What You Need to Know About Contributing to Open Source with AmyJune Hineline

Joe Casabona: Hey, real quick before we get started, I want to tell you about the Creator Crew, an exclusive community designed to help you build something more. Now I say build something more because that is the version of the podcast that members get. That version of the podcast includes longer, ad-free episodes, pre and post-show conversations, bonus behind the scenes episodes at least quarterly, plus a members only community, live streams and office hours, members interviews and advanced look at the schedule, a monthly behind the scenes newsletter, and special deals and offers.

If you want to sign up for just $5 a month, you can head over to buildsomething.club. And in today’s build something more, I’m going to be talking to AmyJune Hineline, our guest, about the differences between the WordPress and Drupal communities. I think she shares a lot of really interesting insights, as someone who’s never been in the Drupal community or has even used Drupal, to my knowledge, I can’t tell you what the dashboard looks like. She offers, again, a lot of really good insight.

I love that part of the conversation we have. And honestly, I think that some of the best conversations I’ve had on this show were for Build Something More. So if you are interested in longer ad-free episodes, behind-the-scenes stuff, and a community of builders, head over to buildsomething.club. You can sign up for 5 bucks a month or 50 bucks a year. I really, really appreciate it.

Intro: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 227 of How I Built It, the podcast that offers actionable tech tips for small business owners. My name is Joe Casabona, and today’s sponsors are Linode, The Events Calendar, and TextExpander. You’ll be hearing about them later in the episode. Today I’m talking to AmyJune Hineline. She is a community ambassador and QA engineer. And we are going to talk all about the open source community, contributing, and teaching.

I loved this conversation. I gushed when we were done recording. I love everything that AmyJune had to say. I love her insight. We talk about music. We talk about the importance of having empathy while teaching. You know, that’s a big thing for me. And I love her insight as someone who has 20 years’ experience in nursing before moving over to the open source community.

So things to look out for, common misconceptions when you are teaching people in general about contributing to open source, things to keep in mind while teaching beginners, and just general outreach and giving back. This is a great conversation with AmyJune Hineline. And I know you will enjoy it. So let’s get on with the episode.

Joe Casabona: Hey, everybody, and welcome. Welcome back to How I Built it. I am so excited that we have AmyJune Hineline. She is the community ambassador and a QA engineer at Kanopi. And we’re going to be talking about contributing to open source primarily, but we will wait into the accessibility waters as well, making this a nice third episode in an accessibility trilogy for this year. AmyJune, how are you?

AmyJune: I am fantastic. It’s really nice weather where I am today, which puts me in an excellent mood. It was really hot yesterday and now it’s in the 70s. So it’s a nice day to go for a walk. We actually have a tree around the corner from us that was hit by lightning a few years ago and now that there’s a beehive in there and it’s our daily ritual to go and visit the bees. And it’s interesting because you can tell what the weather is like by the activity of the bees. Like the warmer it is the more active they are. So I’m really looking forward to that adventure after the podcast.

Joe Casabona: Oh, that’s super cool. I don’t know a lot about nature in general, I would say. So I had no idea. But that’s super cool. It’s also nice here as we record this. It’s been unseasonably cold, which made me grumpy but sun is shining today. Kids are outside playing in their little pool. So good day on both coasts.

I’m excited because your background is in nursing. My wife is a nurse. But you also work in the open source space, which I also do. So I love talking to people who can kind of understand what both my wife and I are saying. I interviewed Stephanie from Formidable Forms a couple years ago, and it was the same for her. She was a nurse who transitioned into programming. But before we get into that and how you made your move, why don’t you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

AmyJune: So like you said, my name is AmyJune. I live in Northern California, I have most of my adult life. But right now I work for Kanopi Studios as their community ambassador. And that’s sort of a weird thing that not a lot of people have heard of. It’s becoming more common, especially in WordPress. I work both in WordPress and Drupal.

My main job with Kanopi is giving back to the community. Because my CEO, Anne Stefanyk realizes that open source depends on us to contribute to make it happen. And since we both rely on open source, both WordPress and Drupal to make our websites and our digital assets, that it’s our moral and civic, sort of our corporate citizenship to give back. And so that’s why she hired me.

So I traveled to camps, and I teach classes, not only on how to contribute back to Drupal, but I also am accessibility advocate. So I go and I talk about different things accessibility. You know, how do you make your social media more accessible? How do you create alt text, you know, little things that we don’t always think about in our content entry.

Beyond work, I like to travel. So my job really helps me out because I really like to go see music. Like this morning, I was actually looking at some of the tours coming out in the summer and seeing if they align with any of the camps that are going for in person. We really like punk rock music and bluegrass. So that’s one of our things that we like to do.

And then I like to geocache because it’s outside. I don’t know if people know what that is. That’s where you take coordinates and you find treasures and you log them on the internet and really make use of million-dollar software to find little bits and pieces in the woods. So I’m not sure what else. I have two kids, but they’re grown so that’s nice. You know, I have my life back. Sorry, parents, but it does get better.

Joe Casabona: Very nice. Very nice. As we record this, this isn’t public knowledge yet, but my wife is pregnant with our third. So we’ll have two under two in December. And I know that that will be exciting and new adventures but it’s a big life change.

There are a lot of really cool things here that you’ve already mentioned. I’m thinking already that in build something more maybe we’ll talk about the differences between the WordPress and Drupal community because I don’t know much about the Drupal community. I’m pretty embedded in the WordPress space. So if you are cool with that, I think we can talk about that in Build Something More. To get that part of the conversation, head over to buildsomething.club.

But also you like to travel and you mentioned that you like to see live music. Punk rock is my jam. I guess more pop-punk because I grew up in the 90s. Blink-182 was my first and longest favorite band. What are some punk rock bands that you’ve seen live? Maybe a couple of favorites off the top of your head.

AmyJune: The Descendents are probably my top two bands. The tour that I was looking at this morning was from Sleater-Kinney. They’re out in Portland. I do like Bad Religion a lot. They’re kind of that pop-punk almost too. I don’t like that really heavy, dark… I like a little bit of sound. Like some punk I don’t really like. Fugazi is actually my top band. I’m not sure if that’s considered hardcore punk. But the ideas behind it around their music is definitely punk.

Joe Casabona: For sure.

AmyJune: And then those bands that come out of Washington DC out of Fugazi is labeled discord I really like. Minor Threat, The Evens—that’s Ian MacKaye, who’s the lead singer Fugazi. Him and his wife have a band called The Evens. And they still play for five bucks all around the country just like Fugazi did in the 90s.

Joe Casabona: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Very cool. I mentioned Blink-182, but also The Misfits put on a heck of a show. I’m a big Misfits fan. Green Day, I guess put on one of my favorite shows that I’ve seen live. I feel like they’re more true to the, at least, the messaging, at least with a couple of their albums. But anyway, I could talk about music all day.

You also mentioned that you, you go to events, you teach people on how to contribute as well as accessibility. Before we dive into that, your back background is in nursing. So how did you get into open source software?

AmyJune: I’ve been in nursing for a long time. I’m in my mid-40s and I can say I have over 20 years of nursing under my belt. Sorry, sometimes the clothes [inaudible 00:11:00] confuse me. But I’ve always been a caregiver. I’ve always been the youngest of a family. So having my sister’s kids to take care of, having my older parents and my grandparents to take care of.

And anyone who has ever been a caregiver knows that burnout can come quick and it can be really painful when you feel undervalued and underappreciated. So, I started to feel that in nursing in about 2015. And that’s when I sort of made the switchover. So I haven’t been in tech very long. But I decided to switch careers. I thought at first I was going to go and be in human resources. So I went back and got a communications degree.

But through a series of unfortunate events, mostly meaning entry-level pay did not quite fit with my lifestyle, someone suggested I take some tech classes, and I landed in a program called Drupal Easy, which is an online program like probably 12 weeks long, where you learn Drupal. And that’s where I really learned the value of what free software meant, and what it was, and the collaboration needed, what you need to be successful with open source.

And I found that really inspiring, that story of it takes a community to build the software. I had some really wonderful mentors who are contributors to open source and they taught me how to write a patch and do all that sort of issue queue stuff. And that’s where I became hooked.

But because I was new to tech, I really had to be creative and use my strengths. And that’s where I’m teaching sort of opened it up for me. But you know, just having that burnout in nursing really led me to a different career in tech.

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And now let’s get back to it.

Joe Casabona: Again, my wife is a nurse. She’s younger than I am. She’s going to be 30 this year. I don’t know if I’m allowed to say that. But I’m sure she doesn’t care. So she’s relatively green. But I just see some days where it’s like tough, she didn’t have the support of the people she needed to have the support of. I mean, that can weigh on you.

My mom has MS, and you mentioned the caretaker burnout. I see that with my dad. And so it could be really tough. I love what you said about kind of being inspired by open source software. I really feel like open source is a different breed of software. I notice this, maybe you’ve notice this in both spaces, but there aren’t necessarily a lot of secrets kept in the open source community. Like Apple and Microsoft aren’t sharing a whole lot of what they’re doing. But the Block Editor that was started in WordPress is going to also be in Drupal. A rising tide raises all ships, sort of thing, which, which I think is super cool to share your knowledge and share your skill and contribute to kind of the greater good.

AmyJune: And the part that open source that sort of… what drew me to it too was because nursing is very altruistic… I was a hospice nurse or I am a hospice. And so there’s a part of yourself that feels good just for giving back. And it translates really well in that open source world, too, because giving back is very altruistic. You don’t expect anything in return. You just do it, because you know it’s the right thing to do.

So it was a good replacement for those feelings I felt in nursing that I was missing. When I started thinking I was going to be an HR, I didn’t get those feelings in HR. I get those feelings for really helping out and giving back to the greater good. And most of our projects that we work on, well, it depends on what company you work for, but a lot of agencies and organizations that use our open source software are doing things for the greater good. They are higher Ed’s. They are nonprofits. And so it feels good to be a part of that. WordPress operates 40% of the web, Drupal runs 5% of the web. That’s almost 50% of the web that you’ve had your hands in. So it’s very exciting.

Joe Casabona: That’s incredible. I love the parallel that you drew there between being a nurse and giving back, and then being able to give back in the open source space as well. Because I guess I have a harder time seeing it. My wife has a bad day versus I have a bad day. I feel like my wife’s bad day is worse. And she always tells me that’s not the case, it depends on kind of where you are and things like that. And so it’s really cool to see parallels like that.

Now, I was checking out your LinkedIn profile and you say—I really like this—”working to lower the barrier to entry in tech through my leadership of first time contributor workshops at the local and regional level.” I think that this is an often overlooked aspect of contributing. So I guess, to give some context, a lot of people think that in order to contribute to open source, you need to know how to code or maybe they know how to code, but they’re not quite sure how to jump in. What made you focus on the first time contributor kind of aspect of it?

AmyJune: I worked for an agency very much that had the same sort of role for me in a little bit different way. But I was helping internally versus externally, where I was helping people when they were onboarded onto our team give back to Drupal. And I was working with someone, a friend of mine, who had been in Drupal for 10 years. And I thought to myself, “I can’t help this person.” And she said, “I’ve never written a patch. I’ve never done this.” And I was like, “What?”

So I realized that everyone has the potential to be a first time contributor. It doesn’t matter how long they’ve been doing it. Maybe they haven’t had the privilege or the opportunity to give back and they just needed a little bit of help. So when my next job came around, and I had the opportunity to teach externally within the community versus just within the agency, I really thought about who contributed, how we see when we go to camps and we go to contribution space, when we… And this is where Drupal and WordPress are a little bit different.

When I go to a Drupal contribution day at the Drupal com level, we have a workshop where there’s hundreds of people. And the people who are getting left behind are the Human Resources people, the project managers, the marketers, our designers, our content authors, because they had this misconception that only coders. Because they go to these workshops and everyone’s talking about “how do you set up your machine for local development? How do you do this?”

And I realized I don’t have my machine set up for local development and I’m a top contributor to Drupal. You don’t need to have those things to do that. And I realized, too, that these people weren’t coming to contribute day. So they were missing out on a whole day of networking because they felt they weren’t equipped to do that.

So we sort of took contribution days and sort of raveled it up a little bit and decided, well, let’s teach more about not just code, but how do you contribute to documentation? How do you contribute when you don’t have a local environment? How do you market Drupal? How do you market WordPress?

And what it was for me was going to my first WordCamp US and going to their contribution day, and seeing that the code table was one of the smallest tables in all of the other contrib spaces. And it was sort of one of these aha moments for me. So I decided to take that back to the local and regional level, because I go to local and regional camps, and teach it in a way that everyone can feel empowered. Because that’s what it’s about, it’s about empowering people to feel like they can contribute.

And I think coming from that non-technical background really helps me be successful with empowering folks too. And not to sound self-deprecating, but it’s that, you know, if I can do it, you can do it sort of montage. And we really have to think about like it takes all types of perspectives and diverse people to make our software usable and accessible. Because our engineers use the software in one way. They write the documentation for other developers and engineers.

So it takes all of our perspectives to be like, wait a minute, that doesn’t make sense, you’re skipping a step that I don’t know, because I don’t have a technical background. So I really empower folks to like contribute, like even a documentation. Like, if you can’t figure out what they’re asking you to do, that means the documentation is incomplete. So those non-technical users are the best people for some of these user experience tasks, documentation, and even UI things. So that’s where I… you can tell, I just get super excited.

But now when we do contrib days, when we run initiatives like WordPress, we make sure that there’s issues for everyone to work on. And even we get some of these smaller tasks, maybe it’s a documentation or a code block in our code base. And it’s not code, it’s written in plain English. But we can get our human resource person to come in and change that human-readable text and learn how to make a patch.

So they’re touching the code, but not touching the code at the same time, but they’re learning that process. And so every time they contribute, they become more empowered, they learn code, they’re opening up, they’re learning git. So all of these little things help people sort of explore what they can do next too. So if they want to switch and go into code, they have that little bit of experience of even opening their terminal for the first time.

Joe Casabona: I absolutely love that. Because even I mean, I have a master’s degree in software engineering, but my biggest contributions to the WordPress space are not code. Because I don’t feel like running SBN, I don’t feel like running the million things I need to do through homebrew to get my local machine up and running or whatever. So I contribute primarily through teaching and speaking. And that’s a passion of mine as well. I think that’s so great.

And you’re absolutely right, the different perspectives. I am a developer who absolutely hates when a developer as well is working on my machine. That’s not great. So I’ll just go use your machine for the thing I need to do. I don’t know how that’s helpful. So working with other people who have different perspectives, who use your software differently is just going to make the software better.

I think you touched on this a little bit, but what are some of the most common misconceptions that you see when teaching people about contributing to open source?

AmyJune: Well, again, folks often think that they need to know how to code. But often they’re reluctant to fix the small things. Like they don’t think they’re going to be impactful. So I just like to remind folks that there’s no such thing as just a typo. There’s no small issue in our software. Our grammar that we use in our user interfaces, our spelling errors, our accessibility patterns, incomplete documentation, all of those things might seem small to folks. But when we have external people evaluate WordPress as a project, are they going to be using WordPress for their organization?

When we have product owners evaluate our projects and there are spelling mistakes, or the UI, or our code blocks or documentation have typos, or it’s one long sentence and it’s hard to read, they question the validity of our projects, right? So we want to make sure that our products look good from all angles. So when folks asked what kind of issues are worth reporting and fixing, I say, all of them.

Those smaller fixes, like I said, help empower people. The smaller fix helps empower people to make a bigger fix. The more small fixes they have, the more experience they have under their belt.

Joe Casabona: Wow, I love that. The smaller fix empowers people to make a bigger fix. That’s so true. Like, yeah, not everybody is going to be working on the Block Editor or full site editing or whatever. But the language, for example, that we use is so important.

I guess a couple months ago now, Matt Maderos tweeted about some messaging in the Jetpack plugin, and how it was a little scare tactic key, and how it made people think they needed to get this extra thing in Jetpack. And to the Jetpack, team credit, they fixed it same day. They reworded it. But it took somebody else pointing out, hey, like maybe this isn’t the best way to approach users with this problem. And that can have a big impact on how people use the software.

Another example is Block Editor versus Gutenberg. A lot of people think they are different, or how do you get one without the other? Just the way we talk about that affects how people are interacting with WordPress. So I think what you said is so important. Again, I love the smaller fix empowers people to make a bigger fix.

AmyJune: And then also to kind of tag along with that is sometimes people don’t grasp the concept that you don’t need to know how to fix the issue to report the issue. You don’t need to know code to open an issue in the track queue. Again, it comes down to our developers don’t know how we all use the software. Especially when it comes to accessibility, maybe they don’t know the latest eye-tracking software or the way a screen reader interacts with when people zoom in to the browser.

So if we don’t report those edge cases, they don’t know that they exist. And like I said, I just always want to stress to people: you don’t have to know how to fix it to report an issue. And reporting an issue is definitely giving back to our project.

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And now let’s get back to it.

Joe Casabona: When I was writing my book, I had a chapter on accessibility. So I was trying these accessibility tools and it revealed some things about my own site. I don’t use my site in a certain way for sure. I’m usually on the back end of my website. So I’m not even really interacting on the front end with it a lot except for some basic testing. So when you see an issue, especially in open source on any website, report it. It’ll make the software better for you and for lots of other people too. What a great point that you make there.

Wow, we’ve already been talking for a while. The next question I want to ask you is more around the teaching side of things. I’m a teacher, I’ve taught at the college level for a long time and I have my own online courses and things like that. And a few years ago at WordCamp US, I gave a talk about having empathy while teaching. Because it’s easy, once you have been using something for a long time to forget what it’s like to be a beginner. So with that in mind, what should others keep in mind when teaching beginners?

AmyJune: I think keeping in mind that gatekeeping knowledge is a real thing that exists is the first part. We don’t want to make any assumptions about anybody’s skill level. And then saying things like, “You’ve never done this?” can be really discouraging for folks. So just making sure that you understand that everyone’s skill levels and passions and interests are different.

And then taking to account that not everyone learns the same way. I might learn from watching a video, but other people might need that transcript to really process the information. So having a couple of available formats for folks to learn from or additional resources really helps. And like you said, I have a book in my storage unit that says, “Every great chess player was once a beginner.” And really remembering that.

And then there’s that saying “if you want to learn something, teach it.” Because we’re always better teachers when we’re first teaching the subject, because we’ve really explore it because we don’t want to get it wrong. And then we iterate. But that first time we learn. And then really our students, and even people we collaborate with, they ask questions that we didn’t even think about.

They introduce those weird edge cases. So I always encourage students to help out in the teaching process, too. And I tell them that from the beginning, you know, I’m not perfect, help me improve the documentation, help me improve the slide deck. And that way, all those best practices are in place for the next round of classes. Those students will feel empowered to because they’re helping you with the next set of people.

But I think it’s really not making assumptions about skill levels. When I teach people like how to open a terminal, I skip no steps. When I write documentation, I skip absolutely no steps. Because it’s easier that way. That way people don’t get lost at the beginning. They’re following you the same way.

And I found the virtual thing has been a little bit more difficult because you can’t always see your students anymore. You can’t see the bewilderment in their eyes. But that’s something I look for in real life. I just make sure I’m focused and make sure my classes are small enough. I just really value the experience that that student has more than the information I’m presenting. It’s more about the experience of the student.

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Joe Casabona: Especially when you’re writing documentation or you have a video, something that’s not necessarily in the classroom, people could always skip the part that they know. But the people who don’t know the very basics, they can’t just like invented out of thin air. So explain what the terminal is. If I know what terminal is, I can just skip that sentence and move on to the part that I want. I think that’s so great.

And you are 100%… in the classroom versus teaching online, I mean, the thing that changed my whole perspective on teaching was the first time I decided to teach WordPress to a bunch of non-technical students, students at the University of Scranton had to take what’s called Computer Literacy. And I thought it would be good for them to set up like a wordpress.com blog.

And I was explaining the difference between pages and posts as somebody who has been using WordPress since 2004 and I just saw faces. And I’m like, “Does anybody have any questions? You definitely do.” And one girl, God bless her, she changed my whole perspective on teaching, just said, “I have no idea what any of that means.” And I’m like, “Okay.” I reworded the whole thing in a way that they actually understood. And from then on, I was like, “Wow, I taught like everybody has been using WordPress the same way I do.” So getting the students involved in teaching I think is so so important. And I’m really glad that you mentioned it.

AmyJune: Yeah, I like workshops a lot. When I do the first time contributor workshops, I teach them like a workshop where we do round-robins too. One person gets to do one thing, the next person, then they sit around. But having that interactive learning is so much more effective than that lecture-based too.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, for sure. There’s the idea of the flipped classroom, where you maybe assign a lecture for homework and then you actually work through the problems in class and or in the workshop. That has its pitfalls, too. I’ve had students tell me that they’ve had teachers who just say, like, “Watch these videos on Udemy or whatever. Just watch these free videos and then we’ll work through.” And I’m like, that’s not teaching. That’s outsourcing the teaching part.

But actually working through the problem as a group, those are some of my favorite computer science classes because it was like all of us. The teacher was acting like they didn’t know the answer, and just kind of let us work through it. And that’s so valuable.

So wrapping up here, first of all, I’ve loved this conversation. Everything that you’re talking about, I’m super passionate about as well. So this is great. But I do need to ask my favorite question, which is, do you have any trade secrets for us?

AmyJune: This might seem odd or weird, but I recently was awarded a pretty prestigious award in Drupal for giving back. And I had a lot of people ask me like, how do you always have that go-getting and always wanting to help? And it’s because I’ve made myself redundant. So making yourself redundant, especially when working and volunteering in open source is super important. When you take on a leadership role, part of being a leader and having that leadership position is really making sure you have an exit strategy.

So we’re always looking to learn new things and take on new leadership roles. But we also need to learn how to leave those other leadership roles behind. So for me, in the last two years, I’ve been making sure that I’ve always had someone learning the roll with me. So if I take on a meetup, like I organize San Francisco Drupal Users meetup, I make sure that there’s someone that can do absolutely every task that I can do.

So one, I can go on vacation. Wow, what a concept, right? Or I just am overloaded, because I’m going to WordCamp Ohio next week, and I can’t possibly do the Thursday meetup. So making sure that I have someone who can step in is something I had to learn because at first you have imposter syndrome, you want to make yourself valuable, you don’t want to be replaceable. But really that’s my secret is making sure that I am replaceable so I can always take on those new opportunities when I’m asked.

So if someone asks me, hey, do you want to be a WordCamp Us organizer? I’m like, “Yeah.” So I look at what roles I have, and I’m like, “You know what, I’ve been on this team for a long time, I’m going to step down into a support role,” and there’s someone to take over my leadership role. Again, always making sure that you have someone to help you out. Like the buddy system.

Joe Casabona: I am not blowing smoke here. This is maybe my favorite trade secret because in 200 some odd episodes, it’s never been mentioned, but it’s so true. Especially for a lot of people who listen, they’re self-employed and they think they can’t take a vacation or they can’t fully take a vacation. They have to take their laptop with them just in case something happens.

I’ll tell you when I went on my honeymoon in 2016, I was in Italy for two weeks. I didn’t bring my computer, nothing was burned down to the ground because I had a backup. I had my friend. We knew the same things. He could handle the emergencies. There were no emergencies. So make yourself replaceable. I absolutely love that.

So first of all, if you want to hear more from AmyJune about WordPress vs. Drupal and I might ask you about geocaching there too, you can sign up for the Creator Crew over a buildsomething.club. It’s just five bucks a month or 50 bucks a year and you get ad-free extended episodes. AmyJune, if people want to learn more about you, where can they find you?

AmyJune: So I was a Volkswagen mechanic in a past lifetime as well working on air-cooled vintage Volkswagens. So my handle across all of the spaces is Volkswagen Chick. And Volkswagen is a German word. So it’s spelled V-O-L-K-S-W-A-G-E-N, chick, C-H-I-C-K. So that’s Twitter, that’s LinkedIn, that’s all the weird spaces. So that’s probably the best place is LinkedIn or Twitter.

Joe Casabona: Perfect. I will list all of those and everything that we talked about in the show notes over at streamlined.fm/227. AmyJune, this has been an absolute pleasure. Thanks so much for joining me today.

AmyJune: Thank you. What a nice opportunity to talk about my passions!

Joe Casabona: Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much. And thanks to this week’s sponsors: Linode, The Events Calendar, and TextExpander. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time, get out there and build something.