Note for the attendees

By attending this workshop, you will learn how you can become a contributor to Apache Airflow project. You will learn how to setup development environment, how to pick your first issue, how to communicate effectively within the community and how to make your first PR - experienced committers of Apache Airflow project will give you step-by-step instructions and will guide you in the process. When you finish the workshop you will be equipped with everything that is needed to make further contributions to the Apache Airflow project.

Note for people running the workshop

When you would like run a workshop for first time contributors, you can follow this guide. Organisation of such event can be done by both committers but also heavy contributors who aspire to become committers and want to help with building the community. Active community building and spreading the word about Airflow is an important part of contributor's engagement that might lead to becoming a committer. 

Motivation

Contributor's workshop is perfect way to engage more people in Airflow Community and it is surprisingly simple to organise.

The goal of such "First time contributors" workshop is to make Airflow users aware that it is very easy to contribute to Apache Airflow and that we are very welcoming community. There are a lot of users that extends the features of Airflow and they do not really know that they contribute it back.

Organising such workshops is a perfect opportunity to make people feel more welcome and actually contribute their code. It also builds good relationships with the users and helps organisers (usually committers) to learn more about the needs of Apache Airflow users. 

Sponsoring and organizing the event

In case you work at or partner with a company that uses Apache Airflow and supports contributing to Open-Source, it's very easy to get such company to sponsor such event: host the event inn a suitable event space, sponsor food and drinks. Workshops like that are perfect recruitment event for such companies. They can show that they are open-source-friendly company that cares about people learning new stuff, that they are happy to host people, they can bring their own employees who will also be happy to participate in the event and  build relationship with the participants. As an example - the first Apache Airflow Workshop in Berlin was sponsored by Google Cloud, Polidea and Contentful. The second one in Warsaw was sponsored by Polidea. 

Sponsoring companies - when they host such - event usually have people who also take care about ordering food/drinks, setting up the event space, making sure the network works, providing WiFi access to guests and even welcoming the people when they come - this is an important. Some companies will also help with preparing SWAGS (at Promo stuff you can download all the materials to prepare such promo stuff as mugs, stickers, hoodies etc.). 

Inviting people to the event

It is surprisingly easy to invite people to your Apache Airflow Workshop. Apache Airflow is one of the most popular orchestrator and it is used in many companies. There are various ways how you can attract people:

1. Find out if there is a aa Apache Airflow Meetup at https://meetup.com and ask organisers to add your workshop as a Meetup event - you reach out to Airflow community that is already there. Current list of meetups can be found here https://airflow.apache.org/meetups/ but check at meetup.com as the new meetup might be created and not yet reflected at the main airflow page.
2. If there is no nearby meetup - create such meetup yourself (and let us know at dev@airflow.apache.org or Slack: https://apache-airflow-slack.herokuapp.com/. Announce it in your company, related meetups, social media etc. You do not have to create event first - you can first create a meetup and see if there are people interested in Airflow and only create the event after you get enough people signing up
3. Partner with a nearby conference or meetup and make an "accompanying event". If you tell the conference organizers that you will organize the event on your own, and that you announce that you are partnering with the event in your community, they will usually gladly accept your event as  "accompanying event" and use their channels/social media. This is usually a win-win cooperation where both sides are benefiting from each-other's engagement and cross-promotion of both events. This is how two first "First time contributor's workshop" happened: The first contributor's workshop was held as an accompanying event to ApacheCon EU 2019 in Berlin and the second was an accompanying event to PyData Warsaw 2019 . It's best if you also speak at that event (but it is not necessary) - you can easily make an accompanying "open-source" event without speaking at the conference. Additionally - often if you make relation with organisers, you can ask for free or heavily discounted ticket in case you agree to such "accompanying event".
4. Become part of some regular tech meetups organised by a sponsoring company - most of the companies who are in our space organises such events and they are really happy to host you (and even sponsor the event - see above)
5. Ping people at relevant #users- channels or #random at the slack: https://apache-airflow-slack.herokuapp.com/

Prerequisites for the attendees

Here are the prerequisites you can send to your attendees:

Logistics for the event

• Workshops are best if there are 20-30 people attending max.
• It's best if there are at least two (for 20 attendees) or three (for 30 attendees) people organising it - who can help others. Ideally Apache committers or experienced contributors.
• Make sure that people follow prerequisites before the event. Part of preparation is to install Breeze environment and while it is fairly quick to install if you are doing it alone, 20-30 people downloading 1.5 GB each at the same time can saturate your network.
• Space for 20-30 people with desks chairs, WiFi and extension cords to plug the laptops of people in.
• Projector where you can make a short intro presentation
• Food and drinks (traditionally beer & pizza but we recommend more healthy options as well to attract diverse people)
• Ideally some playlist to play music in the background (not too loud)
• Ideally some whiteboards where you will be able to discuss something with your attendees
• Make sure to review existing JIRA issues to choose a few that people can start working on. Some people will come with their own issues as well. 

Workshops can be run as "after-work" evening meetup. The event should last 3-4 hours at most. The agenda we found works best is (assuming 5.30 pm is starting time):

• 5.30pm                      Doors open
• 5.45pm                      Food, drinks, socializing
• 6pm                           Start - intro/presentation
• 6.30pm - 9.30pm     Workshops

Here is a template presentation that you can give during the event: Airflow Workshop [Template].

During the workshop simply let people follow the https://github.com/apache/airflow/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.rst#contribution-workflow-example . Make sure to update template and replace sponsor's material with the actual sponsor. 

Before people leave, you can give people the survey you can print and ask your attendees to fill. With 20-30 participants it is best to give printed survey to fill (people will fill it) rather than send them electronic survey. Link to Google doc here and .pdf version is attached. Make sure to share results of the survey with your attendees.