Are you a missionary?

### 1. Discover what excites you

So you’ve found motivation and have a list of various FOSS projects you could contribute to. This is the equivalent of the “I need a job” stage and you’re figuring out where to apply. It’s time to narrow it down.

What are you excited about? A multi-year pilgrimage of learning how to contribute to Bitcoin Core? A lightning wallet, perhaps? Free speech Nostr? A hardware signing device? Or maybe finding a FOSS projects that is not “Bitcoin” in name, but happens to support Bitcoin, and Lightning.

A great first step is to take some time and explore the Bitcoin Design Community (https://bitcoin.design/) to discover FOSS projects.


Are you excited anon?

### 2. Identify the skills you have or want to develop

Chances are that if you follow the Bitcoin Product Community, you’re skills are in Product Management, Product Marketing, and/or Project Management. But contributing to a bitcoin project requires contributors with skills of many backgrounds such as marketing, documentation, community building, and more.

What’s important to know is that most FOSS teams start with a motivated developer, who then may attract other devs. But many of them may not advertise that they need non-developer help such as a PM.

Therein lies the opportunity for you as an eager bitcoin contributor. See what the needs of a project are and see if you can fill in those gaps with your skills. It may be as simple as coordinating meetings for the team. But doing the “dirty work”, or the work no one else wants to do, is exactly the way you can make an immediate impact to a FOSS project. In fact, this is why members of the Bitcoin Product Community affectionately refer to product managers as “[janitors](https://medium.com/all-things-product-management/product-manager-you-are-664d83ee702e)”!

### 3. Make a list of projects

Now that you have narrowed down your FOSS search, it is time to start building a list of, and evaluating various FOSS products. Some questions you can ask yourself:

Is the project active? Is it a new project? How many team members are there? How many are devs? Is there already a PM? Is there a need for multiple PMs? Is there designer participation? What is the pace of development? Is there enough development activity for this to satisfy your want to contribute? Is there opportunity for a PM?

Github is the defacto standard for FOSS products. Check the activity. Read up on issues. See who is contributing PRs, and creating issues. Check if there is a Github Project instance.

It’s OK, and best for you to check out out multiple FOSS projects concurrently to see which team is the best fit for both parties.

### 4. Use the thing(s)!

Another thing you can do to help you choose a project is to use the thing! Download the OS. Run the software. Use it.

As you’re interacting with the product, some things you can ask yourself are:

What do you love about the product? What can be improved? Are there bugs?

Jot down your notes. Take screenshots. Do screen recordings. Document your experience. Create a video onboarding walkthrough, or a feature tutorial. What you are actually doing is documentation and this will be useful for the project, even if you don’t decide to actively contribute.

As you use the thing, take note of how you’re reacting to it. Are you getting more or less excited? Are you more or less confident in contributing to the project?

### 5. Find out where the team works

Another factor to consider is to figure out where the team works.

By now you have already explored their github to collect your FOSS intelligence. Now check nostr, twitter, telegram, or whatever other comms tools the team might be using. Some teams may have calls, and call recordings. Consider listening in to a recording, and/or joining a call to check the team dynamics.

As you do, assess whether you might be a good culture fit. Also see where there might be some gaps in their workflow that you can help improve.

### 6. Start small

Once you found a project that interests and excites you enough. It’s time to roll up your sleeves and get involved by starting small.

One easy place to start is to go through the github issues list. Some examples of issues in dev heavy teams are e extremely technical bug reports. For FOSS products with an active user base, there might be “customer” centric feature requests.

Start by logging the bug(s) you found. Examine issues, and fill in the blanks if there are unclearly defined reports & requests.

You don’t have to ask for permission to contribute. That said, evaluate team dynamics and who owns what role so you are not stepping on anyone’s toes. You are there to help.

Also take note of how your help is received. It may take time for you to build up your credibility. Don’t throw in the towel on the first week. Keep finding ways to add value.

### 7. Show up consistently

Keep contributing in small things day in and day out. As you do so, communicate with the team to ramp up your learning, and also start building rapport, and your reputation. You may not have time or opportunity to contribute full-time. With the state of asynchronous communication tools in 2023, you can flexibly contribute when you have time. An exception to the asynchronous communication may be team meetings.

As you continue to show up consistently, you will build up your FOSS proof-of-work, and reputation. This will show FOSS devs, and contributors that you bring value.

### 8. Find and meet the “customer”

Find, and interact with the project’s users a.k.a “customers”. What do they care about? What are their pain points? What needs are customers using the product for? Become the “voice of the customer” to the dev heavy team.

Is there a conference where your team is presenting, and customers present? These are invaluable opportunities to observe the customer’s behavior, and also to help answer questions, and troubleshoot on the spot.

### 9. Increase your involvement

After some time starting small and working on bugs, you may eventually find yourself submitting feature requests. Maybe there is an opportunity to create user flows, or mockups. As you consistently contribute, continue seeking more responsibility.

Maybe you offer to facilitate and lead the next team call. Maybe you try creating a roadmap and backlog from scratch. Maybe you host a product & design thinking session. Maybe you will level up and learn how to check out a dev’s PR in a yet-to-released branch.

No matter what you do, be sure to always bring value to the project.


Testing an unreleased Damus branch checked out on XCode

### 10. Prune, Commit, Repeat

Congratulations! By now you’ve been doing a “trial run” with several projects. It’s time to focus and choose one(s) that you can commit to.

As you contribute to the project on an ongoing basis, continuously reevaluate if there is opportunity for you to increase your contributions. If you feel that you’ve maxed that out, it may be time to look for a different FOSS product to contribute to. Perhaps a complementary product to your initial one.

As you embark on this journey, it can be exhilarating at times and in other times thankless. To find a community of peers, and perhaps a mentor check in with the Bitcoin Product Community [Discord](https://discord.gg/Ztvwn8fycA), and introduce yourself. The beauty of open source is people are willing to help FOSS products, and to answer your questions.

[https://youtu.be/ZUgQPR6ecuo

](https://youtu.be/ZUgQPR6ecuo

)“FOSS is the way” - Rockstar dev, @ Advancing Bitcoin Conference London 2023. The author thanks Rockstar for inspiration, and guidance through my FOSS journey.

As you continue to sweep the FOSS floors with your product [mop](https://medium.com/all-things-product-management/product-manager-you-are-664d83ee702e), remember that you are contributing to the mission that you believe in. You are working in the open, with even less authority than a PM at a company might have, and as a result leveling up. You build up your reputation in FOSS, and you show others your capabilities in the FOSS world (and also prospective employers, and co-founders) by doing.

Hopefully this helps you get started. Reach out to [elsat on nostr](https://njump.me/npub1zafcms4xya5ap9zr7xxr0jlrtrattwlesytn2s42030lzu0dwlzqpd26k5) if you have questions about the FOSS journey, and join the Bitcoin Product Community Discord.

nostr:npub1m0sxqk5uwvtjhtt4yw3j0v3k6402fd35aq8832gp8kmer78atvkq9vgcru nostr:npub1xv8mzscll8vvy5rsdw7dcqtd2j268a6yupr6gzqh86f2ulhy9kkqmclk3x nostr:npub1gcxzte5zlkncx26j68ez60fzkvtkm9e0vrwdcvsjakxf9mu9qewqlfnj5z

https://rumble.com/v5h5xas-hurricane-helene-north-carolina-compilation.html

If you run your own blossom-server https://github.com/hzrd149/blossom-server then it has a UI for uploading files. Bouquet also has an upload interface https://bouquet.slidestr.net but you will have to have a server first

But none of this will really give you censorship resistance, it just means you would be hosting your own media. In theory blossom is censorship resistance but it has not been tested yet and there aren't many servers

Another option that would be good to for a backup would be to create a torrent of the files and upload it to https://dtan.xyz/

It would require at least one person seeding for it to stay online. but as things stand bittorrent it the most censorship resistant distribution tech we have

nostr:npub1zafcms4xya5ap9zr7xxr0jlrtrattwlesytn2s42030lzu0dwlzqpd26k5 #nostrability

Many people across Nostr are working on similar initiatives, trying to #grownostr and foster community. nostr:npub1hz5alqscpp8yjrvgsdp2n4ygkl8slvstrgvmjca7e45w6644ew7sewtysa is one of them. We spoke at extent last week about her current project. She volunteered at the Nostr Booth that I organized at nostr:npub167n5w6cj2wseqtmk26zllc7n28uv9c4vw28k2kht206vnghe5a7stgzu3r a few months ago, got purple pilled in the process, and is now planning on doing similar initiatives at three Latin American conferences coming up soon.

I had a conversation with the organizer of LaBitConf in Prague, who expressed a strong interest in having a Nostr presence at his upcoming conference. He asked that I replicate the same level of involvement he witnessed in Prague, including a booth, speakers, panels, and more. He clearly recognized the significance of Nostr and was eager to feature it prominently at his event. Unfortunately, I had to decline, as it’s not feasible for me to attend every conference. However, this is where the strength of the Nostr community comes in—others can step up and make it happen.

This is what Tanja is doing! Check out her project.

https://geyser.fund/project/thenostrboothinitiative

https://video.nostr.build/6b9c22f94ccf9d8bbc7c7873bf7caa1e1636ff97ed3fa4fea7f2bab2d9e6eae6.mp4

nostr:npub1lrnvvs6z78s9yjqxxr38uyqkmn34lsaxznnqgd877j4z2qej3j5s09qnw5 + nostr:npub1tvqc82mv8cezhax5r34n4muc2c4pgjz8kaye2smj032nngg52clq0rkrq4