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Re: (2/3) Fwd: Re: Annual report - can I interview you?

Hi,
If you think so, I'm delighted to concur! I thought that some editing and a little narrative would make for a better article, but I'm happy to bow to your superior availability ;-) 

Thank you!
Dave.

On 05/30/2012 04:41 PM, Emily Gonyer wrote:

Hi again, honestly, I think it'd be fine in the annual report as a
simple Q & A - theres a ton of great info here already, and aside from
adding more info directly related to the OPW I'm not sure what would be
needed. If its all right with you, I'll work on getting it edited for
grammar/spelling/etc and stuck on the wiki as such in the next day or two.

Emily

On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 6:26 AM, Dave Neary <dneary gnome org
<mailto:dneary gnome org>> wrote:

    Hi all,

    Email 2 of 3 re Marina interview for annual report.

    Cheers,
    Dave.

    -------- Original Message --------
    Subject: Re: Annual report - can I interview you?
    Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 01:18:46 -0500 (EST)
    From: Marina Zhurakhinskaya <marinaz redhat com
    <mailto:marinaz redhat com>>
    To: Dave Neary <dneary gnome org <mailto:dneary gnome org>>
    CC: Juanjo Marin <juanjomarin96 yahoo es
    <mailto:juanjomarin96 yahoo es>>, Emily Gonyer <emilyyrose gmail com
    <mailto:emilyyrose gmail com>>, karen gnome org <mailto:karen gnome org>

    Hi Dave,

    Sorry about being a bit late with these. Let me know what time you
    would like to talk on IRC tomorrow (Tuesday) or any other day. Any
    time after 11am EST tomorrow should work for me.

    Thanks!
    Marina

    Q. Marina, you've co-ordinated the GNOME Outreach Program for Women for
    the past two years. Can you tell us how you got involved in GNOME
    yourself?

    I joined Red Hat six years ago to work on a social networking
    product after seeing a posting from the team's manager on LinkedIn.
    I had used Linux through my college years and at my previous job,
    but I didn't have any experience contributing to free software. In
    fact, I remember puzzling over why there was a choice between two
    options - GNOME and KDE - at the login screen of my Red Hat
    Enterprise Linux workstation at my previous job, and wondering how
    was I supposed to know which one to pick.

    Four years ago my original team was merged into the desktop team and
    I started working on GNOME. With many great GNOME contributors out
    there, it's uncommon for the desktop team to hire someone who is not
    an established contributor, so the fact that I ended up working on
    GNOME is a happy coincidence.

    Q. How did you end up co-ordinating the Outreach Program for Women?

    In August 2009, I received an e-mail from Diego Escalante Urrelo, on
    behalf of the GNOME Board of Directors, asking me to organize the
    outreach effort. Having just come from the Gran Canaria Desktop
    Summit, it was very evident to me and others how few women there
    were in the GNOME community. There are just 4 women in this[1] GNOME
    group picture of about 160. Two other women are Stormy Peters and
    Rosanna Yuen, who worked for the GNOME Foundation. The third woman
    is Alia Merali, who joined her husband in attending several GUADECs
    and helped with organizing GUADEC in Barcelona in 2006. It was very
    exciting to me to have the mandate and the support of the GNOME
    Foundation to involve more women in the GNOME community.

    We started out by doing a round of introductions on the
    gnome-women-list @gnome.org <http://gnome.org>, putting together a
    page with mentors who can help women start contributing to GNOME,
    working with the FSF on creating resources and recommendations for
    encouraging women to get involved in free software, creating an
    issue of the GNOME Journal with articles by women, discussing the
    2006 Women's Summer Outreach Program with its organizers Hanna
    Wallach and Chris Ball, following up with that program's
    participants, and encouraging women to apply for Google Summer of
    Code and connecting them with mentors. When we only ended up having
    one female participant in Google Summer of Code that year, we
    decided to create the dedicated internship opportunities for women.

    There were 15 and 23 women respectively at the GNOME women's dinners
    at GUADEC in 2010 and the Desktop Summit in 2011. So the outreach
    effort has definitely worked.

    [1]
    http://images49.fotki.com/v856/filevUZx/7142f/7/441267/7802004/081.jpg

    Q. Has it been easy to convince people to mentor projects? What
    proportion of the mentors are male?

    People who were involved in organizing the program were the original
    mentors and provided the initial participants with a reasonable
    choice of projects to contribute to. We have been encouraging people
    in the GNOME community to sign up as mentors throughout, but seeing
    the work of the initial participants was likely the most effective
    encouragement that got people to add themselves to the list. Because
    pairing up participants with mentors is one of the key components of
    the program, I occasionally had to ask people about mentoring
    specific projects. They were usually happy to help.

    For the first round, we started out with 8 projects and 9 mentors,
    out of these 3 were women. For the latest, third round, we had 18
    project and 27 mentors, with 7 women among them. So about 70% of
    mentors are men, which is expected, since we need the help of
    everyone in the community in mentoring the participants. Two of the
    women who participated in the program as interns, Luciana Fujii
    Pontello and Ekaterina Gerasimova, have now become mentors.

    Q. Do you think we're doing a good job as mentors in the GNOME
    community? What could we be doing better?

    We have a lot of resources for someone who wants to start
    contributing to GNOME and people are generally happy to help, but we
    need to have more people taking an active role in informally
    mentoring newcomers. It'd be great if there were more people hanging
    out on #gnome-love and answering questions there.

    It'd also be great if people suggested a suitable first bug to fix
    to newcomers and mentored them through the process of getting the
    patch committed. We should not be afraid to direct newcomers in what
    bug to fix first, as this will actually help them get started and
    learn things that will inform their subsequent contributions. Every
    Detail Matters is a great initiative to point out bugs that are
    important to fix to contributors with any level of experience.

    Recently, we used the list of mentors we already had for the
    Outreach Program for Women to start a more general list of GNOME
    mentors [1] who are willing to informally mentor any newcomer any
    time throughout the year. We encourage everyone to add their
    projects and themselves to that list!

    This list is included on the page with links to mentors in different
    free software organizations [2], that is hosted on the Google Summer
    of Code wiki. I initiated creating this resource based on our
    experience in the GNOME Outreach Program for Women of connecting
    applicants with mentors and requiring that they complete a first
    patch with the help of the mentor during the application process.
    Making sure that applicants are connected with the project's mentor
    and make the first contribution before or as part of the application
    process is essential for a successful internship.

    [1] http://live.gnome.org/GnomeLove/Mentors
    [2] http://code.google.com/p/google-summer-of-code/wiki/Mentors

    Q. What do you think are the main issues that we need to work on as a
    community to see more women getting involved in GNOME?

    We need to spread the word more about the mentorship and internship
    opportunities we have for women. Out of the 12 participants we have
    this round, 3 received this information because I contacted people
    or groups in the area. One of these women and 6 others were
    encouraged to apply by someone locally. One woman was regularly
    reading Planet GNOME and 2 others were already involved in the GNOME
    community. If more people use the resources we provide for spreading
    the word at their university and local technical community for the
    next round, we would reach more women! The request to do so and the
    resources will be out sometime in February.

    Beyond that, it would be great to organize events at universities
    and local technical communities that teach people the basics of how
    to contribute to free software, such as using a bug tracker,
    revision control system, and IRC. It's important to start with
    basics in order to attract a wider audience. The Open Source
    Workshop [1] at MIT organized by OpenHatch is one example of such
    event that many students found useful. It has excellent materials
    and interactive exercises available online. Also, it would be great
    to organize events where people can get help installing GNOME and
    starting to contribute to it. Being able to try things in a
    supportive environment where experienced contributors can help
    resolve any setback within minutes would help many people make the
    first step, which is the hardest. Emphasizing the  collaborative
    style and mentioning the Outreach Program for Women in advertising
    such events would help attract women to attend them.

    [1] http://openhatch.org/wiki/Open_Source_Workshop

    Q. Given the success of the first two editions of the Outreach Program
    for Women, do you anticipate the program continuing in future years?

    We have just started the third round of the program, which had even
    more strong applicants than the two previous rounds. We are planning
    to run another round of the program from May to August, with an
    application deadline in early April.

    There are currently many people and organizations making an effort
    to get more women involved in free software, and I expect it to
    become a lot more common for women to be involved in free software
    projects in the next few years. However, even when people inside the
    project will take it as a matter of course that women are involved,
    it will still take even longer until this view is shared by society
    in general. We should try to continue the program as long as we see
    that there are women who have a potential to be strong contributors
    out there, who are not getting involved in the same ways as men who
    have this potential.

    ----- Original Message -----
    From: "Dave Neary" <dneary gnome org <mailto:dneary gnome org>>
    To: "Marina Zhurakhinskaya" <marinaz redhat com
    <mailto:marinaz redhat com>>
    Cc: "Juanjo Marin" <juanjomarin96 yahoo es
    <mailto:juanjomarin96 yahoo es>>, "Emily Gonyer"
    <emilyyrose gmail com <mailto:emilyyrose gmail com>>,
    karen gnome org <mailto:karen gnome org>
    Sent: Tuesday, December 6, 2011 3:52:11 AM
    Subject: Re: Annual report - can I interview you?

    Hi,

    On 12/05/2011 07:14 PM, Marina Zhurakhinskaya wrote:

        Thanks for making plans to cover mentorship in the annual
        report! I'll be happy to do an interview and help with any
        materials about mentorship for the report.

        How about we start it out as a written Q&A, and then you can
        follow up with more questions via e-mail or on IRC based on my
        answers if you'd like? That way I'll get a bit more time to
        think about the answers to the core questions, but then we can
        incorporate questions based on the answers I provide and
        introduce an element of a discussion into the interview. I'm
        generally around this week and next.


    Sure! I was thinking that a half an hour IRC chat which we could edit
    afterwards might come across more as a conversation than a Q&A - but I'd
    be happy to send you a few questions to allow you to organise your
    thoughts. We can either publish these, or do the conversation format
    afterwards, whichever you prefer. Thanks!


    Q. Marina, you've co-ordinated the GNOME Outreach Program for Women for
    the past two years. Can you tell us how you got involved in GNOME
    yourself?

    Q. How did you end up co-ordinating the Outreach Program for Women?

    Q. Has it been easy to convince people to mentor projects? What
    proportion of the mentors are male?

    Q. Do you think we're doing a good job as mentors in the GNOME
    community? What could we be doing better?

    Q. What do you think are the main issues that we need to work on as a
    community to see more women getting involved in GNOME?

    Q. Given the success of the first two editions of the Outreach Program
    for Women, do you anticipate the program continuing in future years?


    Thanks for your help!

    Cheers,
    Dave.

    --
    Dave Neary
    GNOME Foundation member
    dneary gnome org <mailto:dneary gnome org>
    Jabber: nearyd gmail com <mailto:nearyd gmail com>

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--
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
dneary gnome org
Jabber: nearyd gmail com
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