> I've had people tell me that setting up the SVN, moderating discussions in a mailing list, twittering project updates, and orchestrating the cultural/public facing side of the organization are the most productive early tasks.

If there's no code, what "project updates" are you twittering?

Note that all of those things are fairly low cost, so doing them isn't much of a contribution. They may add more value than the same amount of time spent implementing, but there will be far more implementation time.