While at the Western Michigan Day of .NET Steven Harman made a statement, about taking a week long vacation in the summer one year, where he made a contribution to an open source project every day. Whether it was a few unit tests, documentation or a patch, the only requirement he placed on his contribution was it be done before 10:00AM, so he could hit the beach (of course).  

Thinking about this, I thought it was a great idea, but not all developers have the energy level of Mr. Harman.  What I have tried to do for the past few years is grab at least one new project off of CodePlex or SourceFourge each week. Learn the project, and if you decide you are passionate enough about the project, then add a contribution.  It’s not that hard to get started, and I suggest taking a look at the SubText project on SourceForge.

SubText is a blogging engine that is well written and that takes advantage of Unit Tests and Continuous Integration. This is a great project to start learning on.  Your first step is getting the code.  You will need a Subversion client, I suggest Tortoise http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/

Follow the directions on the SourceForge project site, and you will be on your way.