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

Hi again,
Email 3/3 re interview with Marina for the annual report. This is the log of an IRC discussion, plus some follow-on answers from Marina. 

Thanks,
Dave.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Annual report - can I interview you?
Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2011 01:10:12 -0500 (EST)
From: Marina Zhurakhinskaya <marinaz redhat com>
To: Dave Neary <dneary gnome org>
CC: Juanjo Marin <juanjomarin96 yahoo es>, Emily Gonyer <emilyyrose gmail com>, karen gnome org 

Hi Dave et al,

Thanks for conducting a great interview! It was fun :)!
Here are the answers to the questions I skipped over while trying to get to some other questions :). 

Thanks!
Marina
<dneary> Do you think that there's a need for a mentorship and outreach team? You mentioned that you want to get people informally mentoring, labelling some bugs "easy-fix" and committing to helping people fix them.
Formalizing the mentorship and outreach team is a good idea and we have already created outreach-list gnome org to steer the effort. At the same time, everyone in GNOME should consider informally mentoring newcomers, marking bugs that they can help a newcomer fix with the "gnome-love" keyword, signing up for the gnome-love gnome org mailing list, and hanging out in the #gnome-love IRC channel.
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 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! http://live.gnome.org/GnomeLove/Mentors
<dneary> So is mentorship something that every GNOME developer should be doing? Or do you think it's a skill that we need to develop among a team of people?
I absolutely think every established GNOME developer should act as a mentor. By established GNOME developer, I mean anyone who has Git commit rights. People are usually very helpful on IRC when specific questions are asked related to the task someone is trying to accomplish, but we should also be helpful by directing newcomers in what bug to fix first and what resources to read. This is what mentoring is about and anyone can do this within the project area they are knowledgeable about.
<dneary> How about every-day activities? Is there a need to spread the load around? Who keeps watch to make sure we're not dropping the pace?
Having many GNOME contributors act as mentors on the every day basis will spread the load around. In addition to being able to ask mentors from the list on the GNOME Love wiki page for help, newcomers can ask for help in being connected to mentors on the gnome-love gnome org mailing list and #gnome-love IRC channel. There are people on the mailing list and in the channel who ensure that all newcomers know what steps to take next. 

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Neary" <dneary gnome org>
To: "Marina Zhurakhinskaya" <marinaz redhat com>
Cc: "Juanjo Marin" <juanjomarin96 yahoo es>, "Emily Gonyer" <emilyyrose gmail com>, karen gnome org 
Sent: Friday, December 16, 2011 2:20:45 PM
Subject: Re: Annual report - can I interview you?

Hi Marina et al,

Here's a straight transcript of our follow-up IRC chat - I'm hoping to
get time to edit all this into a nice article before flying to Ireland
on Monday, if not, then either someone else CCed might be able to help?
Or it'll have to wait until I get back from holidays.

Thanks for all your time and effort!

Cheers,
Dave.

<dneary> So - Hi Marina!
  You mentioned that you joined Red Hat in 2006. Did you find it tricky,
as a woman, to join an Open Source company?
<marina> Hi Dave!
<dneary> Hi
<marina> Not at all. I was in the computer science club since 8th grade,
got a Computer Science degree at MIT, and have been working as a
software engineer since, so I am used to working with mostly men.
Everyone at Red Hat and in the GNOME community has been very
professional, so I didn't run in into any issues.
<dneary> How about when you joined the GNOME team?
<marina> GNOME is a very mature and friendly community, so there were no
issues their either. My main challenge has been feeling that I don't
know things that are obvious to other people. For example, "upstream"
has been a mystery word to me for many years, which I kept trying to
parse out from the context.
  s/their/there
<dneary> Interesting!
  So - what issues did you want to address when running the Women's
Outreach Program?
  Do you know why Diego asked you to lead it?
<marina> I wanted to reach more women with information about how
exciting and valuable work on GNOME and other free software projects is.
<dneary> Has it been a good experience running it?
<marina> We just came from the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit, which took
place in July 2009, and it was evident to me and others how few women
there were in the GNOME community. I could count 4, including myself, on
a group picture of about 160 GNOME attendees. Perhaps Diego and other
people on the board of directors of the GNOME Foundation thought that I
had a good amount of experience in the GNOME community, but no
  t yet involved in any official role, which made me a good person to
approach about leading this effort.
  Here is a link to the picture:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jcorrius/3693069893/lightbox
<dneary> What's the hardest thing about organising the programme?
<marina> It's been an amazing experience! Many women we are reaching
with our internship program have been using GNOME and interested in free
software for many years, and the program helps them realize their full
potential by becoming a contributor.
<dneary> Surely it hasn't all been plain sailing
  What has been the point you've had to work hard on? Has mentor
recruitment been easy?
  Have all of your interns had a good experience?
<marina> I find that to make the program successful it needs to be a
high-touch effort, with lots of communication to spread the word about
the program, raise sponsorship funds, help applicants figure out what
projects to work on and connect to mentors, make acceptance decisions,
and make sure that the participants are fully engaged in the GNOME
community.
<dneary> Do you have any tips for other projects which might like to do
something similar? Perhaps some pit-falls they might need to avoid?
<marina> So there hasn't been one hardest thing in organizing the
program, but it is a big effort overall.
  There were 9 people who were involved in organizing the program who
were the original mentors for it. We have been encouraging people to
sign up as mentors throughout, but seeing the work of the initial
participants was likely the most effective encouragement that got people
to sign up as mentors. We had 27 mentors for the latest third round.
Because pairing up participants with mentors is one of the key c
  omponents of the program, I occasionally had to ask people about
mentoring specific projects. They were usually happy to help.
<dneary> 27 mentors!
  It obviously takes a lot of time to promote and run the program - do
you think you'll do it again, or is 3 years enough?
<marina> We had 9 mentors for the first round of internships. They were
mostly the people involved in organizing the program.
  (instead of the first sentence above to make it clear that there were
other people organizing the program too)
<dneary> ok
  So going from 9 to 27 is a big jump - have many participants gone on
to be mentors?
  And do you think it's easier for people applying to the project to be
mentored by a woman? Or is it not a concern?
<marina> All the interns seem to have had a good experience . All of the
22 interns we had in the first two rounds stayed engaged throughout
their internship and learned a lot. Many of them continue contributing
to GNOME and help with the program.
<dneary> Excellent!
  I liked the way that you put an emphasis on integrating into the
project, and I noticed a number of mentors & interns became friends and
stayed in contact after the program
  Was that something that happened by designn, or was it a consequence
of the people who were mentors, do you think?
<marina> Two participants, Luciana Fujii Pontello and Ekaterina
Gerasimova, have become mentors for the program. Also three more, Tiffany Antopolski, Anita Reitere and Srishti Sethi, are mentoring Google Code-In tasks. 
<dneary> (I'm getting ahead of you - sorry!)
<marina> While seeing other women involved in the project is likely
encouraging to the program's participants, I don't think it matters to
them whether they are mentored by a man or a woman. About 70% of the
mentors who are helping with the program are men, which is expected,
since we need the help of everyone in the community in mentoring the
participants.
  (It's ok - I'll try to get to each question :)
  Many participants had a chance to meet their mentors and other
participants at conferences and hackfests. Once participants become
integrated into the GNOME community, the normal rules of forming
friendships in the GNOME community apply :).
  (probably no smiley in print :)
<dneary> Why not? ;)
<marina> (up to you :)
<dneary> So bringing interns to conferences was important to you?
<marina> (carrying-over an-answered questions <dneary> Do you have any
tips for other projects which might like to do something similar?
Perhaps some pit-falls they might need to avoid? | <dneary> It obviously
takes a lot of time to promote and run the program - do you think you'll
do it again, or is 3 years enough?)
<dneary> good idea
<marina> (3 rounds = 1.5 years)
<dneary> I have a few more questions, but I'll let you catch up
  backin a second!
<marina> Yes, enabling interns to attend conferences and hackfests is
very important. Meeting other people who are committed to GNOME and
becoming friends with them motivates the new contributors to stay
involved. Besides meeting face to face, there are also many problems
which are easiest to resolve with two faces in front of one screen
<dneary> Does the Foundation fund these trips?
<marina> Yes, the Foundation usually plays an important role in making
this happen by funding these trips fully or to a large degree.
<dneary> So - the big unanswered question - how long do you think you'll
keep doing it?
<marina> My main tip is to just make some outreach effort! We recently
created a resource on the Google Summer of Code wiki that links to
mentors in different free software organizations who would help
newcomers get started and complete their first patch.
  In addition to spreading the word about this resource at universities,
we'll also spread the word about it in different women in technology
organizations and university groups.
<dneary> Do you think that there's a need for a mentorship and outreach
team? You mentioned that you want to get people informally mentoring,
labelling some bugs "easy-fix" and committing to helping people fix them.
  So is mentorship something that every GNOME developer should be doing?
Or do you think it's a skill that we need to develop among a team of people
<marina> So adding a list of mentors in an organization to this page is
a good start. Also, sending information about mentorship, work, and
event participation opportunities in a project to women in technology
groups is a good way to reach out to more women contributors.
<dneary> How about every-day activities? Is there a need to spread the
load around? Who keeps watch to make sure we're not dropping the pace?
  I have to go in a minute
<marina> I think we need to continue the effort to get women involved in
the project for as long as we see that women who have a potential to be
strong contributors are not getting involved in the same way as men who
have this potential. Even though the number of women who are
contributing to GNOME is rapidly growing with the help of the program,
there are many women who have this potential who we have not reached
  yet. So what's common for us, might not yet be perceived the same way
by people outside the project or free software community.
  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.
  I'd personally like to continue being involved with the program after
that, but would be happy if there is another person or group of people
who would like to be the main coordinator(s) for the program.
<dneary> I wonder... why do you think that there are women with the
potential to contribute who aren't?
  Is it because they don't hear about GNOME? Or they hear about us, and
don't think that they have anything to offer?
  Or they have something to offer, and they don't know where to start?
<marina> Most of the 34 women who have been accepted for the program
have been long-time GNOME users and have participated in free software
community in some way by attending events at their university or
translating some free software program.
<dneary> So you think it's that first hand-hold that is missing?
<marina> So I believe the main issue has been that they were not sure
where to start. The program provided just the right encouragement and
support in getting started.
<dneary> And do you think that GNOME should be running local programs
like OpenHatch?
  You mentioned that in your answers. How do you think we might go about
scaling something like that?
<marina> (something like what?)
<dneary> You mentioned OpenHatch by MIT in your answers - it's a program
to "open the hatch"
  Do you think that GNOME should be doing stuff like that?
<marina> OpenHatch has been running great workshops, such as the Open
Source Workshop and the Python Workshop for women and their friends.
<dneary> So - do you think that GNOME should be building a probram like
that at a local level?
<marina> They start with basics to attract a wider audience and provide
a supportive environment where experienced contributors help resolve any
setback within minutes.
  For example, for the Open Source Workshop they have interactive
exercises to show people how to use a bug tracker, revision control
system, and IRC.
<dneary> And they run them in schools, in the evenings?
<marina> They have all the resources and exercises online, which makes
it possible for other people to run the same workshop in different cities.
  The workshops I helped with took place at MIT, but they were widely
advertised and open to anyone.
  The Open Source Workshop took place in the evening, and the Python
Workshop took place on a Friday evening and on Saturday during the day.
<dneary> Sounds cool
  So - would you say that you're passionate about mentoring new
contributors, then?
  :)
<marina> It would be great to organize events where people can get help
installing GNOME and starting to contribute to it. Emphasizing the
collaborative style and mentioning the Outreach Program for Women in
advertising such events would help attract women to attend them.
  I'm passionate about mentoring new contributors and even more
passionate about connecting new contributors with mentors.
<dneary> That sounds like a great way to end the interview :)
  What did you think?
<marina> Thanks :)!
  I think it went well
  There might have been a couple questions I missed, and I can send you
the answers via e-mail for completeness
  we should definitely mention that now we have a list of mentors for
all newcomers on GnomeLove/Mentors and that people should sign up



On 12/13/2011 07:18 AM, Marina Zhurakhinskaya wrote:

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, 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>
To: "Marina Zhurakhinskaya"<marinaz redhat com>
Cc: "Juanjo Marin"<juanjomarin96 yahoo es>, "Emily Gonyer"<emilyyrose gmail com>, 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
Jabber: nearyd gmail com
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