December 12, 2015 — was a mild-mannered developer until that fateful day: the day I submitted my first patch to WordPress. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, it was that moment that would begin to change the way I thought about development, community, and what it meant to be a contributor to an Open Source project.

My contributions to WordPress have taken the form of talks, patches, code reviews, and documentation, but they’ve nearly all started in the same place: solving a problem that I (or someone close to me) had at the time. Together we’ll learn some ways for you to find a way to become a contributor and, just maybe, help scratch someone else’s itch at the same time.