[Biopython-dev] Biopython on Twitter

[Peter]

On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 10:33 PM, Brad Chapman <chapmanb at 50mail.com> wrote:
> Hi Peter;
> Thanks for the feedback. I was definitely not being critical of your
> postings, ...

I hadn't had that impression, but that's still nice to hear ;)

> ... or fishing for extra jobs for myself.

Darn - I thought you'd be an excellent choice.

> On the contrary, I was inspired by the news items and
> brainstorming some ways to get additional people involved.

Well unless anyone already lurking on the dev mailing list steps
forward (*hint hint*), do you (Brad) want to try asking on the main
discussion list to see if there are any takers?

> People who express an interest in Biopython and don't get
> involved often list the following reasons:
>
> - Not feeling like they are technically able to contribute. Perhaps
>  they are just learning Python, or don't feel comfortable with the
>  Biopython library itself.

I find once they get over any shyness, even just having beginners
asking questions can be valuable in itself.  It shows us potential
blind spots, or areas of the documentation which need clarification
(or writing) - plus of course it can bring about discussions etc.

> - Traditional academics doesn't offer recognition for contributing to
>  open source projects. While we can't change academics, we can try
>  and come up with ways to improve the visibility of contributors and
>  make sure they are recognized in the larger bioinformatics
>  community.
>
> My thought was that a "news coordinator" would give one or more
> interested people a chance to help the community, learn more about
> Biopython by being involved, and also increase name recognition for
> everyone coding, bug fixing and discussing.

Some of us are very aware of this issue (accademic recognition for
contributions to projects like Biopython), and different employers
will take different attitudes here.  In some cases making our
contributors more visible won't always be a good idea...  In my
case work on Biopython was a definite plus point in landing my
current job, but there are of course still limits to how much work
time I can reasonably spend on this (and limits to how much time
I spend out of work - like right now on this email).

> In terms of how it is done, those were only my random suggestions.
> Certainly if someone took it up they could be as creative as they
> want about how to go about it.
>
> Brad

It's certainly worth a go :)

Peter