Episode 141: Melissa Mendonça on being a Developer Experience Engineer for scientific OSS

Guest Melissa Mendonça Panelists Richard Littauer | Amanda Casari
Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk
about sustaining open source for the long haul. Today, we are so
excited to have a wonderful guest, Melissa Mendonça, joining us.
Melissa is a Senior Developer Experience Engineer at Quansight,
where she focuses more on developer experience and contributor
experience. Today, we’ll hear all about Quansight and the focus for
Melissa’s role as a Developer Experience Engineer. Melissa tells us
about a grant they are working on with CZI that focuses on NumPy,
SciPy, Matplotlib, and pandas, she shares several ideas on what can
be done to make people feel seen and heard, and we hear her
thoughts on what the future of community management and community
development looks like for people entering the role of these
projects. Go ahead and download this episode now to hear more!
[00:01:25] Melissa tells us her background and her role at
Quansight. [00:03:41] When Melissa made the decision to switch from
one role to another, Amanda asks if that was her plan or if she
learned that the skills that she needed to get things done changed
over time. [00:06:10] We find out what the focus is for Melissa’s
role as a Developer Experience Engineer and what she does on a
day-to-day basis. [00:08:43] As Melissa was talking about her
projects that they work on at Quansight, Amanda wonders if that’s
the majority of her portfolio, or if she works across different
kinds of projects. We learn about the current grant they are
working on with CZI that focuses on NumPy, SciPy, Matplotlib, and
pandas. [00:13:18] We learn about the funding model and how
sustainable it is. [00:16:20] Melissa shares some great ideas on
how we can put more effort into making people feel seen and heard.
[00:19:26] Melissa details some things she learned with the open
source projects and things she recommends for others with large
established projects. [00:22:44] Amanda talks about a 2020 paper
that was released in nature called “Array programming with NumPy,”
and Melissa gives us her perspective on what happened with the
community in 2020, if things have changed, and what needs to be
addressed. [00:27:09] Find out how CZI got involved with Melissa’s
work, what their goals are, and how she’s changing in order to
adapt towards those goals. [00:31:32] Melissa shares her thoughts
on what the future of community management and community
development looks like for people who are entering the role for
those projects. [00:36:40] We hear more about Python Brasil 2022
that’s coming up. [00:38:05] Find out where you can follow Melissa
online and learn more about her work. Quotes [00:02:49] “Since
Quansight is a company very focused on sustaining and helping
maintain open source projects, we are trying to help new
contributors, people who want to do the move from contributor to
maintainer, understanding what that means, and how we can help them
get there, and how we can help improve leadership in our open
source projects.” [00:11:53] “This is one of the barriers that we
want to break, is that making sure that people understand that
these are important, they are core projects in the scientific
Python ecosystem, but at the same time they are projects just like
any other.” [00:12:17] “I think experience of working with projects
that are so old and big has taught me a lot about the dynamics of
how people work and how new people try to join these projects and
how we can improve on that.” [00:16:41] “We need to make sure that
people who do contribution outside of code are credited and that
they are valued inside open source projects.” [00:18:20] “I think
we should think about diversifying these paths for contribution,
but for that we need to go beyond GitHub. We need to go beyond the
current metrics that we have for open source, we need to go beyond
the current credit system and reputation system that we have for
open source contributions.” [00:30:38] “Community managers are not
second-class citizens.” Spotlight [00:39:21 Amanda’s spotlight is a
2014 paper from MSR called, “The Promises and Perils of Mining
GitHub.” [00:40:48] Richard’s spotlight is the book, Don’t Sleep,
There Are Snakes, by Daniel Everett. [00:41:52] Melissa’s
spotlights are Ralf Gommers and Scientific Python initiative. Links
SustainOSS (https://sustainoss.org/) SustainOSS Twitter
(https://twitter.com/SustainOSS?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
SustainOSS Discourse (https://discourse.sustainoss.org/)
podcast@sustainoss.org (mailto:podcast@sustainoss.org) Richard
Littauer Twitter
(https://twitter.com/richlitt?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
Amanda Casari Twitter
(https://twitter.com/amcasari?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
Melissa Mendonça Twitter (https://twitter.com/melissawm) Melissa
Mendonça LinkedIn (https://br.linkedin.com/in/axequalsb) Melissa
Mendonça GitHub (https://melissawm.github.io/) Quansight
(https://quansight.com/) Quansight Labs
(https://labs.quansight.org/) Quansight Lab Projects
(https://labs.quansight.org/projects) Quansight Labs Team
(https://labs.quansight.org/team) Sustain Podcast-Episode 57:
Mikeal Rogers on Building Communities, the Early Days of Node.js,
and How to Stay a Coder for Life
(https://podcast.sustainoss.org/guests/mikeal) Sustain
Podcast-Episode 85: Geoffrey Huntley and Sustaining OSS with Gitpod
(https://podcast.sustainoss.org/85) Advancing an inclusive culture
in the scientific Python ecosystem (CZI grant for NumPy, SciPy,
Matplotlib, and Pandas
(https://figshare.com/articles/online_resource/Advancing_an_inclusive_culture_in_the_scientific_Python_ecosystem/16548063)
Sustain Podcast-Episode 79: Leah Silen on how NumFocus helps makes
scientific code more sustainable
(https://podcast.sustainoss.org/79) NumPy (https://numpy.org/)
SciPy (https://scipy.org/) Matplotlib (https://matplotlib.org/)
pandas (https://pandas.pydata.org/) Sustain Podcast-Episode 64:
Travis Oliphant and Russell Pekrul on NumPy, Anaconda, and giving
back with FairOSS (https://podcast.sustainoss.org/guests/oliphant)
Tania Allard Twitter (https://twitter.com/ixek?lang=en) Array
programming with NumPy (nature)
(https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2649-2) Python Brasil
2022 (https://2022.pythonbrasil.org.br/) “The Promises and Perils
of Mining GitHub,” by Eirini Kalliamvakou, Georgios Gousios, Kelly
Blincoe, Leif Singer, Daniel M. German, Daniela Damian
(https://kblincoe.github.io/publications/2014_MSR_Promises_Perils.pdf)
“The Promises and Perils of Mining GitHub,” by Eirini Kalliamvakou,
Georgios Gousios, Kelly Blincoe, Leif Singer, Daniel M. German,
Daniela Damian (ACM Digital Library)
(https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2597073.2597074) Daniel Everett
(Wikipedia)
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Everett#Don't_Sleep,_There_Are_Snakes:_Life_and_Language_in_the_Amazonian_Jungle)
Excerpt: ‘Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes’ (npr)
(https://www.npr.org/2009/12/23/121515579/excerpt-dont-sleep-there-are-snakes?t=1661871384424)
Ralf Gommers (GitHub) (https://github.com/rgommers) Scientific
Python (https://scientific-python.org/) Credits Produced by Richard
Littauer (https://www.burntfen.com/) Edited by Paul M. Bahr at
Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Show notes by
DeAnn Bahr Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/)
Special Guest: Melissa Mendonça.