We are making onboarding videos! Tell us what you want to learn

Community
1

Hey everyone! :waving_hand:

We want to make it super easy for anyone to contribute to Meshery. It shouldn’t matter if you are writing your very first line of code or if you’ve been here for months, we want to make sure you never feel stuck.

To help with this, we are going to record a bunch of short, simple onboarding videos! :clapper_board:

Before we start filming, we want to know what you think of our plan. Here is what we have in mind:

The Video Plan

For Newcomers:

  1. Welcome to the community: Who we are and how to get a meshmate.
  2. Quick setup: How to download and run the code on your computer fast.
  3. Your first PR: How to claim an issue and submit your changes without mistakes.

For Current Contributors:
4. The Big Picture: How the frontend and backend talk to each other.
5. The Meshmery Canvas: How to contribute to our visual builder tool.
6. Code Reviews: How to help contributors review and test other people’s pull requests.

What do you think?

Please drop a comment below and tell us:

  • What was the hardest thing for you when you first tried to set up Meshery?
  • Is there a specific part of the project that still feels confusing to you?
  • Did we miss anything that you really want a video on?

We want these videos to be exactly what you need, so please share your thoughts!

2

Hi Omolade, thanks for putting this together. The plan covers the right ground, and a short video for each step will help a lot.

Two additions worth considering, based on what newcomers ask about most here in the forum. First, a video on finding and claiming a good first issue, including how labels work and what to do after commenting to claim one. Second, a video on how MeshMate pairing works in practice and where to meet mentors, such as the Friday newcomers meeting and the Wednesday development meeting.

One more: setup troubleshooting deserves its own slot. Newcomers often get stuck on environment errors before they write any code, so a video walking through the common setup failures and where to ask for help would save a lot of frustration.

3

Hi Molly, this is such a rescue initiative. My contribution would be a walkthrough on where to find the first good issue clearly and how to raise an issue too, if we find a concern on the platform.

4

I think we should also add the behavioral guidance for newcomers.

  1. Some of them keep doing spam commenting on issues opened by other contributors.
  2. They keep mentioning a lot of maintainers on slack including lee for PR reviews.
  3. Defining a daily limit of issues/PR opening so they don’t spam it.
  4. Guide them about relevancy with every slack channel and where to post the exact comments and queries.
5

Love the Idea Molly, I think a tutorial / user’s video guide on meshery would be a game-changer.