As open source enthusiasts & contributors who have decided to offer our time and skills to open projects, we deserve a safe, friendly, and enabling environment. Right? EXACTLY!!

Layer5 is that friendly, safe, and enabling community 😎🤗 The Layer5 community is a collection of diverse open source contributors who are all making a beautiful impact on Layer5 open-source projects. Projects are built on principles like collaboration, globalism, and innovation. The shared commitment to the open-source spirit pushes Layer5 projects forward.

The open-source community at Layer5 goes all out to welcome and encourage new contributors enabling them to effectively compare different ideas and find the best solutions for advancement while building the size, diversity, and strength of the community.

How is this done?

A MeshMate, an onboarding buddy is assigned to each newcomer, to ensure that newcomers get both introduced to the projects within the community and introduced around to other individuals.

In addition, they strive to help them get a foothold in a crevice of one of the organization's initiatives, instilling and nurturing a sense of ownership so that they feel at home as they become a regular contributor. A great deal of time is also spent trying to recognize and uplift contributors on the Layer5 and Meshery Twitter accounts whether "contribution" means code or any of the other various forms of being involved in the projects and community.

Open source contributors come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and so on. All are welcome in the Layer5 projects and community!!

Awesome individuals from all walks of life and at whatever stage of their development are all super welcome, as long as they embrace our values and support one another in meaningfully and consistently advancing the community's open source initiatives.

I asked one of the active contributors at Layer5; "how has your experience contributing to Layer5 been?"

Anita answered: "Life-changing" Anita is a Technical writer, speaker, open-source advocate, and MeshMate at Layer5. She writes amazing articles. too.

Now What?

Feel free to jump in by joining the community Slack. You can also take full advantage of the available resources for newcomers in our Contributor's Journey Map such as the community newcomers' guide, which outlines the process by which you can openly engage, learn, and participate in the broad set of open-source projects at Layer5, the membership form, and the community welcome guide.

Layer5 community is warm, so feel free to engage in the community and projects!