Hi all, Please excuse the cross-postings.
At its meeting last week, the Executive Oversight Board discussed the possibility of participating in the GNOME Outreach Project for Women - http://gnome.org/opw/. The goal of OPW is to increase the participation of women in FOSS projects by connecting interns with communities that need help for specific projects.
It is similar to the Google Summer of Code program in which Evergreen has previously participated, but the internships provided through this program can extend beyond coding. Interns could also work on user experience design, graphic design, documentation, web development, marketing, translation, or any other task that would help sustain the project. The EOB agreed to put forth the funds to cover the intern's stipend if, as a community, we could come up with some strong project ideas that will help the community and mentors willing to commit their time to the project
I have started a page at http://wiki.evergreen-ils.org/doku.php?id=opw where we can start collecting potential project ideas. I had a couple of doc ideas that I have already added to the list. If you can think of anything that you think would be a worthwhile project, feel free to add it to the page.
Please remember, though, that the projects need to be something that serve as an entry point for somebody who is entirely new to Evergreen. In talking about how to define a project, OPW suggests starting with smaller tasks (i.e. bugs) with a shared them and progressing over time to more complex tasks (i.e. features). They also ask that we select projects where the intern is likely to see their contributions incorporated in the project before the internship is over.
Also, we need to make sure we have committed mentors on any project that is ultimately posted. The next OPW round starts September 8 when the names of participating organizations are released. The application deadline is October 22. During that application period, mentors may need to commit as much as 10 hours per week on the program since you'll be working with multiple potential applicants. I expect that it wouldn't be 10 hours per week for the entire application period, but that it will become more demanding as the application deadline approaches.
The internship dates then run from December 9 to March 9, during which time you may need to spend up to five hours per week working with the intern. Due to the time commitment, I think we should shoot for two mentors on each project so that the commitment does not fall on just one person.
There is more information for potential mentors at https://wiki.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen/Admin/InfoForMentors.
We need to let OPW know by September 8 if we plan on participating, so we have about two weeks to see if we can pull together some strong projects. However, I think this is doable if we have some willing volunteers and good project ideas.
Feel free to let me know if you have any questions! Kathy -- Kathy Lussier Project Coordinator Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative (508) 343-0128 kluss...@masslnc.org Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kmlussier _______________________________________________ OPEN-ILS-DOCUMENTATION mailing list OPEN-ILS-DOCUMENTATION@list.georgialibraries.org http://list.georgialibraries.org/mailman/listinfo/open-ils-documentation
