I had the pleasure of being invited to speak at WordCamp Orange County this weekend about core WordPress contribution, the problems that I ran into when first getting started, and some things that have since changed to make things simpler for new contributors.
Thanks to the organizers, volunteers, and everyone involved for an excellent camp!
You can find the slides in PDF here, and embedded from Speaker Deck after the break.
Included as well are the small set of slides in PDF used for the Core Contribution Workshop, and embedded below.