Global Sprint is coming and you should join it
Mozilla's commitment to a healthier Internet has been well carved throughout the years in the way they support other open source projects. With the Global Sprint 2018 coming tomorrow and the day after, there are plenty of projects where you can put your hands on for a good cause. From digital inclusion to open science, there are nearly 150 of projects listed for collaboration, requiring help on things such as coding, testing, UX design, content creation, localization and much more. Anyone with an Internet connection can get involved. There are also various places around the globe where people will physically meet and work together. I will be at the Lisbon one, which will take place at Bright Pixel.
As a Project Coach, you can read below about my personal highlights, but you can also check the full list of Global Sprint projects here.
Fogos.pt
For a long time, much like other Mediterranean countries, wildfires have been a tragic part of every Portuguese summer. In 2015, Tomahock started Fogos.pt, a website and app that displays the information of Protecção Civil (Portuguese emergency services) about fires and deployed resources; all in real time and in an accessible manner. In 2017, Portugal was ravaged by the deadliest wildfires the country had ever witnessed, claiming more than a hundred lives. In the aftermath of the Pedrógão fire on June 17th, the project got a lot of attention and it turned out to become the most reliable source of information about fires in the country during the October fires, as the Protecção Civil website crashed.
Tomahock is looking for help with things such as:
- creating a page for partnerships
good first issue - creating a warning feed
- adding multilanguage support and (at least) an English version
localization
TPP - Transportes Públicos de Portugal
One day, André Glatzl wanted to go from Lisbon to Figueira da Foz by public tansport, but there was no place where he could find the all the information he needed - things such as schedules and stops. In Portugal, that information is scattered through the many websites of different operators; in different formats and hiding away in clunky pages. So, he decided to tackle the issue by creating an app that gathers all this info in one place and TPP - Transportes Públicos de Portugal was born.
TPP's team is looking for help with things such as:
- replacing all hardcoded links with ENV variables
good first issue - defining an algorithm that sorts the geocoding results in the best way for the user
advanced - improving the Portuguese translation
localization
While it is not mandatory, if you'd like to help in this project, it might help if you speak Portuguese.
ROSA - Resources for Open Science in Astronomy
Rachael Ainsworth is a a Postdoctoral Research Associate and Open Science Champion at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, University of Manchester. Since last year, she has been developing a toolkit to help researchers and scientists in fields such Astronomy and Astrophysics to improve their practices regarding open data and open source.
Rachael is looking for help with things such as:
- content creation around open access, open science, open data and open source
content - developing discussions around open science issues and best practices
discussion
Other projects
There are loads of other open source projects you can work on. Some require more specialized knowledge than others. If you are more into technical things, try PDF graphs to CSV, bioSyntax or Application Frame.