Hello all!

As you know, from time to time we come up with little tasks (and some not so little!) that members of the community can handle. I'd like to remind everyone of some the general things they can do to help out. I also have a few specific tasks that require some expertise in various areas.

First, I'd like to have everyone check out this post on freeswitch.org. It links to a great article by Andy Lester, who has been doing FLOSS stuff for ages. He offers 14 ways that people can contribute to an open source project, most of which have little to do with actual programming. I highly recommend that you read it, regardless of how long you have been associated with FreeSWITCH or any other open source project. Even if you don't learn anything new you will have something specific to give to a newbie who asks. :)

Next, I'd like to remind everyone that we can always use people who download the latest git and give it a test drive. Although we will be doing the 1.0/1.2 branching soon we will still need people to "make current" and try things out. As always, put your bug reports and feature requests in Jira. Note: the reporting bugs page of the wiki has information not only on collecting data (which helps you determine *if* it's really a bug) but also some tips on how to open a proper Jira ticket. Lastly, I'd like to remind everyone that we can always use help in verifying bug reports. It's not glamorous work but it is extremely helpful.

Another area where people can help out is spreading the wealth of knowledge. We do this in three primary ways:

Answering questions on the mailing list
Helping people in the IRC channel
Updating the FreeSWITCH wiki

It is part of my job to do all three of these, but as you can imagine one person can only accomplish so much. A number of community members have stepped up to help out, and to all of them I would like to say thank you. Also, I would like to remind everyone that I am available to assist those who wish to add to the wiki or who have questions about anything else with respect to answering questions from community members.

Here are a few specific things that we talked about yesterday on the FreeSWITCH community conference call. If you have any knowledge or expertise in these areas I would like you to contact me off list and I can give you more information.

Wiki syntax highlighting - I installed a GeSHi-based syntax highlighter on our wiki but it is not working. Anyone with mediawiki or even just plain PHP skills could assist with troubleshooting.
FreeSWITCH debug log syntax highlighting - If anyone has any experience with creating syntax highlighting for any of the popular text editors (Emacs, VIM, Textmate, Notepad++, UltraEdit, etc.) then please let me know. I'd like to get syntax highlighting for at least one text editor in *nix and one in Windows.
Documenting new FreeSWITCH items - on the Feb 8 conference call we talked about a number of new features. Many of these need documentation on the wiki. The task here is to look at each new feature, search the wiki to see if it has been documented, and then to add documentation where needed

I know this may seem like a lot of stuff but what I really would like to do is have several people each take one small piece and focus only on it. If we break these down into smaller tasks I think it will be easier to make progress. Please let me know where you would like to help out. If you're feeling adventurous you can even take on a task about which you know very little and then make it a learning project. (I do this all the time. :)

Thanks again for all of your help. With the ClueCon season gearing up we are going to need you more than ever. I look forward to working with you in the coming weeks and months.

-Michael S Collins