A short time ago I saw a tweet by Adam saying that Bower was looking for people who would be interested in volunteering to the Bower project. I looked at the tweet and read it a couple of times asking myself if I was good enough to actually be a volunteer to a large project. So I decided I would go ahead and sign up and see what happened, most of me knowing that I would never hear back from a large project. A few days later I received an invite to participate in the repository on GitHub. Uh oh! I actually received the response, now what?

The first couple of days I looked around the code base getting myself familiar with the structure and reading the issues and pull requests. I was not yet comfortable taking on an issue that dealt with making changed to the code base so I decided I would take on a role of handling issues and the wiki. Looking into issues was something that I found myself enjoying because I did not want to get right into fixing bugs, working on features, etc. Instead I was going to gradually get myself comfortable with the Bower community by lending a hand with support on any issues that were outstanding or coming in. After a few dealings with issues, I started to get an understanding of Bower leading me to want to make small changes to the documentation in the wiki. This continued on to the point where I felt confident enough to start to work closer and closer with issue handling and wiki page creation. Each time that the wiki was being updated I felt that we were getting better and better documentation which would lead to a better understanding for those who use Bower in their projects.

It is now a little over a month now - I think - that I have been taking part in the Bower project being a volunteer. I have yet to touch the code base … wait … I did try to make one change but it was one that was not needed. Anyways, I have continued to thoroughly enjoy working issues and documentation for the team. Taking on this role has led me to believe that everyone can take part in any open source project in some way or another. Just as any sports team needs players at different positions, an open source project needs people that contribute in different positions.

If you are like me, one who is not yet confident enough to want to dig into code just yet, there is a role for you. Handling issues, wiki updates, documentation, and more is very important for an open source project, and frankly very much needed. I have learned during this time that I do want to get to a point where I start to get into making a contribution to the code base, but until then I am getting more and more confident by handling other facets of the project which can be just as important.

All who are involved in the Bower project have been very welcoming to me from day 1 and have shown me the rights and the wrongs along the way. If you are like me wanting to get involved in an open source project but are not yet sure if you can handle features or bug fixes, start slowly just as I have done by taking on another role that gets your foot in the door and your confidence level up. It is very rewarding no matter what the role is because all of the roles are important in an open source project. This is what I have learned in the first month of volunteering with the Bower project.