First thing is to sort out some administrative tasks. Before your account is created and commit access granted you must complete and fax back to Apache the Committer's License Agreement.
While this process is sorting itself out it is recommended that you peruse the various guides provided by Apache. All the guides are located in the Development Infrastructure Information.
Of particular interest is the Committer's FAQ and the New Committer's Guide.
If you have any questions please feel free to ask any of the Maven developers.