Chris Ball: Women's Summer Outreach Program

Women's Summer Outreach Program

Chris Ball — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 20:35:00 +0100

While reviewing GNOME's Summer of Code applications I noticed that none of the 181 applications we'd received appeared to be from women. This upset me, and I teamed up with my ex-officemate Hanna Wallach to write a proposal to the GNOME Foundation's board, suggesting that we use the money given to the foundation by Google (for taking part in SoC) to fund a few project slots specifically for women.

To our delighted surprise, the board said yes, and today GNOME's launching the Women's Summer Outreach Program, which will run from July 1st - September 1st and offer two-month long projects to three female students. For this to be a success, we need as much help from the community as we can get. Namely:

Spread the word! If you know any female students with programming experience, please consider sending them an e-mail with a link to the project. Even if they decide not to take part, they might at least be interested to see what we're doing.
We've created a list of potential projects on the wiki, based on the MentoredProjects list started by murrayc, and it'd be a great help if any GNOME developers could consider adding something to the list. Please give the entries enough context to have them understandable by someone who isn't necessarily experienced with the GNOME stack.
If you're involved with a CS department we have a poster for your noticeboard. If your department has an e-mail list for student job opportunities that we could use, please let us know.

We have a tight timeframe to get started — 2.5 weeks until the submissions deadline — due to starting out late, but I'm confident we can make a real difference to the community with this project. If you're interested in helping out, please stop by #wsop on irc.gnome.org.

Update: The project's been linked to from gnome.org, along with Mairin Duffy's awesome artwork.

"Women's Summer Outreach Program" by Garri

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 20:48:04 +0000

Great site. http://virtab.freehostia.com/cialis/map.html

"Women's Summer Outreach Program" by איחסון אתרים

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 16:06:19 +0000

bah :( I missed it. Oh well it least I'm now subscribed to your RSS feeds so I wont miss this years gathering :D

"Women's Summer Outreach Program" by Iroke

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 13:07:48 +0000

Lol. I have to agree with comment 10. Nice thing ya doing here, but KDE 4 ever ;)

"Women's Summer Outreach Program" by A Code Gambler

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 15:02:02 +0000

Very nice initiative Chris ! But I'm still a KDE fan though :)

"Women's Summer Outreach Program" by teen models

Thu, 17 May 2007 09:48:01 +0100

is there any mass edit plugs section? want to change my blog script - it's wp now.

"Women's Summer Outreach Program" by mahmoud abbas

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 11:50:29 +0100

Amazing tutorial! Really apreciate that – thanks!

"Women's Summer Outreach Program" by captain stabbin

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 22:58:36 +0100

Captain on the bridge:-) kiddin' around, nice article! :-)

"Women's Summer Outreach Program" by Lion

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 00:03:56 +0000

very interesting article, Chris. Thank you!

"Women's Summer Outreach Program" by Happy Girl

Wed, 21 Jun 2006 00:50:18 +0100

As a female student I think it is great. Different sexes have different lifes and differnt thoughts and ideas. The color of the skin, religion, or country of origin don't affect the view and mind of a person but sex does.

"Women's Summer Outreach Program" by Christel Dahlskjaer

Fri, 16 Jun 2006 11:43:07 +0100

Hi Chris, Long time, no see. Just figured I'd say wel done and best of luck with WSOP.

Christel

Pssst. When you're over in the UK next you must let me know.

"Women's Summer Outreach Program" by anonymous coward

Fri, 16 Jun 2006 07:40:09 +0100

I must be missing something. Why is it we "need" equality of the sexes? Don't we "need" equality of the races, religions, sexualities, nationalities, and physical abilities, as well?

"Women's Summer Outreach Program" by anonymous me

Fri, 16 Jun 2006 00:28:30 +0100

I respect your choice but I think that this is useless. First, we need equality between the both sexes. Second, this is a cultural issue in some societies that need to be fixed by the culture, from the mentalities.

"Women's Summer Outreach Program" by anonymous coward

Thu, 15 Jun 2006 01:15:22 +0100

I guess getting more people involved hacking free software is always good, but where does it end? What if we happened to notice that none of the applicants was (for example) black, or Catholic, or homosexual, or Chinese, or physically disabled?