How can I volunteer with Sourcefabric?
Much of what we do at Sourcefabric relies on our community of volunteers. We could not do what we do without them. Many of the activities our volunteers engage in may not fall into the traditional definition of volunteering (answering questions on the forums, or reporting a bug in our software) but nonetheless, we rely heavily on all of these contributions. To volunteer with Sourcefabric, all you need to have is a passion for our organisation. It’s as simple as that. From contributing code to providing translations, we need help from any and all willing participants. This is a great opportunity to support media development in a way that works with your busy schedule.
Donate your time, ideas and knowledge
When volunteering for a software company, you don’t necessarily need to have coding skills, there are plenty of other ways in which you can contribute.
Documentation and localization
Are you a multilingual language wiz? We are always in need of translation volunteers to help us with the translation of our software. We are a global organisation that operates on almost every continent. We make it our goal is to make our software accessible to people anywhere on earth. A lofty aspiration admittedly, but to make that happen we rely on help from our large community of talented volunteers. If you are fluent in a language other than English and want to help us out, contact Daniel James to get started or go straight to our projects on Transifex.
Current localisation opportunities: Newscoop has been translated into a couple of languages and the localizations are almost completed. Have a look here to see what still needs to be done. While Superdesk is still in development, there are many opportunities for translating its interface, see the opportunities here. Of course, Booktype, Airtime and Citizen Desk also need your love.
Answer questions on the forums
If you have been using Sourcefabric software for some time, chances are you may be able to answer some questions that other users have. This is a great opportunity to get to know some other members of the community and show-off your how tech-savvy you are ;). Maybe next time someone will answer a question you might have!
Here are a few of examples of what users often have questions with: running Airtime on Raspberry 2, Airtime Icecast User Authentication, or how do I export Airtime monthly schedule to Google calendar?
Beta testing
As a quickly growing and dynamic organisation, we frequently release new versions of our software. As with any new release, we need people to test it out and help us to identify where the bugs are! If you are interested in becoming a beta tester for our software send us an email.
Current beta testing opportunities
Contribute Code
Last but not least, check out our projects on GitHub and put your coding skills to use! Feel free to make pull requests if you find a bug or if you want to add a feature. This is a great way to work on your skills as a developer or to just have a little fun improving the software.
Contribute any other skills you might have
If you don’t see an opportunity listed that meets your skill sets, just get in touch with us. We have people working with us on a number of specific activities ranging from website optimisation to brand advocacy.
Why should you volunteer?
- Build relationships with community members. You’ll gain valuable experience from working with people from different cultural backgrounds and with different communication styles.
- Develop your skills. Even if you are working on something as a volunteer, you can still add these activities to your CV/portfolio. Gaining experience like this can significantly help you land an awesome job in the future.
- Work towards something bigger. In volunteering with us, you are helping build open source software to help produce quality independent journalism. This work has helped us to develop and maintain a strong media development portfolio in some of the most challenging political environments across the globe. In this way, your contributions are helping to contribute to the dissemination of free speech.
- If you’ve been volunteering with Sourcefabric for awhile, we have a few T-shirts set aside as a show of thanks for the most active volunteers. Send us an email to get yours.
Thank you to all our current volunteers, we could not do what we do without you. We look forward to working with new volunteers in the future!