Blog/Slack/Wiki/GitHub/Wikipedia/OpenStreetMap Activity

Introduction

Professional and open source software development makes use of many different communication channels, each with its own strengths and purpose. We will be making use of several such communication channels (blogs, Slack, course wiki, GitHub organization) in this class and many of you will find yourselves also using others (IRC/Gitter/etc.) as they apply to your selected projects.

You will also be contributing to projects hosted on several sites: GtiHub, Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap and others as they apply to your selected projects.

The start of the semester is a good time to get organized and setup access to these platforms.

Blog

You will be using a blog to post weekly writings reflecting on the reading and discussion topic for the week (see the syllabus for more details.)

Tasks:

Setup your blog site (this can only be done AFTER you shared your GitHub username with your instructor and you were added to the course organization):

• locate your repository in the class organization, it should be called YOUR_USERNAME-weekly
• edit the _config.yml file and make changes indicated by the CUSTOMIZE comment
• edit the about.md file to include some information about yourself (make sure that you are using markdown to format this page)

Note: files are in the gh-pages branch, not a master branch of your repository.

You should be making your first blog post by the end of the first week of classes and then weekly throughout the semester.

Slack

Slack is "A messaging app for teams". Slack helps teams working on projects to do all communications within a single app rather than spreading information across e-mail, im, texts, etc. Everything posted on Slack is indexed and searchable, making it easy to go back and find information and resources or reconstruct ideas and processes.

Tasks:

1. Skim over the What is Slack? page to familiarize yourself with the Slack Basics. You don't have to get everything… just get the idea.
2. Use this link nyuossd.slack.com/signup to sign up directly for our course Slack Workspace.
3. Edit Your Profile to include at least your first and last name. You can also upload a photo or avatar if you'd like.
4. Skim over the links in the Work in Channels Topic page do the following:
   • Join the #sample-live-log channel.
5. Skim over the links in the Send Messages Topic do the following: - Post a message to the #general channel. - Edit the message you just posted. - Star the #sample-live-log channel and note where your starred channels appear. - Star a message in the #general channel and note where your starred messages appear. - Add a reaction to a message in the #general channel. - Team up with a classmate or two:
   • Mention another member in a message in the #general channel.
   • Find the list of your mentions and reactions.
   • Send a direct message to someone.
   • Reply to a direct message from someone.

GitHub

The course organization is hosted on GitHub. It is also likely that you will pick a project that hosts its repositories on GitHub. (It is possible that you will work on a project that uses a different hosting site. In such a case, you will need to setup an account there as well.)

Tasks

1. Visit GitHub.
2. In the upper right corner click the Sign Up button.
3. In the page that opens, complete the information required by GitHub. If you do not wish the user name to be easily associated with you, pick something that is not related to your name or your netID.

Wikipedia

We will spend some time editing Wikipedia pages, and while an account is not absolutely necessary for this, I am requiring that you create one so that we can easily track your contributions. These are instructions for creating an account in Wikipedia.

Tasks

1. Visit Wikipedia
2. In the upper right corner, click the Create Account link.
3. Complete the information required on the page that loads. It is very self-explanatory. If you do not wish the user name to be easily associated with you, pick something that is not related to your name or your netID.

Open Street Map

We will also spend some time editing the OpenStreetMat, so you need to create an account on that site as well.

Tasks

1. Visit the page OpenStreetMat.
2. In the upper right corner click the Sign Up button.
3. In the page that opens, complete the information required by OpenStreetMap. If you do not wish the user name to be easily associated with you, pick something that is not related to your name or your netID.

Course Wiki

The course organization on GitHub contains a private repository called wiki. We will use this for content that needs to be jointly edited by everybody in the class. All of you should have write access to the existing pages and permission to create new pages.

Tasks

1. Go to the existing page called OSSD participants and edit it to add your name and some information about you (use my entry as a template). You should list:
   • your name,
   • link to your blog,
   • link to your GitHub profile
   • your Wikipedia username with a link to your contributions page
   • your OpenStreetMap username with a link to your contributions page
   • the name (and a link) of your favorite open source project (challenge: pick a project that nobody else listed; you can list more than one)

Follow the formatting in my entry! (and use it as a guide for markdown if you are not familiar with markdown yet).

NOTE: With our Wiki anyone can edit any page. This is great for collaborative creation of the pages, but it also comes with great responsibility. Please do not edit anyone else's personal entries. Keep in mind that the software logs all changes and the user that makes them (Have a look at the "History" tab).