Open Source Q&A and Videos

I've recently been getting more into open-source to contribute back to the community and to just make cool stuff.

But I'm interested in various ways of how to market these projects without coming off as "shilling".

I would presume there's less of a likelihood for this to happen due to the free & open framing as opposed to a for profit venture(?)

The meta seems to have a huge focus on becoming an "influencer" with creating short form viral content as a springboard to long form for then that to be your marketing funnel for any type of CTA.

But are there any other tried and tested ways that don't involve so much of this strat?

There are a lot of different side projects, from open source tools to end user apps.

For this question, I would like to know your experience creating and promoting open source projects.

What I think makes sense is:

• You should solve a pain point or problem.
• For nature, mostly of the target users are software engineers.
• You should make it easy to use.
• There should be a decent documentation.

In my case, I created , it's a Next.js boilerplate that helps the developers to start a SaaS web application faster.

I would like to help more developers to get their side projects faster, tho I advise to build your own solution from scratch IF you want to experiment the learning experience completely.

What do you think?

(I'm open to feedback for my open source project, too).

In of Taro's courses, Alex teaches building side projects as a practice during the job search, and he is right (IMHO). Since I have a strong background in OCaml open source, I initially felt frustrated to keep building side projects in OCaml yet OCaml jobs are scarce. When I asked in the Taro premium Slack channel, Josh Lindsay offered some insights into switching to promising languages.

Following Josh's guidance, I translated my project idea to TypeScript and React Native, which has allowed me to build skills aligned with more job opportunities. Again, Many thanks to Josh for the encouragement and insights!

Currently, I’m progressing on this project in a private GitHub repo, but it is far from pleasing. I'm kindly seeking advice on enhancing my resume to be competitive for non-OCaml roles. I've attached a link to my resume and would greatly appreciate any feedback.

About Me

I've been a software developer for more than 20 years. I've been in IT for my whole career. I've worked on mainframes, UNIX systems and all versions of Windows as a Dev and Sys Admin. All my roles have been technical, ranging from what's now called DevOps to Development. I've mainly used the C family of languages: C, C++ and C#. When Angular v1 came out, I transitioned to frontend development full-time from mainly doing C#. About a year after Angular v2 came out I transitioned to that, so I've added TypeScript to that list. During the last 15 years, I've moved countries 3 times and now I'm back in the UK.

I've worked as a contractor most of the time since 2010 when I moved to New Zealand. I've had the odd permanent job when necessary, but contracting allowed me to work in different industries over a shorter period of time than would have been possible had I had permanent roles.

What I'm Looking For

I'm looking for a way to transition from my Angular contracting role to an Angular Architect role.

I imagined myself getting known publicly for Angular expertise and advising companies on Angular application architecture.

This type of role is rare (at least in the UK), so competition is high. I imagined a situation where companies approached me and not the other way around.

I just don't know how to build and execute a roadmap to make that happen.

Any advice would be appreciated.