Mobile (alpha 1)

11. jQuery Mobile – October 2010
• Developed lecture notes and examples
• Discovered bugs
• Reported bugs

12. jQuery Mobile – March-Nov 2011
• Developed a small project
• Discovered & reported bugs
• Discovered & reported docs inconsistencies
• Gave solutions

13. Pull Request ??

14. 19th October 2011: DIY!

15. My New Best Friend!

16. November 2011
Starting to feel the Impact!

17. Go ahead from Todd Parker
• rewrite the docs in one voice,
• fix inconsistencies,
• add more information &
examples where necessary.

18. GitHub
• I’m on Patch level…
• I want to be a Master!

19. .net Magazine Award
“Sort of random, but since you're now a
member of the mobile documentation team,
now all the glamour begins. There is a .net
awards party nov. 24th in London and we're
looking for someone to represent the project if
we win. Might you be interested?”
Todd Parker (jQuery Mobile Lead)

20. .net Magazine Award
“Sort of random, but since you're now a
member of the mobile documentation team,
now all the glamour begins. There is a .net
awards party nov. 24th in London and we're
looking for someone to represent the project if
we win. Might you be interested?”

21. .net Magazine Award
“Sort of random, but since you're now a
member of the mobile documentation team,
now all the glamour begins. There is a .net
awards party nov. 24th in London and we're
looking for someone to represent the project if
we win. Might you be interested?”

22. .net Magazine Award
“Sort of random, but since you're now a
member of the mobile documentation team,
now all the glamour begins. There is a .net
awards party nov. 24th in London and we're
looking for someone to represent the project if
we win. Might you be interested?”

23. .net Magazine Award
“Sort of random, but since you're now a
member of the mobile documentation team,
now all the glamour begins. There is a .net
awards party nov. 24th in London and we're
looking for someone to represent the project if
we win. Might you be interested?”

24. .net Magazine Award
“Sort of random, but since you're now a
member of the mobile documentation team,
now all the glamour begins. There is a .net
awards party nov. 24th in London and we're
looking for someone to represent the project if
we win. Might you be interested?”

25. .net Magazine Award
“Sort of random, but since you're now a
member of the mobile documentation team,
now all the glamour begins. There is a .net
awards party nov. 24th in London and we're
looking for someone to represent the project if
we win. Might you be interested?”

26. Hi Todd,
Yes I am definitely interested :-)
Thank you very much!
Anne

27. Source: http://diary.chopard.com
I’m thinking….

29. I met Paul Irish!

30. And this happened!

31. After 73 merged PRs…

33. Meanwhile at work…
• Restructuring:
– Merged two schools
of Computer Science
– All staff had to
reapply for their
position
– Reduced staff by 30%
– Tensions
– STRESS

34. Meanwhile at work…
• All new roles are
unavailable to me
• No prospect for
career progression

35. Meanwhile at work…

37. Typical Day
• 6.30am wake up, get kids ready for school
• Go to Work
• 5.45pm pick up kids, prepare dinner, help with
homework.
• 7pm/8pm to 11pm+ jQuery time! (+
commuting time)
• Weekends & Holidays are also jQuery time!
• Roughly 35h a week – sometimes more…

38. 2011 – 2012

44. My Contributions
• In 4.5 years:
– Contributed to 15 jQuery repos and a few others
(jsbin, node.js, w3c)
– 1500 commits
– 50000 additions
– 3500 h

45. April 2013

46. Award Nominations/Shortlists

47. Speaking Opportunities
• 5 international conferences (UK, Europe, USA)
• 1 international meetup (Europe)
• Many more offers (Europe & Asia)

48. In-person meetings/conferences

49. Opportunities to make new contacts

50. Opportunities to make new contacts

51. Opportunities to make new contacts

52. Learning Opportunities
• From discussions
• From conferences
• Feedback on PRs
• Code Reviews

53. Learning Opportunities
• GitHub
• git
• Wordpress
• IRC
• Grunt
• Node
• jQuery
• jQuery UI
• jQuery Mobile
• Markdown
• Coding standards
• Software Engineering
processes
• Testing
• Documentation

54. That feeds back into my work
• Better teaching experience for my students
• Improved and wider expertise in the web and
mobile area
• Work with web and mobile experts
• Good position for curriculum development
• My students get:
– Invited to Mozilla events in London
– Invited to London JS events
– Guest Lectures

55. Now at work…
• New roles are
available to me
• Prospect for career
progression

56. Now at work…

57. Now at work

58. New Challenge

59. jQuery and me!Open Source and me!

60. Conclusion
• Many opportunities to contribute to Open
Source
• Many areas in which to contribute
• Real impact on your
– Career
– Confidence
– How people see you

61. Where will you contribute?

62. Thank you!
• Anne-Gaelle Colom (Anne)
• @agcolom on Twitter
• I'm agcolom on the #jquery-content and
#jqueryui-dev channels on freenode IRC