Sunday 1:50 p.m.–2:20 p.m.

Outreach Program for Women: Lessons in Collaboration

Marina Zhurakhinskaya

Audience level:
Novice
Category:
Community

Description

Since 2010, the GNOME Foundation’s Outreach Program for Women has provided 130 women with an opportunity to participate in remote internships with 23 Free Software organizations. This talk will cover the history of the program, what makes it successful, how the same strategies can be used for engaging all new contributors, and what other initiatives help increase diversity in Free Software.

Abstract

Since 2010, the GNOME Foundation’s Outreach Program for Women has provided 130 women with an opportunity to participate in Free Software internships. In the last year, it has expanded to 23 Free Software organizations, including the Linux Kernel, Mozilla, Wikimedia, OpenStack, MediaGoblin and the Twisted Project. Many of the participating organizations use Python. The diversity of the GNOME community has changed dramatically as a result of this effort. While women comprised only 5% of GNOME contributors attending the Desktop Summit 2009, women comprised 18% of attendees at GUADEC 2013. In a December 2012 survey of newcomers who joined and stayed involved in 12 Free Software organizations, 50% of GNOME respondents were women whereas only 6% of the respondents from other organizations were women, with no other organization having more than 15%. Moreover, GNOME had 22 female respondents, which was a greater number than the 20 female respondents from all of the other organizations combined. Organizations that joined the program within the last year are seeing similar interest in participation from women. The Wikimedia Foundation had 7 women participating in its Google Summer of Code 2013, run concurrently with the Outreach Program for Women, while they have only ever had one woman participate before. Upon joining the program, the Linux Kernel had 39 applicants, 11 of whom landed 148 patches during the application process, and 7 of whom were accepted for the program. This talk will cover the history of the program, what makes it successful, how the same strategies can be used for engaging all new contributors, and what other initiatives help increase diversity in Free Software. It will serve as a great introduction to the program for project leaders and established contributors interested in encouraging participation of women, as well as for women interested in expanding their involvement in Free Software by participating in an internship program.