This document summarizes Toms Bauģis' experience developing open source software and working at Parse.ly. It discusses his work on the Hamster time tracking project from 2012, contributions to GNOME, and lessons learned. It also outlines his role as employee #4 at Parse.ly, focusing on communication, version control, work organization, and observations about leading an open source project.

1. On developing things
Toms Bauģis, 27.07.2012

2. Me
● 1999-2007 - Riga - Tieto Konts
● 2007-2011 - Galway, Ireland - Digital Enterprise
Research Institute (DERI)
● 2012 - Parse.ly

3. What i'll talk about

4. The Hamster
story

5. Open Source
● take apart
● modify
● use

6. GNOME
● desktop environment (just like windows / apple)
● core applications - file manager, calculator, clock, etc

7. Project
Hamster
http://projecthamster.wordpress.com/

8. GUADEC (GNOME User and
Developer Conference)
● Focused
● Cheap
● Awesome

9. How can i contribute?

10. 6 days after the
conference
Work on hamster is going on. I've mastered
Glade basics, and how to connect to SQLite,
and now i'm learning how to install/distribute
files

11. +4d
"i was bending my brains yesterday trying to
make it all look object-oriented but i hope to
have a first version really soon"

12. +11d - patient zero
I kinda fixed dependencies and some other
things so it should be possible to install it
now

13. Started blog another
4 days later

15. Fast forward 4 months
first serious contributions

16. From there
● Patryk pushed us to get in shape for
inclusion in GNOME
● That meant exposure and translations
● As a result hamster is now translated in 65+
languages and used by 50k+ people around
the globe

17. Managed to make something
actually useful

18. Few personal
takeaways

19. Few personal takeaways
Beginnings can be slow
enjoyed every bit

20. Few personal takeaways
Sometimes the hardest
part is to take the plunge

22. So how hard can it be?
(without any prior experience in the field)

23. ● 3 hours to draw a rectangle
● +2h to make the chart

24. Few personal takeaways
Don't be shy about how
you do it
it's about the result

25. Few personal takeaways
Don't be shy of the result
If somebody thinks they can
do better - let them

26. Few personal takeaways
There are lots of people
out there
but recruiting matters

27. Few personal takeaways
Use the source
it's open

28. Few personal takeaways
Release early,
release often

29. What excites me
about open
source

30. What excites me about open source
Screw money
money talk is boring

31. What excites me about open source
Free tutoring
from patch reviews to patches and feedback

32. What excites me about open source
You are in control
Fix it

33. What excites me about open source
Everyone is in control

35. Parse.ly Dash
http://parse.ly/

36. Right now
● 12 people on team (7 devs)
● some of our customers
○ mashable
○ thenextweb
○ ars technica
● 55 million hits a day (~600/s)
● 70 rackspace servers; moving to colo

37. How I became employee
#4

38. "First off... we want to
thank you for Hamster - I
use it every day..."

39. Luckily turned out to be
not that different from
OSS
apart from being full-time

40. Not that different
● can be wherever internet is
● working in a small, focused and diverse
team
● lot of the communication is async
● flat[-ter] structure - parsely is me
● meeting in person roughly every 6 month

41. Practicalities

42. Communication
● IRC/Jabber
● yammer (fenced facebook)
● email
● google docs

43. git & github for version control
● comment on commits & commit lines
● notifications of commits in IRC
● unit tests fired off via web hooks

44. Work organization
● pivotal for stories
● lighthouse for bugs
● monday is bugday
○ winner gets a hackday for next bugday

45. Observations

46. Observations
Lead

47. Observations
Learn

48. Observations
Pivot

49. Observations
Surrender Control

50. Observations
Flow

51. To wrap it up

52. Share your work
and release often

53. Do it yourself
or whatever floats your boat

54. Start small
and iterate

55. Yes - now is good!
in case you were wondering

56. Check yourself

57. before you

58. wreck yourself

59. Thanks!
http://tiny.cc/tm-techhub