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Join our team! Job Search for a Development Mentor (m/f/d) – #202007-01

The Document Foundation (TDF) is the non-profit entity behind the world’s leading open source office suite, LibreOffice. It’s comprised of a team of highly skilled and motivated people, working on infrastructure, design, documentation, QA, marketing and other tasks. We’re passionate about free software and bringing people into our community.

To grow our volunteer community, in particular for code contributions, we’re searching for

a Development Mentor (m/f/d)

to start work as soon as possible. If you’re interested in the role, which is offered on a part- or full-time basis, you ideally have:

  • previous experience in remote work
  • been a long-time contributor to one or more FLOSS communities
  • excellent communication skills, with enthusiasm for mentoring – a fluent command of the English language (written and spoken) is expected
  • coding experience in several FLOSS code bases and programming languages, including LibreOffice
  • demonstrable C++ coding experience of at least five years, plus active knowledge of at least one more language used in LibreOffice (e.g. Python or Java)
  • willingness to regularly travel to Hackfests & conferences in Europe and globally
  • self-driven and a good team player; interested in working together with our team

The remote job role involves working from home at your location and includes among other items:

Work with our existing team in the LibreOffice community on topics including:

  • building relationships between the community and new contributors
  • identifying and on-boarding new contributors
  • affirming and encouraging their contribution
  • encouraging them to join IRC and other communication channels to meet the community
  • building relationships with domain experts for deeper learning
  • attracting new contributors by promoting the project
  • interaction with UX volunteers

Shape and create development mentoring including:

  • helping to onboard new contributors by
    • positively reviewing their code contributions
    • improving their C++ programming skills & design, and coding style
    • introducing them to our tooling and culture
  • designing, and define easy tasks for new contributors
  • maintaining our technical documentation, e.g.
    • developer guide
    • wiki articles
    • code comments
  • helping to review the results of development tenders produced by TDF
  • goals-oriented and with a laser-sharp focus to grow excellent LibreOffice core contributors, our perfect candidate will come up with creative ways to find and attract volunteers

Previous experience with such tasks is highly welcome, so is using free software. Speaking and writing English fluently is a mandatory requirement.

The work time during the day is flexible, apart from some fixed times when availability is required (e.g. during meetings).

TDF welcomes applications from all suitably qualified persons regardless of their race, gender, disability, religion/belief, sexual orientation or age.

As always, TDF will give some preference to individuals who have previously shown a commitment to TDF, including but not limited to members of TDF. Not being a member, or never having contributed before, does not exclude any applicants from consideration.

TDF is looking forward to receiving your applications, including curriculum vitae, your financial expectations, and the earliest date of your availability, via e-mail to tender20200701@documentfoundation.org no later than September 15, 2020.

If you haven’t received feedback by October 30, 2020, your application could not be considered.

Interview with Ilmari Lauhakangas, Development Marketing

Ilmari Lauhakangas, based in Helsinki (Finland), is in charge of Development Marketing.

We have asked him a few questions, about his relationship with free software and his role in the community.

How did you become involved with free software and LibreOffice? Are you contributing to other FOSS projects?

I did localisation for FOSS projects in the early 2010s. Around 2012, I started contributing more to Retroshare, a secure communication platform, doing recruiting, translation coordination and web design.

In 2014 I began doing quality assurance for LibreOffice. People like Yousuf Philips, Joel Madero and Robinson Tryon were instrumental in making me understand the relevance of QA work. The attitude towards recruiting more contributors was spontaneous and immediate in the QA team.

I have focused on LibreOffice for the past few years.

You have been involved in the LibreOffice project for quite a long time, in QA and other areas. Can you summarize your activities?

I have: 1. somehow touched over twelve thousand reports in TDF Bugzilla, 2. improved and written technical documentation in TDF wiki, 3. improved help content, 4. done development for the web help, 5. edited content for the main website, 6. piloted the use of the translate extension for TDF wiki and guided people in its use, 7. helped new contributors get started in development, QA, documentation, design and infra, 8. recruited contributors through various channels such as VolunteerMatch.

You have explored several tools to attract new contributors. What do you think we should do as a project to keep the high level of contributions necessary for a large FOSS project such as LibreOffice?

We should make sure our technical documentation is high quality. When developers run into good documentation, they are very happy.

We should invest in improving the user experience of our web-based tools.

You are responsible for Development Marketing since September 1. How can you describe your responsibilities? Who should get in touch with you?

Basically everyone who wants to improve LibreOffice should get in touch. If you have no idea of how you could even be useful, I will help you find out, because everyone can be a part of the community and contribute! I hope to encourage strong cross-team collaboration. I want people to be credited for their work. I want us to have a safe and supporting environment for everyone to challenge themselves, try new things and learn new skills.

Technology focused high schools and universities, what should we do to grow the interest and the willingness to contribute among students?

This is more of a political question. If money and resources are lacking in education, teachers will not have time to offer structured introductions to free software projects. Likewise, if higher education is not free, students will have to work alongside their studies and will not have the energy contribute to FOSS.

On our part, we need to provide students with software they can rely on. In Finland, thirty thousand students in advanced secondary education use LibreOffice every year. If they find the software enjoyable, surely they are more inclined to contribute.

Sophie Gautier talks about the project

You are one of the people who have been around from the beginning of The Document Foundation, and one of the oldest members of the community (including the years of OpenOffice.Org). How were you involved in the project?

I was using StarOffice 5.2 and was contributing support on the French speaking users list. When Sun Microsystems was about to open source the code and create the OpenOffice.org project, they invited me to join and support the community. From there, I’ve been involved in various tasks like localization, quality assurance or documentation.

We are getting close to the 10th anniversary of the LibreOffice project, and the 20th anniversary of the FLOSS office suite. Which are the milestones of this long history?

I may not remember all of them, but I guess the creation of the Native Language projects with the French speaking one as a Proof of Concept in 2001. Then the many community supported projects such as marketing, documentation, etc.

And then of course, the birth of the LibreOffice project. Since then I’ve the impression that each year is a milestone 😉

There have been so many exciting things to do in each corner of the project. The community is pushing a lot of good ideas and energy. Considering the work done on QA, UX/Design and marketing for the product or the community, the new help system and the size of our infra, we have achieved more than we could even imagine ten years ago!

You have been involved in the localization of the software since the very first version, and now you are coordinating the activity of native language projects. Can you talk about the localization activity?

Localization is a complicated task, and sometime tedious. LibreOffice is a big software with thousands of different strings. Localization happens at the end of the software making process, so the workload depends on development, UX/Design and marketing projects.

Recently, there have been changes on the strings format for almost the entire interface of each module, on the help system and more and more marketing activities. Each localization member should be very proud of his/her work.

We want to cover more languages because localization is a way to preserve those languages, preserve the local culture and give all users the opportunity to express themselves in their own language. This is where my activities lie: understand the needs of localizers, voice their concerns, update the workflow and try to make them happy to translate the different projects.

You have been a member of the team for almost six years, with a number of different responsibilities. From your point of view, how well did the project during this time?

Happy to say: fairly well 🙂 The task was not easy but I believe we are doing right. Some people would like to see more things happening, or the project going faster or further. But we are a diverse community with different cultures, different business or occupations and different time zones!

We need to keep people together on the same path, to preserve the soul of the project. It’s not easy to keep an eye on the horizon on a daily basis, but our directors are doing that since the beginning and they are doing it very well if you look at the foundation’s results.

I can see my colleagues of the team working hard on each critical part of the production process, and at the same time taking care of the community, trying to answer end user questions and help independently from what they have on the table. I’m proud and very happy to be part of this team, and happy to see how mature the foundation has became. Every day I’m learning something new, either from them or from the community. I’m thankful for that 🙂

With the growth of the project and the community, you are now moving to the position of Foundation Coordinator. Can you describe this role?

I’m taking care of several foundation activities, like helping to organize LibOCon and Advisory Board meetings, and handling several administrative tasks. I’m also directly involved in L10n/NL, marketing and certification projects.

I follow what is happening in other parts of the project, and try to bring my help and my knowledge where needed. For example, when the work began on the UX, I helped the team with my knowledge of the product and its philosophy.

The change will happen mainly in the administrative parts, where an assistant will be hired by the foundation. That should leave me more time to push some projects we want to put in place, like the travel support program, Open Badges, moving to another translation tool, etc.

Looking at the next decade, which are the top challenges for LibreOffice?

One of the most important challenges for open source projects is to make the community of volunteers and ecosystem participants thrive. Our developers are securing this by constantly enhancing tools and processes, but at the same time users and contributors are evolving, and we need to reinvent ourselves almost every day. This also means to re-evaluate processes and tools, looking at them in perspective.

Last, but not least, the product has to further evolve according to changes in the market, and we have to invest to make the online version more popular amongst users and increase the number of adoptions and contributions to the project.

The Document Foundation is looking for an Administrative Assistant

The Document Foundation is the home of the LibreOffice community and one of the most popular open source projects, with an estimated user base of 200 million people worldwide.

The foundation has existed for seven years and today several activities are coordinated by a multi-national team of open source advocates who look after release management, infrastructure, marketing, quality assurance, mentoring, documentation, user experience and design.

The team is working on lowering the barriers to entry, fostering participation in native language communities, providing the server infrastructure, organizing events, handling travel refunds and – in general – to make it easier to join the volunteers active in all areas of the project.

We are now looking for an Administrative Assistant. The position requires speaking both German and English (which is and remains the project’s main language) and this is the reason why the following tender is in German. Find the official tender below:

Hallo Welt!

Kennst du LibreOffice, das freie Office-Paket?

Wir sind die gemeinnützige Stiftung „The Document Foundation“ und das Zuhause der LibreOffice-Community. Weltweit arbeiten viele Firmen und hunderte Ehrenamtliche gemeinsam an einem der bekanntesten Open-Source-Projekte, das von über 200 Millionen Menschen weltweit eingesetzt wird.

Die Stiftung gibt es seit sieben Jahren und unser vielköpfiges Team aus verschiedenen Ländern sorgt dafür, dass sich Ehrenamtliche u.a. in Marketing, Qualitätssicherung, Entwicklung, Dokumentation, User Experience und Design einbringen können, indem wir beispielsweise die Einstiegshürden senken, die Serverinfrastruktur bereit stellen, Veranstaltungen organisieren, Reisekosten bezahlen und somit den Ehrenamtlichen das Mitmachen erleichtern.

Wir suchen so bald als möglich eine im Home-Office arbeitende

Assistenz der Geschäftsführung (m/w/divers)

in Teilzeit (20 Wochenstunden) zur Festanstellung.

Als spendenfinanzierte gemeinnützige Einrichtung können wir dir zwar keine teuren Boni bieten, dafür ist Arbeiten im Home-Office bei uns Standard, genauso wie flexible Arbeitszeiten und flache Hierarchien. Ideal ist, wenn du im Großraum München lebst, das macht den regelmäßigen Austausch mit den deutschsprachigen Kollegen noch einfacher.

Du kannst mit deinem Einsatz bei uns etwas für den guten Zweck tun und das Arbeiten in einer internationalen Community bereichert ungemein.

Zwar gibt es auch bei uns eine Probezeit, wir wollen mit dir aber langfristig zusammenarbeiten.

Deine Aufgaben

Wir sind in den letzten Jahren gewachsen, deswegen suchen wir jemanden, der verlässlich, zuverlässig, eigenverantwortlich und kompetent administrative Aufgaben übernimmt. Die Administration ist ein notwendiger Teil der Stiftungsarbeit und kommt vor allem unseren Ehrenamtlichen zugute, denen wir damit den Rücken freihalten und viele Projekte überhaupt erst ermöglichen.

Zu deinen Aufgaben gehört unter anderem

  • Du bist erster Ansprechpartner nach außen. E-Mails an unsere info@-Adresse, Anrufe auf der zentralen Nummer und der Posteingang landen bei dir, du antwortest entweder selbst oder leitest an’s Team weiter und du verschickst ausgehende Post.
  • Du kümmerst dich um die Spendenverwaltung. Du erstellst Spendenbescheinigungen, pflegst die Spendendatenbank, beantwortest Rückfragen, führst etwaige Rückbuchungen durch und behältst die verschiedenen Spendenkonten im Blick.
  • Du unterstützt uns bei der vorbereitenden Buchhaltung. Du sammelst, sichtest und prüfst Belege und Kontoauszüge, hast die Budgets, Sachkonten und Umsatzsteuervoranmeldungen im Blick und pflegst die nötigen Zahlen in das DATEV-Modul ein. Eingehende Rechnungen prüfst und bezahlst du. Die anonymisierten Monatsabschlüsse übersetzt du ins Englische, da wir diese regelmäßig veröffentlichen.
  • Du hilfst mit bei der Organisation von Projekten, Ausschreibungen und der jährlichen LibreOffice Conference, die im Jahr 2019 beispielsweise in Almeria in Spanien stattfindet.
  • Du pflegst und organisierst unsere interne Nextcloud-Dateiablage und scannst und archivierst Dokumente.
  • Du bist verantwortlich für unsere Inventarverwaltung und übernimmst den Versand von Marketing-Materialien und von Hardware für Veranstaltungen.
  • Du bearbeitet Reisekostenabrechnungen. Dazu prüfst du die Anträge und Belege, führst Überweisungen ins In- und Ausland durch und buchst ggf. auch Hotel, Konferenzräume und die Anreise für ganze Gruppen.
  • Du bereitest für Sitzungen und Telefonkonferenzen die Einladung, Tagesordnung und Beschlussvorlagen vor, führst und veröffentlichst das Protokoll (i.d.R. auf Englisch), stellst die Präsentationsfolien zusammen und prüfst regelmäßig, wann Entscheidungen des nichtöffentlichen Teils publiziert werden können.
  • Du unterstützt das Mitglieder-Komitee bei der Mitgliedsverwaltung und der Meldung an die Stiftungsaufsicht.
  • Du bereitest Veränderungsanzeigen unter anderem an Stiftungsaufsicht, Versicherung, Bank und Transparenzregister vor.
  • Du hilfst uns dabei, Termine, Fristen und Wiedervorlagen im Blick zu behalten.

Was du können solltest

Sag uns, warum du den Job kannst und welche Praxiserfahrung du hast! Wichtig sind folgende Punkte:

  • Du hast Erfahrung mit (gemeinnützigen) Organisationen.
    Begriffe wie Jahresabschluss, Sachkonto, Tätigkeitsbericht, Umsatzsteuervoranmeldung, A1-Meldung, VBG, DATEV, Zuwendungsbestätigung, Künstlersozialkasse und Zweckbetrieb sind dir nicht fremd. Mit fachlicher Unterstützung navigierst du auch durch die Grundzüge der Buchhaltung.
  • Du beherrscht fließendes und gutes Deutsch und Englisch in Wort und Schrift.
    Du wirst nach außen hin unter anderem mit Behörden, Dienstleistern und Partnern kommunizieren, die Projektsprache intern hingegen ist ausschließlich Englisch. Da du häufig als „Gateway zwischen den Welten“ fungieren wirst, musst du in beiden Sprachen sattelfest sein.
  • Da wir LibreOffice herausgeben und das natürlich auch selbst benutzen, ist ein souveräner Umgang damit wichtig.
    Ein Teil deiner Arbeit besteht in der Gestaltung von Dokumenten und Anschreiben (Writer), dem Erstellen von Präsentationen (Impress) und dem Kalkulieren von Budgets und Kosten (Calc).
  • Fit solltest du auch im Umgang mit vielen E-Mails sein, beispielsweise in Mozilla Thunderbird, mutt oder Roundcube.
    Die Hauptkommunikation im Projekt erfolgt mittels E-Mail – mittels vieler E-Mails! Den Umgang mit Mailinglisten, Mailfiltern und Verteilerlisten musst du beherrschen. Wir nutzen dabei bevorzugt freie Lösungen.

Ebenfalls sehr hilfreich ist Folgendes:

  • Wenn du dich für das Open-Source-Prinzip begeistern kannst und weißt, was es damit auf sich hat, hilft dir das definitiv, dich bei uns zurechtzufinden. Der beste Start gelingt dir, wenn du selbst bereits freie Software einsetzt!
  • Das Arbeiten im Home-Office bietet viele Freiheiten, verlangt aber auch gute Organisation und Selbstdisziplin, damit dir nicht die Decke auf den Kopf fällt. Wenn du mit dieser Arbeitsform schon Erfahrungen sammeln konntest, ist das sicher ein Plus.

Wir freuen uns über deine Bewerbung per E-Mail, inkl. Lebenslauf, Gehaltsvorstellung und frühestmöglichem Eintrittsdatum bis spätestens 5. April 2019 an Florian Effenberger unter floeff@documentfoundation.org. Du kannst deine E-Mail an diese Adresse mittels PGP verschlüsseln.

Bewerbungen, die bis zum 10. Mai keine Rückmeldungen erhalten haben, waren nicht erfolgreich.

Join our team! Job Search for a Development Mentor (#201902-01)

Note that we’re at FOSDEM (building K, level 1, group A) on February 2 and 3, so you can talk to us in person there!

The Document Foundation (TDF), the charitable entity behind the world’s leading free office suite LibreOffice, seeks an individual – or individuals part (or full) time – to be

a Development Mentor

to start work as soon as possible. The role requires the following:

  • Self-starting, remote working experience
  • Experience contributing to FLOSS communities
  • Excellent communication skills, with enthusiasm for mentoring
  • Coding experience (LibreOffice coding preferred)
  • Willingness to travel to Hackfests & conferences in Europe and globally

The role involves working from home at your location for at least 10 hours per week, up to full-time and includes among other items:

Supporting existing mentors in the LibreOffice community including:

  • Building relationships between existing mentors and new contributors
  • Identifying and on-boarding new contributors
  • Affirming and encouraging their contribution
  • Building initial relationships with them
  • Encouraging them to join IRC to meet the teams
  • Introducing them to domain experts for deeper learning
  • Helping to educate new contributors by
  • Positively reviewing their code contributions
  • Introducing them to our tooling and culture
  • Attracting new contributors by promoting the project
  • Interaction with UX volunteers

Previous experience with such tasks is highly welcome, so is using free software. Speaking and writing English reasonably well is a mandatory requirement.

The work time during the day is flexible, apart from some fixed times when availability is required (e.g. during meetings, which usually take place at 14:00 or 15:00 UTC once per week).

TDF welcomes applications from all suitably qualified persons regardless of their race, sex, disability, religion/belief, sexual orientation or age.

As always, TDF will give some preference to individuals who have previously shown a commitment to TDF, including but not limited to members of TDF. Not being a member, or never having contributed before, does not exclude any applicants from consideration.

TDF is looking forward to receiving your applications, including curriculum vitae, your financial expectations, and the earliest date of your availability, via e-mail to Florian Effenberger at floeff@documentfoundation.org no later than March 29, 2019. You can encrypt your message via PGP/GnuPG.

If you haven’t received feedback by April 29, 2019, your application could not be considered.

Marketing Activities, January to September 2018

The new year at The Document Foundation starts with FOSDEM, where many LibreOffice contributors gather for the largest Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) meeting in Europe. In 2018 we had a booth in the main hall of building K, where most of the largest projects are based, and a devroom focused on OpenDocument Format (ODF) editing software.

The marketing team at TDF was in charge of the booth and the devroom, and also of logistics for the internal meetings and the hackfest organized at ICAB just after FOSDEM. I also helped to cook some real Italian pasta for the social dinner on Saturday, where the community gathered together with some friends.

Just before FOSDEM, we announced LibreOffice 6.0. We coordinated the announcement, drafting the documents for the press kit and organizing several pre briefings with journalists. As usual, thanks to the efforts of localization volunteers we were able to distribute the press release in some local languages.

We then followed up with announcements of minor releases, with a reduced emphasis in comparison with the major announcement.

After FOSDEM, we started working on TDF’s Annual Report, drafting most of the content and illustrations, and collecting images from community events for the final version. We have managed the final layout, using only free software (LibreOffice for drafting text and drawings, GIMP for tweaking images, and Scribus for creating the final layout, using the free fonts Carlito and Caladea).

After releasing the Annual Report, we started to concentrate on the next major announcement, preparing journalist mailing lists. We have a large number of contacts in media outlets around the world, which we have to update regularly.

Mailing lists are key to maintaining regular contacts with journalists. Of course, relationships must be nurtured over time, and the fact that we have always been proactive and responsive has increased our reputation. We have always replied to requests in due time, and pitched new article ideas as often as possible.

We also increased TDF and LibreOffice presence on social media, by increasing the number of tweets and posts. This will further grow in the next few months, as an increasing number of journalists are shifting to social media as the main source of information for news stories.

In early August we announced LibreOffice 6.1, with a test of the increased Twitter activity, based on a policy document that we drafted and shared with community members. We duplicated step-by-step most of the activities from the previous announcement, but we managed to organize a smaller number of pre-briefings.

In addition to these “major” marketing activities, we also managed several background tasks which are useful to keep TDF engine in good shape. The first is keeping track of donations, which provide the economic resources for the project. We are closely following donation trends, and have been implementing A/B testing for the donation page.

Starting from the month of November, this will include fundraising. If we want to bring the project to the next level, we need to raise money to increase the level of support for local communities, and for marketing and education activities behind the OpenDocument Format.

Last, but not least, we warmly invite community members to attend marketing calls. If the schedule is not the right one please let us know, and we will change it to suit your needs. If necessary, we can schedule two different calls to talk with people in different time zones (Asia and the Americas are hard to fit into the same time slot, but we have active community members in both continents).

Press Releases

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