We are a 100% volunteer run international open source community. We always need more volunteers, and there are always things to do!
There are two main things that nodeschool does:
- build and maintain automated workshops that teach software + open source skills
- organize educational events around the world
Here are some of the tenets of the community:
- there is no top-down leadership structure. we have thousands of students, hundreds of chapter organizers, and a small group of central admins who keep the website running etc.
- chapters should experiment with new ways to engage their community, and share approaches with other chapters over time
- events should be affordable and should strive towards diversity and inclusiveness
- we are 100% open source and like to license things as open source/creative commons
nodeschool started in the Node community, but has since expanded to be much more broad. For example, we used to only have Node related content but now have workshops on a much wider range of content such as JavaScript, GLSL (graphics shaders), Git and WebGL.
We are now active in many communities around the world. Each chapter is an individual node that shares content and approaches with other nodes in the graph, which is why we still use the word 'node' in our name even though we are not specific to Node.js/io.js anymore.
See if there is a chapter near you. Each chapter gets their own github repo, e.g. https://github.com/nodeschool/berlin. These repos usually serve at least two purposes (maybe more):
- host a chapter page on the
gh-pagesbranch (example) - provice a discussion board for the chapter using GitHub Issues (example)
There might be an issue for new or prospective members to introduce themselves, or there may be one that is an announcement/planning for the next event. You should click Watch on your chapters repo so that you get emails when new discussions happen.
If there is no local chapter, and you want to start one, check out our guide.
All of our workshops point people at this issue board when they get stuck:
https://github.com/nodeschool/discussions/issues
Questions we receive there range from beginner to advanced. You can click Watch on that repo to get emails in your inbox when new people ask questions. This helps us out a lot!. We get a ton of questions!
Each workshop has it's own github repository. For example, on our giant workshop list if you click on 'javascripting' it takes you to the github repo: https://github.com/sethvincent/javascripting
In this case it's maintained by @sethvincent. You can check out the open issues for any workshop and try and find one to dive in and help on.
If you have an idea for a new workshop, you can dive right in and build a new one. If you want feedback on your idea, open an issue on the organizers repo issue tracker
A big part of nodeschool is documenting our process in a way that helps other organizers build successful communities around the world.
If you come across something that is unclear, either in a workshop, on our website, or anywhere else that has content tracked by git, please send pull requests!
If you have never sent a pull request before, we have a workshop that teaches you how:
https://github.com/jlord/git-it
We have an issue tracker specifically for organizers. There are many more ways to contribute in there.
These are just some ideas to get you started, but as long as you are respectful and courteous to other nodeschoolers there is no wrong way to contribute.
If you have an idea for a new format for a nodeschool chapter event, or a new format for a workshop, or any other ideas, do them and send a pull request (or open an issue for feedback if you are unsure).
This document is in source control. If you have ideas for ways to improve it, fork it!