From Zero to Open Source Contributor

Never contributed to open source and feeling intimidated? Same. Before joining Datadog, Alessandro had zero open source experience. Now he's a regular contributor to Apache Iceberg. Here's exactly how he got started.

Step 1: Join the Slack community and answer user questions. Step 2: Look for "good first issue" tags in the repo. Step 3: Remember that opening bug reports and doing code reviews count as contributions too.

The Apache Iceberg and Polaris communities are small but incredibly active and welcoming. If you're using these technologies at work and hit friction (like Datadog did with Azure authentication), contributing fixes back is more accessible than you think. This is your sign to make your first PR.