Re: [gnome-women] Issue 17 (GNOME Women) Update & Editors Needed

[Marina Zhurakhinskaya <marinaz redhat com>]

Hi!

Here is my article with the interview of the GNOME WSOP 2006 participants. Hope it can still be included.

I e-mailed the participants to ask them for the headshot photos that we can use next to each one of their responses, similar to how user headshots are used on Twitter. I also asked them to clarify a few things, like which FOSS technologies they use. I'll send in this information as I get it, but it should not affect the overall structure of the article.

Thanks!
Marina

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Where are they now? Interview with the Participants of the 2006 Women's Summer Outreach Program

The GNOME community is interested in increasing women participation in the project. The goals are to increase the visibility of the existing women contributors and to create a support system for encouraging women participation. The first outreach program was run in the summer of 2006 and was motivated by GNOME receiving 181 applications for the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) program, but not a single one from a woman[1].

[1] http://gnomejournal.org/article/48/the-womens-summer-outreach-program

Hanna Wallach and Chris Ball, who organized the program, found that creating the program specifically for women, changing the language from aggressive "prove you are the best coder" to a more supportive "gain experience developing Linux desktop applications and collaborate with open source developers", and advertising widely with the help of supporters at various colleges, turned up many qualified applicants. They also noted that finding mentors committed to following through on their mentorship responsibilities is essential to the success of the program.

Federico Mena-Quintero, who was one of the participating mentors, created a guide about how to be a good mentor based on his experience with the program and with GSoC[2]. This guide has important advice for anyone interested in being a mentor in one of these programs, such as to introduce your student to other people in the community and help the student get the system built very early on.

[2] http://www.gnome.org/~federico/docs/summer-of-code-mentoring-howto

The GNOME community is interested in making a consistent effort to engage more women with the project and is organizing a new Women Outreach Program (WOP) that will encourage women participation throughout the year and create internship opportunities in the summer[3]. Creating better resources for all newcomers will be an integral part of this program. However, having materials specifically for women will reach more of them with the information about how exciting, varied and valuable work on GNOME can be. The goal of the program should not only be to have women applicants for the WOP internships, but for the GSoC GNOME projects as well. We are currently raising money for the WOP internships to make this part of the program possible. The GNOME women mailing list is used as the main communication channel for updates about the program, so feel free to sign up for it if you are interested in participating or helping with the program[4].

[3] http://projects.gnome.org/outreach/women
[4]http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-women-list

We've asked the six WSOP 2006 participants to share their experience with the program and their advice for the program organizers, mentors, and participants. We have learned that they all stayed in technical professions, are big users and proponents of FOSS, and have great things to say about their mentors and the GNOME community. Most of them keep technical blogs. Unfortunately, many of them did not have their work during WSOP incorporated into the module they worked on (which is common in GSoC as well) and did not have time to continue contributing to FOSS due to busy school and work schedules.

The WSOP 2006 was organized in about a month, after the GSoC applications were received in May. With the new program, we are going to have more time to prepare the resources and the selection process before the summer 2010. We are already looking for mentors for the program[5] and would like to have online bootcamps for the participating projects before the application period. This will allow the applicants to be more familiar with the projects and the mentors to have project contributions to look at when evaluating the applicants. We would like to include non-programming projects  such as graphics design, interaction design, documentation, and marketing, in the program. Another change we are considering is having the participants work as part of the team starting with smaller contributions and progressing to larger ones rather than working on stand-alone projects. This would be similar to how companies run their internship programs and will ensure that the contributions get incorporated throughout the summer. Finally, we will offer the support for the participants in the #gnome-women IRC channel on irc.gnome.org and will include the participants' blogs on Planet GNOME with a special badge, similarly to how it is done for the GSoC participants.

[5] http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWomen/OutreachProgram#participating-projects

Here are the responses from the WSOP 2006 participants who all share some great insights!

1) Who are you? (Introduce yourself.)

Fernanda Foertter: I am a 2006 WSOP graduate.

Monia Ghobadi: Currently, I'm a third year PhD student at University of Toronto. At the time of WSOP I was doing my masters at University of Victoria.

Cecilia Gonzalez-Alvarez: I am a 25 year-old girl from the Canary Islands, living for 7 years in Barcelona. I've studied Computer Engineering at the Technical University of Catalonia and now I'm enrolled on a PhD program at the same university.

Ümran Kamar: I am working as Computer engineer and study Aeronautical Engineering as Master degree.

Clare So: I am a software developer now living in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.  I completed my BSc and MSc in Computer Science at The University of Western Ontario, Canada.  I attempted PhD in Computer Science at McMaster University but left without finishing the degree. Other than computers, I am also interested in classical music.  I have been singing in various local choirs for the last 10 years.

Maria Soler: I come from Barcelona but I'm currently living in Denmark. I've been in Maths university (not the whole thing but enough to get some interesting ideas), in Electronic engineering school and now studying further into distributed and real time systems.

2) What did you accomplish as part of your WSOP project. Who was your mentor? Did your work get incorporated into the module you worked on?

Fernanda Foertter: I started graduate school that very summer so WSOP did more for me learning than I was able to finish. I learned a lot about GUI programming and helped me land a job after grad school! Chris Ball was my mentor and he was a great mentor! Unfortunately I couldn't finish my work in time, so it did not get incorporated into the module.

Monia Ghobadi: The project that I worked on Gnome-Screen: Integration of Gnome Terminal and GNU screen. Behdad Esfahbod and Chris Ball were my two incredibly cool mentors. Unfortunaly my work did not get incorporated into the module yet. I keep giving people my patch here and there and I had a chat with Behdad on resuming my work.

Cecilia Gonzalez-Alvarez: My project was the optimization of the switch of components (mail, contacts, calendar, tasks, memos) in Evolution. The time of switching increased exponentially with the number of switches done (almost 2 seconds after 200 switches). I profiled the application, analyzed the code and detected and solved the bug responsible of that behavior. My mentor was Federico Mena Quintero. I think my work got incorporated into the module... Federico did the update on the CVS.

Ümran Kamar: I worked at developing Mozilla plug-in for Evince pdf reader project. My mentor was Ronald S. Bultje. I don't know if my work got incorporated into the module.

Clare So : I helped my mentor designing a cut/paste/selection mechanism in his existing math expression viewer. My mentor was Luca Padovani from Italy. Unfortunately, my work did not get incorporated into the module.

Maria Soler: In my WSOP project I was supposed to enable synchronization in Tomboy. I didn't get that far, but I touched some Mono libraries on the way, although I'm not sure if the changes got into the modules. My mentor was Alex Graveley.

3) What were your experiences with your mentor and the community?

Fernanda Foertter: Really positive! My mentor was very knowledgeable and patient and the community is really great.

Monia Ghobadi: Overall, it was an amazing experience. I had the opportunity of attending OLS and meeting my mentors as well as members of the community which I find amazing. From the IRC chat helps to the comments on my blog, I find the community one of the most interesting parts of GNOME.

Cecilia Gonzalez-Alvarez: My mentor was great, well organized and always willing to help me if I got stuck, specially in the first part of the project, the building and configuration of the working environment.

Ümran Kamar: Community was pretty good, especially Chris Ball helped me so much.

Clare So: I was surprised that no one told me to "RTFM" when I did not understand something.  My mentor was patient.  In addition, I enjoyed hanging out with some local GNOME users and developers in the Toronto area.

Maria Soler: I didn't have enough contact with my mentor during the project. I was too proud to ask for help and approval, and he didn't press me much. The time zone difference didn't help either. I got to talk to some other developers by mail and IRC and I got a very good impression about working in this community.

4) What did you learn about GNOME and FOSS from your participation in the program?

Fernanda Foertter: The great way the community keeps bringing great open-sourced project. I became a much bigger advocate for open source and not just a user.

Monia Ghobadi : I learnt a lot. Pointing out to the cool projects and people here. But certainly open source is the way to go.

Cecilia Gonzalez-Alvarez: I found a big community of people that really appreciate new helping hands.

Ümran Kamar: I learned GTK programming.

Clare So: Developing for GNOME is a great way to play with your ideas and get constructive feedback.  It is a good way to see how a real piece of software can be designed, written and maintained.

Maria Soler: <no answer>

5) Did you contribute to GNOME or any other FOSS project since 2006?

Fernanda Foertter: Mostly as a alpha/beta tester. I'm hoping to get back to coding now that I left grad school and started a job.

Monia Ghobadi: Unfortunately no. (The reason is being busy with school.)

Cecilia Gonzalez-Alvarez: Unfortunately I didn't have the time to participate on more projects.

Ümran Kamar: Yes, I was following Pardus project before and after the program.

Clare So:  My involvement in GNOME has been limited since working in a full-time job.  Sometimes I browse the Ubuntu questions posted in launchpad and see if I can answer any.  It's a great way to encourage others to use free software.

Maria Soler: I didn't keep contributing. I both work and study, with programming, and I have not much free time. I hope I can start again when I'm done with my studies.

6) Do you use any FOSS technologies now?

Fernanda Foertter: YES! I use FOSS at home and encourage my newest employer to use OSS at work. I definitely evangelize more since WSOP because I understand the model better.

Monia Ghobadi: Yes, lots of things.

Cecilia Gonzalez-Alvarez: Always. I'm a 100% Linux supporter and try to spread FOSS.

Ümran Kamar: I use but I am not a developer right now.

Clare So: I am an Ubuntu user.

Maria Soler: I still use a lot of FOSS, except at work.

7) What do you work on now?

Fernanda Foertter: I'm a scientific programmer for a genetic company. I code anything from FORTRAN to C/C++/VB/C# (which I started to learn during WSOP).

Monia Ghobadi: Right now, I'm doing an internship at Google. At school I'm working on router buffer sizing and transport protocols in the Internet.

Cecilia Gonzalez-Alvarez: Trying to deal with my PhD thesis... something about the automatic generation of hardware accelerators for bioinformatics applications. Also in my work I use FOSS technologies, like the LLVM compiler, GCC, all running on Linux.

Ümran Kamar: I am studying on aeronautics.

Clare So: Nothing particular in FOSS technologies. I am working as a software developer at Maplesoft, maker of Maple computer algebra system.

Maria Soler: <no answer>

8) What advice do you have for the new program organizers, mentors, and participants?

Fernanda Foertter: To create a project plan and timeline, with perhaps a way for the participants to regularly communicate throughout their learning experience. The mentoring is great, so change nothing!

Monia Ghobadi: I think as interesting as a remote program is, it is not the most effective way to get involved. I would suggest planning a four week summer school instead of two month remote work. Or a way for the students to get involved from one of the offices in their home town, if there is one.

Cecilia Gonzalez-Alvarez: It would be great if there were more continuity with the program (it has been a while from 2006).

Ümran Kamar: The objective of the program should be getting really fresh ones in to the community. Mentors can keep being awesome.

Clare So: For the organizers and mentors, I would like to say that one advertising campaign would not fix the gender imbalance in FOSS community.  Every FOSS member must promote a welcoming atmosphere to all people who may be interested in FOSS. For potential participants, you may be surprised in what you can do in a real piece of software.  The GNOME community is more friendly than you think.

Maria Soler: I would advice the mentors to keep an eye on their project participants, and the students to not be shy, not too proud, not afraid of what the mentor would say... ask and talk!

9) Please include links to your WSOP project blog or write-up and your current blog or web page.

Fernanda Foertter: My current blog project is http://hpcprogrammer.com

Monia Ghobadi: http://monia.wordpress.com

Cecilia Gonzalez-Alvarez: Here is the project blog: http://m3gumi.wordpress.com and here is the project report that contains the main points of what I did http://m3gumi.iespana.es/wsop.pdf Currently I don't maintain any personal webpage or blog.

Ümran Kamar: My blog is http://www.handlet.blogspot.com and it has one entry about the WSOP project http://handlet.blogspot.com/2006/07/wsop-first-screen-shot-of-evince_20.html

Clare So: My blog is found in http://lacampanella.wordpress.com.  It contains some progress reports on the WSOP project.

Maria Soler: I don't have the blog I had when I was doing the WSOP... the server was shut down long time ago and I didn't recover my data. Here is my current one: http://mariadelsrinxols.blogspot.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Cutler" <pcutler gnome org>
To: gnome-women-list gnome org, gnome-journal-list gnome org
Sent: Wednesday, November 4, 2009 9:13:11 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: [gnome-women] Issue 17 (GNOME Women) Update & Editors Needed


Good morning! 

I've updated the wiki to reflect what articles we've received for Issue 17 - Women in GNOME. We have 4 of the 7 articles, and I'm in the process of uploading them to our CMS, Textpattern, today. ( http://live.gnome.org/GnomeJournal/ArticleSubmissionQueue ) 

If you've submitted your article and I've missed it, please let me know. 

If you are interested and have the time to help edit them, the help would be appreciated. If you're new to the GNOME Journal team and need an account for Textpattern, please reply to the list with your name & email address and Jim will create an account for you. If you have questions on editing, please let us know, and if you do edit an article it's encouraged to work with the writer if there is a section you're not clear on. 

My goal is to have all articles edited by Nov. 11th, formatting complete by Nov. 14th and publish on Sunday, Nov. 15th. 

Thank you to all our writers, I'm really looking forward to this issue. And thank you in advance to our editors. Please let me know if you have any questions. 

Paul 

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