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Showing posts with label womoz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label womoz. Show all posts
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Growing the company, structuring volunteerism: My response to David Eave's community lifecyle audit
Last Wednesday David Eaves presented the results of the multi-tiered contributor lifecycle audit (watch the video). A few points really grabbed my attention and as someone with a background in arts & education non-profits I feel the need to share my experiences alongside my reactions to this talk.
David pointed out that as we are growing, we can hire people to solve problems, so what exactly do we need volunteers for? Survey results showed that contributors often don't feel their contributions had much impact on the project and that as our paid staff pool grows in size, there is less clarity about what exactly a volunteer's importance is to the critical path of Mozilla's mission. I wish we had this data prior to the 1+ year push to releasing Firefox 4. My hand-waving hypothesis would be that as we were cramming to get a product out the door we forgot to be leaders of volunteers and instead unconsciously pushed them aside so that things could get done on a schedule. It was a stressful time, but now that we've moved on to regular, rapid releases perhaps we paid staff can all take a step back and really assess how we incorporate the work of volunteers into our individual areas.
For many Augusts I have worked at a women's music festival in the woods of Michigan and at that festival there is a kitchen that has pumped out 3 vegetarian meals a day for 5 days to 4000-8000 attendees depending on the year. This festival relies on a core group of 'workers' who are in fact volunteers but let's pretend that group of 500-600 people is like the paid staff of Mozilla. The main kitchen work crew gets about 30 workers to run the kitchen. You might think to yourself "but 30 people cannot produce enough food for 4000-8000 women" and you'd be very right. The way it works is that all attendees of the festival are asked to do two 4 hour workshifts during the week they attend the festival. The majority of workshifts center around the main kitchen and creating the meals which range from burrito night to pasta putanesca to nutloaf (a vegetarian version of meatloaf). All these meals involve preparation of pounds upon pounds of vegetables as well as cooking of pasta, beans, sauce. Did I mention this was all in the woods, over a massive firepit? Yup, so 30 women are in charge of making that entire process work and they do so by wrangling hundreds of volunteers per day into shifts around each meal and constantly leading and dividing up the work so it can be done by many hands yet results in one huge meal - 3 times a day!
So let's go back to people who are volunteering not feeling clear about how Mozilla works and whether their time and effort has impact. How can we make sure that the smallest task makes that person feel like they've contributed? Some areas of Mozilla do this very well to name a few; AMO, SUMO, QA, and Personas. These teams manage tons of volunteers and have tasks with measurable outcomes (tests run, filing bugs, approving an add-on, answering a question in the knowledge base, shrinking the queue of pending Persona submissions) and sometimes they can use scoreboards or themed days to get volunteers mildly competitive for the respect of their peers and accomplish larger goals in a short burst. I'd encourage people interested in having volunteers participate in their team's work think about how to make sure their volunteers have tools to measure their impact from the get-go. In Release Engineering I would measure the number of bugs that we have yet to fix, many of them labelled "simple" or "old". If I had volunteers doing RelEng work I could keep track of their progress and post reports (as blog posts) of who fixed what when and how as the number of bugs shrank.
Another interesting result from the survey: older folks (34-55!) aren't on-ramping as much as younger ones. At first I wondered how much of this was about access to the muscle memory of being a student. I think it's fair to assume that many students/youth can have a lot more time to contribute to projects like Mozilla as certain adult responsibilities may not be required of them yet. Over the past week though, I have started to visualize another take on this. In the arts & social justice organizations I have been involved with there have been plenty of adult volunteers but those organizations have a different need for volunteers. The music festival I mentioned would not happen if it wasn't for volunteers. The fact that the volunteers want the community of the festival to exist for them every year becomes the carrot drawing women of all ages to come to the woods of Michigan and build a music festival every year. People quit jobs, take unpaid leave, and make plenty of other sacrifices of their time to participate in creating this community. The thanks for this 2-4 weeks of donated work is an amazing live/work experience camping with 5000 women on private land, having workshops, parties, and dances all in a very natural, safe, and ad-free environment and watching incredible performances all day and night for 5 days.
In a different example, let's look at a the Toronto International Film Festival. Volunteers have to make it through the rigorous screening and application process in order to 'get' to volunteer for the festival. They are rewarded with behind-the-scenes access to the festival, sometimes a quick run in with a movie star, and free tickets to festival screenings. The festival shows entirely world-premiere films so this is a huge deal for a volunteer. Several films will see theatrical releases after the festival but seeing the premiere, often with the star in attendance and with a director Q&A post-screening really sweetens the experience. The volunteers also get thanked before every screening with a cute trailer from the sponsor for the volunteer program and there's always a fantastic party post-festival as the final thank you.
At Mozilla we do thank our volunteers with tshirts and sometimes bringing them to summits, MozCamps, or other parties. For older volunteers though, I wonder if that's enough. What does it take to get someone in the 34-55 range to donate their time? I'm really interested in this one since I fall in that demographic as well. For me, I need the time donated to do at least one of the following things:
What's going to encourage 34-55 year olds to engage with Mozilla? In my opinion it's going to happen with targeted events where they can do something in a few hours that leaves them feeling connected and fulfilled and even better if it makes something in their life easier. A while back, in Toronto, we did a day of service and set up an info table at the local library so people could come and ask anything about Firefox and even though by some ironic twist the library's internet died we still had an amazing day just conversing with people and answering questions about Firefox, the web, security, and even general computing questions. According to David "having good experiences in the project helps one to want to find others and pull them in" and "age and gender have no impact on the willingness to on-ramp, but the longer you volunteer with Mozilla, the less you on-ramp". My approach with trying to on-ramp then, in light of this, would be to look at getting a lot out of that short interaction. Help someone help themselves on their computer. Teach them a few keyboard shortcuts or how to install an add-on that helps them do what they already do faster and with more confidence. Then encourage them to come back and teach someone else what they learned. This can spread like a pyramid scheme and it's no longer about getting a single volunteer to stick around for a long time, it's just about having a good experience and carrying that forward. Potential volunteers can be motivated by the mission and/or by practical considerations it's important to remember both have tremendous value to the Mozilla project. I think it's important to encourage 34-55 year olds by believing it's OK for a contributor to do a one-off in a few hours as long as they walk away happy.
In conclusion of this very long post, I want to circle back to measuring. If we are going to make community a core part of what we do then we need to measure it we currently do not have an institution-wide measurement of contributions, volunteer performance cannot be evaluated, there is no structure for including volunteer engagement during strategic or operational planning. Until we require Directors to create annual and quarterly goals that include measurable goals around volunteer growth, retention, participation, and effectiveness we will only see people (like myself) trying to do this "off the corner of their desks" which means it's not a part of your paid work and thus less likely to be sustainable and effective. The Toronto International Film Festival is a great example of what we could do here. They have paid staff who organize the volunteers each year. They have a clear path for volunteers to follow to be accepted - training sessions are mandatory. Each year returning volunteers are given roles depending on performance from previous years. The record kept of each volunteer's performance allows paid staff to request certain volunteers for specific tasks based on that information and a volunteer's history with the organization. Teams of volunteers will sometimes have "Captains" who are also volunteers but with more experience and they are thus given more responsibility. Each area of Mozilla that can accommodate volunteers should keep an eye out for their current or potential "Captains". David also suggested that, while we avoid it, we should really look head on at guidelines for when to rely on volunteers and when to not - this seems to fly in the face of open source "free for all" mentality but if we compare ourselves to other non-profits like TIFF there is proof that having some structure for volunteers allows staff and teams to develop stronger relationships and the work gets done smoothly, which was really the point all along.
Don't forget to throw them fabulous parties, share with the world the importance and impact of their contributions, and remember you can never thank a volunteer too much.
David pointed out that as we are growing, we can hire people to solve problems, so what exactly do we need volunteers for? Survey results showed that contributors often don't feel their contributions had much impact on the project and that as our paid staff pool grows in size, there is less clarity about what exactly a volunteer's importance is to the critical path of Mozilla's mission. I wish we had this data prior to the 1+ year push to releasing Firefox 4. My hand-waving hypothesis would be that as we were cramming to get a product out the door we forgot to be leaders of volunteers and instead unconsciously pushed them aside so that things could get done on a schedule. It was a stressful time, but now that we've moved on to regular, rapid releases perhaps we paid staff can all take a step back and really assess how we incorporate the work of volunteers into our individual areas.
For many Augusts I have worked at a women's music festival in the woods of Michigan and at that festival there is a kitchen that has pumped out 3 vegetarian meals a day for 5 days to 4000-8000 attendees depending on the year. This festival relies on a core group of 'workers' who are in fact volunteers but let's pretend that group of 500-600 people is like the paid staff of Mozilla. The main kitchen work crew gets about 30 workers to run the kitchen. You might think to yourself "but 30 people cannot produce enough food for 4000-8000 women" and you'd be very right. The way it works is that all attendees of the festival are asked to do two 4 hour workshifts during the week they attend the festival. The majority of workshifts center around the main kitchen and creating the meals which range from burrito night to pasta putanesca to nutloaf (a vegetarian version of meatloaf). All these meals involve preparation of pounds upon pounds of vegetables as well as cooking of pasta, beans, sauce. Did I mention this was all in the woods, over a massive firepit? Yup, so 30 women are in charge of making that entire process work and they do so by wrangling hundreds of volunteers per day into shifts around each meal and constantly leading and dividing up the work so it can be done by many hands yet results in one huge meal - 3 times a day!
So let's go back to people who are volunteering not feeling clear about how Mozilla works and whether their time and effort has impact. How can we make sure that the smallest task makes that person feel like they've contributed? Some areas of Mozilla do this very well to name a few; AMO, SUMO, QA, and Personas. These teams manage tons of volunteers and have tasks with measurable outcomes (tests run, filing bugs, approving an add-on, answering a question in the knowledge base, shrinking the queue of pending Persona submissions) and sometimes they can use scoreboards or themed days to get volunteers mildly competitive for the respect of their peers and accomplish larger goals in a short burst. I'd encourage people interested in having volunteers participate in their team's work think about how to make sure their volunteers have tools to measure their impact from the get-go. In Release Engineering I would measure the number of bugs that we have yet to fix, many of them labelled "simple" or "old". If I had volunteers doing RelEng work I could keep track of their progress and post reports (as blog posts) of who fixed what when and how as the number of bugs shrank.
Another interesting result from the survey: older folks (34-55!) aren't on-ramping as much as younger ones. At first I wondered how much of this was about access to the muscle memory of being a student. I think it's fair to assume that many students/youth can have a lot more time to contribute to projects like Mozilla as certain adult responsibilities may not be required of them yet. Over the past week though, I have started to visualize another take on this. In the arts & social justice organizations I have been involved with there have been plenty of adult volunteers but those organizations have a different need for volunteers. The music festival I mentioned would not happen if it wasn't for volunteers. The fact that the volunteers want the community of the festival to exist for them every year becomes the carrot drawing women of all ages to come to the woods of Michigan and build a music festival every year. People quit jobs, take unpaid leave, and make plenty of other sacrifices of their time to participate in creating this community. The thanks for this 2-4 weeks of donated work is an amazing live/work experience camping with 5000 women on private land, having workshops, parties, and dances all in a very natural, safe, and ad-free environment and watching incredible performances all day and night for 5 days.
In a different example, let's look at a the Toronto International Film Festival. Volunteers have to make it through the rigorous screening and application process in order to 'get' to volunteer for the festival. They are rewarded with behind-the-scenes access to the festival, sometimes a quick run in with a movie star, and free tickets to festival screenings. The festival shows entirely world-premiere films so this is a huge deal for a volunteer. Several films will see theatrical releases after the festival but seeing the premiere, often with the star in attendance and with a director Q&A post-screening really sweetens the experience. The volunteers also get thanked before every screening with a cute trailer from the sponsor for the volunteer program and there's always a fantastic party post-festival as the final thank you.
At Mozilla we do thank our volunteers with tshirts and sometimes bringing them to summits, MozCamps, or other parties. For older volunteers though, I wonder if that's enough. What does it take to get someone in the 34-55 range to donate their time? I'm really interested in this one since I fall in that demographic as well. For me, I need the time donated to do at least one of the following things:
- be social, meeting new people in the community I chose to volunteer in is a big part of why I'd do it in the first place
- provide a networking opportunity (similar to above, but might apply to folks on the job market a bit more accurately)
- get me free access to an event I wouldn't attend if it wasn't
- be something my friends are also doing so we are visiting with each other while doing something interesting
- be for a very good cause so I feel good just helping that cause regardless of the tasks I perform
What's going to encourage 34-55 year olds to engage with Mozilla? In my opinion it's going to happen with targeted events where they can do something in a few hours that leaves them feeling connected and fulfilled and even better if it makes something in their life easier. A while back, in Toronto, we did a day of service and set up an info table at the local library so people could come and ask anything about Firefox and even though by some ironic twist the library's internet died we still had an amazing day just conversing with people and answering questions about Firefox, the web, security, and even general computing questions. According to David "having good experiences in the project helps one to want to find others and pull them in" and "age and gender have no impact on the willingness to on-ramp, but the longer you volunteer with Mozilla, the less you on-ramp". My approach with trying to on-ramp then, in light of this, would be to look at getting a lot out of that short interaction. Help someone help themselves on their computer. Teach them a few keyboard shortcuts or how to install an add-on that helps them do what they already do faster and with more confidence. Then encourage them to come back and teach someone else what they learned. This can spread like a pyramid scheme and it's no longer about getting a single volunteer to stick around for a long time, it's just about having a good experience and carrying that forward. Potential volunteers can be motivated by the mission and/or by practical considerations it's important to remember both have tremendous value to the Mozilla project. I think it's important to encourage 34-55 year olds by believing it's OK for a contributor to do a one-off in a few hours as long as they walk away happy.
In conclusion of this very long post, I want to circle back to measuring. If we are going to make community a core part of what we do then we need to measure it we currently do not have an institution-wide measurement of contributions, volunteer performance cannot be evaluated, there is no structure for including volunteer engagement during strategic or operational planning. Until we require Directors to create annual and quarterly goals that include measurable goals around volunteer growth, retention, participation, and effectiveness we will only see people (like myself) trying to do this "off the corner of their desks" which means it's not a part of your paid work and thus less likely to be sustainable and effective. The Toronto International Film Festival is a great example of what we could do here. They have paid staff who organize the volunteers each year. They have a clear path for volunteers to follow to be accepted - training sessions are mandatory. Each year returning volunteers are given roles depending on performance from previous years. The record kept of each volunteer's performance allows paid staff to request certain volunteers for specific tasks based on that information and a volunteer's history with the organization. Teams of volunteers will sometimes have "Captains" who are also volunteers but with more experience and they are thus given more responsibility. Each area of Mozilla that can accommodate volunteers should keep an eye out for their current or potential "Captains". David also suggested that, while we avoid it, we should really look head on at guidelines for when to rely on volunteers and when to not - this seems to fly in the face of open source "free for all" mentality but if we compare ourselves to other non-profits like TIFF there is proof that having some structure for volunteers allows staff and teams to develop stronger relationships and the work gets done smoothly, which was really the point all along.
Don't forget to throw them fabulous parties, share with the world the importance and impact of their contributions, and remember you can never thank a volunteer too much.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
OccupediA - Women Contributing to Wikipedia (the first of many such events)
Last Thursday night about 8 women arrived at Noisebridge to learn how to contribute to Wikipedia. Several things led to this gathering:
I was happy with the turn out - we had a mix of artists, educators, and tech workers. Also as a bonus one of the attendees, my coworker Boriss, was a seasoned Wikipedia contributor who was able to really detail the ins and outs of the different levels of participation. I can't stress enough how amazing it was to have her and her knowledge there because there are lots of misconceptions about Wikipedia (I definitely had some) and her first-hand knowledge was inspiring to me.
So the beginning of the meetup went well enough, and as you might expect. We introduced ourselves, talked about why we had come to the event and what we were hoping to get out of it. We started in on learning how to set up an account if one didn't already exist and we looked at discussion/history/edit and other basic navigations of Wikipedia space. There were a lot of questions about what belongs in Wikipedia, neutral tone, citations. The conversations were lively and I found them quite enjoyable.
Here's what I didn't expect: Getting folks interested and excited about Wikipedia becomes REALLY HARD in practice. Unlike learning Python where the participants can hammer out some code on their own computers in minutes and feel accomplished, there is a lot more complexity to Wikipedia. There is a lot of confusion about their UI, their purpose, who can do what and when. Very quickly it seemed that the women who had come to the event feared adding anything new to the knowledge base and they were also incredibly intimidated by the UI of the site. It wasn't even clear enough how one would create a new article when none existed.
From this event I learned a lot about organizing and about the intentions of future events like this and I did a little braindumping while we were meeting so I could remember to list them later in this very post.
Things that would help newcomers:
I will continue to organize these events, perhaps once a month. More reports as they happen.
- An article in the New York Times back in October drew attention to the lack of women contributors to the Wikipedia knowledge base and that got me thinking.
- Having organized other spontaneous "women get together and learn stuff" events I figured I could take the same approach to Wikipedia contributing, get some women together to create accounts, generate content, learn how to stop vandalism and see what would stick.
- Recent participation in activism around the Occupy Wall Street movement also inspired me to try and reach out to communities I am in who are not as technical, to encourage people to come first with knowledge and interest in topics Wikipedia could benefit from and let the tech come second.
- A month ago Elsa and I were talking casually about all the the above mentioned things and we decided to just go for it and pick a date, throw it up on the Noisebridge (local SF hackerspace) calendar, and see what we could make happen.
I was happy with the turn out - we had a mix of artists, educators, and tech workers. Also as a bonus one of the attendees, my coworker Boriss, was a seasoned Wikipedia contributor who was able to really detail the ins and outs of the different levels of participation. I can't stress enough how amazing it was to have her and her knowledge there because there are lots of misconceptions about Wikipedia (I definitely had some) and her first-hand knowledge was inspiring to me.
So the beginning of the meetup went well enough, and as you might expect. We introduced ourselves, talked about why we had come to the event and what we were hoping to get out of it. We started in on learning how to set up an account if one didn't already exist and we looked at discussion/history/edit and other basic navigations of Wikipedia space. There were a lot of questions about what belongs in Wikipedia, neutral tone, citations. The conversations were lively and I found them quite enjoyable.
Here's what I didn't expect: Getting folks interested and excited about Wikipedia becomes REALLY HARD in practice. Unlike learning Python where the participants can hammer out some code on their own computers in minutes and feel accomplished, there is a lot more complexity to Wikipedia. There is a lot of confusion about their UI, their purpose, who can do what and when. Very quickly it seemed that the women who had come to the event feared adding anything new to the knowledge base and they were also incredibly intimidated by the UI of the site. It wasn't even clear enough how one would create a new article when none existed.
From this event I learned a lot about organizing and about the intentions of future events like this and I did a little braindumping while we were meeting so I could remember to list them later in this very post.
Things that would help newcomers:
- Having a "new to wikipedia" moniker next to their nickname for the first N activities on the site (we have this on our Mozilla bugzilla) so that hopefully older and wiser participants would be extra nice to them
- Find a way to make some of the simpler tasks that help Wikipedia (typos, reverting vandalism, categorizing articles) into a game that a new arrival could play that would start easy and then move more toward the real-life workflow of working on Wikipedia - as a way to warm them to the UI
- Encourage newcomer to write a straight-up article and have a place for these things to be dumped for inpection/linkage/categorization and otherwise Wikipedia-fying the knowledge dump. My partner is an English professor and can certainly write good content for Wikipedia but everything about the site is intimidating. There should be a page where she could copy/paste or upload a document of her article and then let people who know wiki syntax and the other requirements an article needs come along and finish it up
- Make it way easier to find the "adopt a user" program that I hear exists but no one would know to find that from the Wikipedia home page
I will continue to organize these events, perhaps once a month. More reports as they happen.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Want more women in Open Source? Donate to Ada Initiative today!
Short version: If you love women, or even like them just a bit, go right now and donate to the Ada Initiative to show the women in your life that you value their contributions past, present, and future to the wonderful world of Open Source. I'm going to make a donation in my grandmother's name this year and I know she'll be happy to have supported such a valuable project.
Long Version
I love Open Source.
When it first came to my attention, in the first year of my degree in software development at Seneca College, I knew we'd be a good fit. There's something about the spirit of Open Source that instantly clicked with my existing guerilla activist sensibilities. The way that you just take what you want and make it happen. That you create and give away. That you work with other passionate people to make cracks in the surfaces of monopolies that only want you to be able to do things through their (usually financially) gated communities. It reminded me of how I had approached being a filmmaker - taking $50 of Super 8 film and developing it myself in 16L bucket in a dark bathroom then submitting the results to a prestigious film festival and being accepted. Having my work shown alongside films with budgets bigger than the cost of a house was an amazing experience and taught me that not everything has to be polished to be valued.
Open Source is like that to me, the diamond in the rough.
While I was working on my degree I of course noticed (and was not surprised by) the lack of women in my classes. I was surprised when I started to get involved in Open Source to discover that there were less women in FOSS than in proprietary software companies. That seriously BLEW MY MIND. I mean, if Unlocking the Clubhouse is to believed (and it is very thorough research) then technical women want to do work that is meaningful and helps people. Why that sounds a lot like Open Source doesn't it? So why aren't there more women in Open Source? I'll let you Google that question to your hearts content, there's a lot written on the subject and so much more could be. The point though is that the Ada Initiative is a new project that is here to take on that very question through ACTION. They will DO things to get more women in Open Source. Women don't have to be dragged into FOSS kicking and screaming. Trust me, after seeing the overflowing wait list for the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing's FOSS day, there are a ton of talented and smart women interested and able to do work in Open Source. We (all of us who have already drank the Kool-Aid) need to help them get integrated and feel comfortable staying in FOSS.
When I first met my future team at Mozilla in April of 2008 there was a woman on my team (!) and she self-identified herself to me as a feminist within the first 5 minutes we were together. As someone who was coming in as a student with zero experience in professional tech workplaces I was so thrilled to have an immediate feeling of relief, trusting that if she was respected there I would be too. She also introduced me to wonderful internet properties such as GeekFeminism and Sociological Images both of which helped me start connecting with other feminists in tech fields. Almost three years later I am starting to feel like I've been successful in building the community in FOSS around me that I want to be a part of. It's a wonderful mix of the talented people I work with at Mozilla, the folks I'm working on planning the next Dare 2B Digital with, the programmers I organize PyStar workshops with, the Women Who Code, the Women 2.0, and of course - The Ada Initiative.
I'll leave you with their own words about why you should go straight to the donation page:
Long Version
I love Open Source.
When it first came to my attention, in the first year of my degree in software development at Seneca College, I knew we'd be a good fit. There's something about the spirit of Open Source that instantly clicked with my existing guerilla activist sensibilities. The way that you just take what you want and make it happen. That you create and give away. That you work with other passionate people to make cracks in the surfaces of monopolies that only want you to be able to do things through their (usually financially) gated communities. It reminded me of how I had approached being a filmmaker - taking $50 of Super 8 film and developing it myself in 16L bucket in a dark bathroom then submitting the results to a prestigious film festival and being accepted. Having my work shown alongside films with budgets bigger than the cost of a house was an amazing experience and taught me that not everything has to be polished to be valued.
Open Source is like that to me, the diamond in the rough.
While I was working on my degree I of course noticed (and was not surprised by) the lack of women in my classes. I was surprised when I started to get involved in Open Source to discover that there were less women in FOSS than in proprietary software companies. That seriously BLEW MY MIND. I mean, if Unlocking the Clubhouse is to believed (and it is very thorough research) then technical women want to do work that is meaningful and helps people. Why that sounds a lot like Open Source doesn't it? So why aren't there more women in Open Source? I'll let you Google that question to your hearts content, there's a lot written on the subject and so much more could be. The point though is that the Ada Initiative is a new project that is here to take on that very question through ACTION. They will DO things to get more women in Open Source. Women don't have to be dragged into FOSS kicking and screaming. Trust me, after seeing the overflowing wait list for the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing's FOSS day, there are a ton of talented and smart women interested and able to do work in Open Source. We (all of us who have already drank the Kool-Aid) need to help them get integrated and feel comfortable staying in FOSS.
When I first met my future team at Mozilla in April of 2008 there was a woman on my team (!) and she self-identified herself to me as a feminist within the first 5 minutes we were together. As someone who was coming in as a student with zero experience in professional tech workplaces I was so thrilled to have an immediate feeling of relief, trusting that if she was respected there I would be too. She also introduced me to wonderful internet properties such as GeekFeminism and Sociological Images both of which helped me start connecting with other feminists in tech fields. Almost three years later I am starting to feel like I've been successful in building the community in FOSS around me that I want to be a part of. It's a wonderful mix of the talented people I work with at Mozilla, the folks I'm working on planning the next Dare 2B Digital with, the programmers I organize PyStar workshops with, the Women Who Code, the Women 2.0, and of course - The Ada Initiative.
I'll leave you with their own words about why you should go straight to the donation page:
We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished already. Since our founding in early 2011, we helped over 30 conferences and organizations adopt an anti-harassment policy, organized the first AdaCamp unconference, provided free consulting on high-profile sexist incidents, wrote and taught two workshops on supporting women in open tech/culture, and ran two surveys, among other things. http://adainitiative.org/what-we-do/ We need your help to achieve our upcoming goals. The Ada Initiative is funded entirely by donations. Without your financial support, the Ada Initiative will have to shut down in early 2012. http://supportada.org/donate Your donations will fund upcoming projects like: Ada’s Advice, a comprehensive guide to resources for helping women in open tech/culture, Ada’s Careers, a career development community, and First Patch Week, where we help women create and submit their first open source patch. You can learn more about how the Ada Initiative is organized and operated on our web site and blog: http://adainitiative.org Whether or not you can donate yourself, you can help us by spreading the word about our fundraising drive. Please tell your friends about our important work. Email, blog, add our donation button to your web site, and tweet. Here’s how: http://adainitiative.org/support-us/spread-the-word/ You don’t have to stand on the sidelines any longer. You can help women in open technology and culture, starting today.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Friday, February 12, 2010
FOSDEM 2010 Video - Women in Open Source and Free Software
A quick 'n dirty vlog featuring some of the women attending this year's FOSDEM conference. I was really glad to see so many women attendees, a much higher ratio than any FLOSS events I've been to so far. It was challenging for me to get over my initial shyness about talking with them but I'm glad I did. As my friend Bevin has said "No one ever died of awkward". That in mind, I just put myself out there on the Sunday of FOSDEM and was pleasantly surprised to discover how eager women were to talk about their involvement. I hope to continue to do this kind of documenting at future events. I'd also encourage you, dear reader, to do the same if you can. We can compile a ton of testimonies from women in open source and free software describing what they do and why.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
FOSDEM 2010 Reflections - Part One: Why I went
This was my first time attending FOSDEM and my first time in Europe as an adult. Being able to attend this conference was very exciting because I got a whole new perspective on the Mozilla project's community outside of North America and I met many folks in the l10n community which helps remind me that there are people attached to the RelEng Buildbot columns. In my time at Seneca, my internship, and now as a full time employee of Mozilla I mostly interact with employees and contractors so it's really great to be around folks who aren't paid to do this and yet love it as much as I do.
It wasn't until the second day of the conference that it really started to sink in how the driving forces of community were very different across the ocean. People I met told me how they were involved with open source for political reasons, and one pointed out that he could watch TV or do something that mattered, so for him contributing to Mozilla was a way of doing something important. If more people in America put down the remote (or game controller) and followed suit, imagine how many new contributors we could have! I loved hearing that for some of our European contributors, their time spent on Mozilla projects isn't volunteerism; it is essential to their daily lives.
I suspect that coming from countries that have at some point been governed by autocratic or dictatorial leaders has spurred many free-thinking people to want to personally work on openness and freedom in many areas, but especially in areas relating to technology, where web browsers become an important tool for managing identity and privacy. It's activism, it's political, and it's one of the reasons I'm here too.
My early roots of activism looked a lot more like this:
Invigorating but prone to burnout. Being crushed up against riot shields and poked with billy sticks loses its appeal fast especially when police crowd control tactics get more and more violent with every protest. So now my activism is more about finding positive, measurable, and constructive ways to help people. Hopefully free of riot gear and pepper spray.
Enter WoMoz. For folks who don't know, WoMoz is a new group in Mozilla aimed at increasing the visibility of women at Mozilla as well as increasing the number of women contributors. The main reason I attended FOSDEM was to participate in two days of planning sessions with other WoMoz members in order to lay a road map for the rest of this year. Up until now the WoMoz participants have only interacted through IRC, wiki, and mailing lists. It's nearly impossible to get a decent big picture that way, let alone get to know each other.
In the next couple of blog posts I'm going to write up my thoughts and ideas about directions that WoMoz can take and my goals for this project. I'll also post a quick 'n dirty video I've made featuring some of the women in open source that I met at FOSDEM.
It wasn't until the second day of the conference that it really started to sink in how the driving forces of community were very different across the ocean. People I met told me how they were involved with open source for political reasons, and one pointed out that he could watch TV or do something that mattered, so for him contributing to Mozilla was a way of doing something important. If more people in America put down the remote (or game controller) and followed suit, imagine how many new contributors we could have! I loved hearing that for some of our European contributors, their time spent on Mozilla projects isn't volunteerism; it is essential to their daily lives.
I suspect that coming from countries that have at some point been governed by autocratic or dictatorial leaders has spurred many free-thinking people to want to personally work on openness and freedom in many areas, but especially in areas relating to technology, where web browsers become an important tool for managing identity and privacy. It's activism, it's political, and it's one of the reasons I'm here too.
My early roots of activism looked a lot more like this:
Invigorating but prone to burnout. Being crushed up against riot shields and poked with billy sticks loses its appeal fast especially when police crowd control tactics get more and more violent with every protest. So now my activism is more about finding positive, measurable, and constructive ways to help people. Hopefully free of riot gear and pepper spray.
Enter WoMoz. For folks who don't know, WoMoz is a new group in Mozilla aimed at increasing the visibility of women at Mozilla as well as increasing the number of women contributors. The main reason I attended FOSDEM was to participate in two days of planning sessions with other WoMoz members in order to lay a road map for the rest of this year. Up until now the WoMoz participants have only interacted through IRC, wiki, and mailing lists. It's nearly impossible to get a decent big picture that way, let alone get to know each other.
In the next couple of blog posts I'm going to write up my thoughts and ideas about directions that WoMoz can take and my goals for this project. I'll also post a quick 'n dirty video I've made featuring some of the women in open source that I met at FOSDEM.
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