Community Contribution and Where I Stand
Introduction
I recently started a local engineering community called Minato.dev, so I want to write about the background behind it and what I've been thinking about contribution lately.
More and more, I feel that my career as an engineer has been built on connections.
Connections with people and with communities have given me many opportunities and broadened my perspective.
I had long believed that passing on what I learned along the way — sharing it, spreading it, and giving it back to the community and to engineers who are just starting out — was my own way of contributing.
But with the current AI landscape, the role of technical articles and conference talks is changing dramatically.
With generative AI, a plausible-sounding title and article can be produced in no time.
Using AI is not bad in itself.
However, more and more often there is no process behind the writing and no sense of the person who wrote it, and I feel the idea of contributing something to the reader is starting to fade.
Of course, I understand that people write technical articles for many different purposes and reasons. But shouldn't the starting point be "to put something out there and aim to have an impact on someone else"?
In a sense, the flood of articles "created by AI" does have an impact. But for some readers, isn't it becoming something that takes away their motivation to read technical articles at all?
A similar change is starting to happen with conference talks and sessions.
At the proposal stage, AI can now produce content beyond what the speaker actually understands, so there is often a wide gap between what is written and the speaker's real level of understanding.
If the speaker then works hard to catch up with what the AI wrote, truly understands it, and builds their own message into the talk, that becomes a great opportunity to grow. But it is also a fact that unfortunate cases where that gap never gets closed are increasing.
I don't see this as a problem with any particular individual, but as a structural change caused by the falling cost of writing a proposal.
For those reviewing proposals, too, it must be harder than before to judge a speaker from the text alone.
In this way, writing articles and giving talks — which used to be ways of contributing to communities (technical or otherwise) — are changing in meaning.
So what am I trying to say?
Looking for Other Ways to Contribute to the Community
The first thing that comes to mind is individual sponsorship.
There are systems built specifically for engineers, like GitHub Sponsors, and there is also the option of donating goods.
In the article "For-profit companies, of all people, should pay OSS creators" (in Japanese), ubugeeei writes the following (my translation):
Events are easy to see. Your logo goes up, you get a booth at the venue, it ties into recruiting, and it's easy to justify internally. The work of OSS creators, on the other hand, is hard to see. They read issues, write reproduction code, avoid breaking changes, update dependencies, fix vulnerabilities, write release notes, and take in users' delicate complaints.
This isn't flashy work, and it's hard to see from the outside. But when this steady work stops, one day our own work suddenly stops too. I'm not saying event sponsorship is unnecessary — if anything, I hope it continues. What I'm saying is that if support tends to lean toward events, perhaps a little more of it could go to the people who build and maintain OSS.
OSS is not necessarily maintained in an organized way by engineers at large companies who have time and resources to spare.
Some maintainers rack their brains over users' very demanding requests and work out answers, all while barely able to make ends meet.
It also often takes strong problem-solving skills.
Debates in GitHub Discussions sometimes get heated. When that happens, maintainers return to the principles of the OSS project or community, explain things carefully so as not to brush off the users who took part, and steer the conversation back on track.
People have all sorts of motives for doing such sophisticated work for free, but as users, we could at least consider supporting them.
Financial Support Isn't the Only Way to Contribute
That said, some people can't commit to financial support for various reasons.
In that case, the next option is to get involved in running a community or maintaining OSS.
However, problems similar to those I mentioned earlier with technical articles and talks are happening here too.
Recently, Yusuke Wada (@yusukebe), the creator of Hono, talked about the large number of issues and PRs that appear to be AI-generated.
https://x.com/yusukebe/status/2107122627945074774
There are a few reasons:
- Anyone can write code now, so code itself has lost some of its value
- Maintainers can write code without contributors' help
- The quality of AI-generated PRs is now high. We can't call them "slop". But they scan the repo, find nitpicks, and create PRs. The important thing now is not quality, but attitude
- In the first place, I think contributions just for the sake of "contributing" are unhelpful
- Having commits in a well-known OSS project on your GitHub profile can give you an unfair hiring advantage. We don't like contributions made mainly to get hired
- I don't want to see a lot of wasteful PR every morning
Thinking that contributing to a well-known OSS project and leaving a track record will build your portfolio, you tell an AI to find bugs, skip the issue entirely, throw a PR at the project, and wait to see what happens...
This kind of thing is now being seen across many OSS projects.
At the risk of being misunderstood, the point is that "AI-generated fixes are not necessarily low quality." This is more about the developer's mindset.
Against this background, developers who have maintained OSS for years have become more wary than ever of PRs from people they don't know, or PRs where the author's intent and background aren't visible.
There are some OSS projects that set guidelines assuming a high volume of AI-generated issues and PRs and accept PRs broadly, but it would be far too harsh to expect most OSS projects to do the same.
In other words, jumping into OSS and suddenly opening issues or PRs has become much harder than before.
Just to be clear, it's not impossible. It has just become harder.
So What Should You Do?
That's exactly why I recommend starting by building relationships, rather than rushing to make your mark by suddenly opening a PR.
Start by joining a community.
Any community will do. If you use React, try React Tokyo; if you use Svelte, try Svelte Japan. If you simply want to keep up with JavaScript, a language-focused event like "something.js" is a good choice too.
There are local events outside the Tokyo area as well. In Hokkaido, for example, there is Vue Sapporo, a community that combines a region with a language or framework.
Getting a feel for a community's atmosphere, understanding it, and finding a place where you might contribute is one way to go.
Most communities warmly welcome newcomers.
If you keep showing up, there will come a time when the community needs a hand.
Whether you step up then is up to you.
Do You Have to Donate a Lot of Time to Contribute?
To be honest, I haven't found the answer myself.
OSS and community work are not mandatory, so it's clearly healthiest for everyone to do what they can.
On the other hand, it's also true that the time you put in is proportional to "the trust and influence you gain." A developer who showed up for 30 minutes and a core contributor who has spent years taking part in discussions and helping set the direction of an OSS project will clearly look different from the outside, and will be entrusted with different roles.
But I don't think that means one contribution has more "value" than another.
To borrow Wada's words from earlier, what matters is not quality but attitude.
Not how much time you spent, but whether you did it with the other person and the community in mind... Isn't that where the true worth of a contribution lies?
I myself can't devote that much time to communities and OSS (or at least, I haven't been).
That's why I'm trying out whatever ways of contributing I can think of.
Please keep an eye on whether this has a positive impact for everyone involved.
Why I Started Minato.dev
I felt I needed a flexible setup to achieve a few goals, so I started a local engineering community called Minato.dev.
It began as a community for engineers who work or live around the harbor and bay areas of Tokyo, such as Shinagawa, Minato, Ota, and Koto, but now anyone who loves the sea and harbors is welcome.
One of the reasons I started it is "to close the distance between junior engineers and mid-level and senior engineers."
If you've been involved with various engineering communities since your student days or your first job, or if your seniors and managers at work have been part of such activities, joining in may be relatively easy.
But not every engineer works in such a fortunate environment.
Some spend 10 or 20 years doing development work with few chances to interact with people outside their company, without even knowing such communities exist...
Do you know engineers like that? If you don't, you are very lucky.
Another reason is "to create more places to practice putting your work out there."
This relates to the point about AI-assisted talks that I touched on earlier, but I believe your first talk doesn't have to be on a big stage.
If you have potential, you may get a chance right from the start at large conferences like Vue Fes Japan, Frontend Conference, or one of the many "*Kaigi" conferences.
But if those glamorous stages feel so intimidating that you become afraid of putting yourself out there, wouldn't it be nice to have places where you can give a lightning talk or a session more casually?
In fact, many communities already hold small and medium-sized events like this and offer plenty of opportunities.
I decided to join them.
There are a few other reasons too, which I plan to talk about at Minato.dev #1.
Closing
To engineers who don't interact much outside their company yet and aren't sure what OSS or community activities are all about:
Don't be afraid to jump in.
I've gone on about AI this and that, but in the end, everyone starts as a beginner.
From there, you level up by interacting with engineers from other places, picking up new ways of thinking, mixing them with what you've learned yourself, and turning it into output...
Start from here.
To engineers who don't see the point of spending time on community activities as an extension of their work:
Come to a conference once.
As the culmination of community activity, it has a real festival feel, and you should be able to enjoy the atmosphere just by being there.
Minato.dev is holding an event on October 13.
I'd love for you to come and join us.