* Start with two misconceptions:

1. You have to be a developer to contribute to Debian
2. You have to be a Developer to contribute to Debian

* Debian needs more than developers

Debian badly needs people to do things that are not software
developers:

- providing support on mailing lists and IRC
- create and review translations
- create and improve documentation
- help maintain the website
- help organize events (like DebConf)
- help represent Debian at local events
- help with handling bugs
  + file good (i.e., reproducable) bugs
  + confirming the existance of bugs
  + finding out how to reproduce "unreproducible" bugs

* You don't have to be a developer to be a Developer!

"Debian Developer" is a term people use in the Debian community to
refer to people who have voting rights in the Debian project.

Historically this is strongly tied to upload rights and but this has
changed -- particularly within the last few years.

An unfortunate side effect of this conflation is that Debian has had
an easier time getting Developers who are developers but a harder time
getting non-developer Developers.

* Becoming a Developer is pretty hard

e.g., of how hard it is to become a Debian developer

https://nm.debian.org/

* Debian needs more developers

If you want to do technical work, there's tons of space to
contribute as a developer without being a Developer:

- get involved in a package maintenance teams (e.g., the KDE, GNOME,
  Perl, Python, etc. teams which tend to maintain large groups of
  pacakges)
- maintain packages through a sponsor
- creating patches to bugs (especially release critical bugs)
- contribute to the development of Debian specific software (e.g.,
  dpkg, apt, or DebConf)
- help work on ports to an (obscure?) architecture of your choice

* And if you do want to be a Developer?

The first requirement is advocacy by an existing developers so you've
basically got to do all that stuff anyway.

* How to get plugged in

Joining Debian is really about joining a community and so the first
step is to get plugged in:

following what people are up to:

- join mailing lists (e.g., debian-announce and debian-devel-announce)
  to start with and others
- join IRC channels #debian-devel and #debian on OFTC
- follow Debian Planet to follow what people are up to.

getting people to pay attention to what you want to do:
- debian mentors: website, IRC channel (especially for code stuff)
- SIPB at MIT hosts in person bug squashing parties

* Other Resources

There are particular resources that you can follow to find out more
about the type of contribution you want to do. Here are two pages
which provide a bunch of links, some of which are likely relevant to
your interests:

- How can you help Debian: http://www.debian.org/intro/help
- How you can join: http://www.debian.org/devel/join/
- Debian New Maintainers: http://www.debian.org/devel/join/newmaint