This is a report on the adventures of a long-time opensource developer, and how he learned to navigate, and eventually contribute to, Open edX. Attending this talk will get you a personal description of the ups and downs of this trip, including a summary of how the contribution process works.
Where relevant, this adventurer will also wax lyrical about corresponding experiences in other opensource projects, in particular OpenStack, and how they compare, in his own humble opinion, to the way Open edX does things.