Merge pull request #15 from lottspot/outline/start-or-contribute

Add sections in start-or-contribute.md

start-or-contribute.md

@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
+## Choosing a mission
+
+Every civic engagement project should be based on a mission! If there is not mission, what is the purpose?
+The mission is the bedrock of the project which should guide every subsequent decision, technical and non-technical alike
+
+## Surverying for previous work done toward the mission
+
+Once a mission is selected, the first thing to do should always be to investigate previous work done toward accomplishing
+the mission. For Code for Philly projects, one way to do that is to ask around in the #general or the #project-ideas channels
+in slack. There are lots of members with long memories who may be able to point toward previous work done on the issue.
+
+## Why bother with surveying?
+
+Just as an academic who is trying to contribute to a field must be familiar with previous works done in the field, so it is
+with being a successful open source contributor. Surveying previous work done in the field allows the project to begin from
+a place of knowledge; lessons can be learned from previous attempts at solving the problem, pitfalls can be avoided, or it
+might even be found that a working solution already exists which simply needs to be revived or needs more contributors!
+Furthermore, the spirit of open source is to improve upon existing work whenever possible; this is a major reason why source
+code is published to places like GitHub.
+
+## What to do after a survey
+
+Once the field has been surveyed for previous work, where to go next depends on the state of previous work.
+
+- If previous work is non-existent or defunct, then it may be appropriate to start a new project
+- If previous work is existent and functional or close to functional, then it is most appropriate to become a contributor to the existing work