So I guess the kind of questions to ask would be 1) How important it is to mysociety?
2) What kind of skills are needed? 3) How much background knowledge is needed? 4) Is it a new project/startup or is it maintenance and development of an existing one? 5) Is it implementing a solution to a well understood issue or is it a less well defined problem-solving type task? 6) Will it require working closely with a team or in isolation? If it’s a team, then is it a bunch of other newbie’s or seasoned experts? The ideal being to start with something that’s straightforward to achieve and useful to you guys, even if it is a little mundane. That way I can get a feel for how you all operate before attempting anything more ambitious. Though I guess in reality there’s a tendency to just ignore all the analysis and embark on the first thing that seems exciting and glamorous J. If I’m honest it was this blog post http://www.mysociety.org/2009/02/19/why-i-want-a-million-quid/ that bumped me from just being a fan of mysociety to wanting to be involved. (edit : Matthew just pointed me at the ticket system, which may well help https://secure.mysociety.org/cvstrac/reportlist ) You’re sort of right about http://www.mysociety.org/helpus/. It felt like it was pitched at two extremes ; encouraging people with just a passing interest to spread the word, and helping those people already in the field to get in touch to push their own ideas and agenda. For those of us in the middle that need a little more handholding, I was left a little unsure how to proceed. Hence my email to the list. I’ll give it some thought and see if can come up with some suggestions. On the last point, guilty as charged. I have a rather beaten and worn out Blackberry Bold. I can see you have an iPhone app, has anyone started on a blackberry version? Dustin 2009/3/17 Simon Bohlin <[email protected]> > Dustin, > To help you find something interesting for you, can I ask you to write down > some thoughts on what you'd need to know to find something to do. > > After that, look at http://www.mysociety.org/helpus/ > > Then I suggest writing a short change-suggestion for the above page :-). > I'm asking this because I suspect it didn't fulfull your needs. It didn't > for me, when I found it some month after joing the mail list, but I'm too > lazy to get around figuring out how to improve it... > Probably the helpus page could be made more visible, also from other > sites Contact, FAQ and similar pages. Link texts like "Developers wanted" or > "Join a project"? Or there might be reasons for not trying to bind up every > person with a whish to somehow help. > > Now now specific to you Dustin; as a finance guy with knowledge of > C/C++, do you perhaps have a smart/mobile phone with GPS? You should have a > look at the FixMyStreet mobile software. There might be one that works on > your model, or you could help figuring out how to make one of them > compatible with your phone. > > Cheers > /Simon B. > > > > On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 4:02 PM, Dustin McGivern < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> Hi all, >> >> >> >> I wanted to get in touch to see if you had any projects I could get >> involved with? I love the stuff that mysociety does and I have some free >> time so I thought I’d see if there was any way I could join in. >> >> >> >> I can’t claim to be a expert web developer or anything, but I’ve done the >> odd bit of programming in C/C++, VBA, SQL and I’m pretty IT literate in >> general. Also happy to learn some new things if that will make me more >> useful. I’ve spent the last few years as a finance director and as an >> analyst in the finance industry so I’m not scared of business-type stuff if >> that’s what’s needed. Happy to give anything a go, so speak up if you have >> anything I can help with. >> >> >> >> Thanks, >> >> Dustin >> > > _______________________________________________ > Mailing list [email protected] > Archive, settings, or unsubscribe: > https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public >
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