By Ryan F. Mandelbaum, Senior Technical Writer, Qiskit
I’m a science writer, not a programmer. When I joined the Qiskit team, I assumed I’d just write blogs, not actually improve the Qiskit community. I thought, “what skills could a quantum-interested writer with only a little bit of python coding experience contribute to maintaining and updating a quantum software development kit?” I was wrong. It’s only been a few months and I’ve already made plenty of contributions, mostly without writing any code.
Qiskit is, after all, way more than just a software development kit. Qiskit is a global community of quantum-interested people, from professors to high schoolers, who not only want to learn how to program a quantum computer, but also want to meet, network with, learn from, and teach folks who share their passions. You don’t have to contribute code if that’s not your forte — you can also write blogs, mentor, help update the textbook, provide feedback to those who are developing Qiskit, and more.
I started contributing to Qiskit before I joined the team without even realizing it. Like everyone else, I used the Learn Quantum Computation Using Qiskit Textbook and Programming on Quantum Computers video series to teach myself the basics of quantum computing, Jupyter Notebooks, and running Qiskit code. I realized that there were a few pieces missing as I worked through the textbook, most notably that it introduced tensor products and outer products but didn’t explain how to do them in its introduction to Linear Algebra. I notified the textbook’s owners over Slack shortly after I started working here and then later through a GitHub issue ticket. This alone counts as a contribution to the Qiskit community, since I identified a place where Qiskit could have been improved and flagged it for the people with the skills to improve it.
The textbook’s authors had their hands full with other issues, so I found a place to make a second contribution: I wrote that missing piece of the Linear Algebra chapter myself. I didn’t have a lot of experience formatting text with LaTeX, but it was pretty clear to me how I could add a section and make the vectors and matrices look nice when I opened the chapter’s Jupyter Notebook. I figured out how GitHub worked, forked the textbook, added the LaTeX formatting through trial and error, wrote a few paragraphs, and after maybe two hours I had composed a whole new section on tensor and outer products. I made the pull request and proudly bragged about the new textbook update on Twitter and to my spouse.
Writing about and sharing Qiskit knowledge is another way to contribute. My posts are probably cheating because I get paid to run the Qiskit blog, but blog posts and communications sharing knowledge on ways to use Qiskit, explanations of technical papers, or spotlighting the work of Qiskitters all increase other folks’ knowledge of Qiskit and its community. My posts have even offered me opportunities to write my own Qiskit code. Your blog posts don’t need to be on our Qiskit blog in order to count as a contribution to the community, though it would be awesome if you sent us pitches. You can also write posts for your personal blog, for other blogs, and for LinkedIn.
If you’ve been using Qiskit for more than a day and are actively engaging with the Qiskit community on Qiskit Slack or elsewhere, you may have contributed in ways you haven’t realized. Testing out new features (like the optimization module), bug reports, and feature requests all make Qiskit better. Updating the textbook and documentation makes it easier for others to use Qiskit. Serving as a mentor and sharing your knowledge of Qiskit — be it in Qiskit Slack, during educational sessions, or during hackathons — helps new Qiskitters grow. Videos, art, or even translating Qiskit documentation into another language all are helpful contributions that benefit the community.
Contributing to the Qiskit community isn’t something folks do just because they want a fancy Qiskit Advocate badge. We hope that you’ll continue contributing to the community today, tomorrow, next week, and into the future. After all, Qiskitters and their contributions are what make Qiskit a community.
If you’re interested becoming a Qiskit advocate, applications are currently open here and will close August 15, 2020 12:00 AM EDT. There are lots of ways to contribute, including to code, tutorials, textbook chapters, bug reporting, Slack support, blogs, videos, events, and more. If you have any questions, please reach out to us in the #qiskit-advocates-help channel on Qiskit Slack.
