Outreachy
The OpenStack Foundation joined the GNOME Outreach Program for Women.
GNOME Foundation has found that the program has dramatically improved the participation by women in their community. For example, at GUADEC they went from having around 4% women to around 17% in just a few years. Representation of women among free and open source participants has been cited at 1.5% as contrasted with the percentages of computing degrees earned by women (all at over 10% higher) in the US. At the most recent OpenStack Summit, Anne Gentle led an unconference session about including more women in OpenStack and identified one of the goals as bringing more newcomers to OpenStack. The GNOME Outreach program is an excellent way to meet that inclusion goal.
The program offers a good match for efforts to improve our community for women and all newcomers in OpenStack, making it more welcoming for all. The GNOME program specifically seems to be a perfect fit because it matches mentors with newcomers. Another expected effect is to increase women's attendance at the Summit, maybe in conjunction with scholarships and/or employer support. Contrary to Google Summer of Code, which is aimed only at developers, this program results in many strong applicants because it reaches and is suitable for many people with interests in coding, documentation, design, or marketing.
The Women in OpenStack group has already found 4-6 mentors for the program. Each internship requires $5,000 from OpenStack sponsors or by the Foundation. Individuals are pursuing funding from Rackspace and Redhat. The Foundation will sponsor one intern. More funding is required.
The identified volunteer mentors are: - Iccha Sethi, Developer, Rackspace - Julie Pichon, Developer, Red Hat - Anne Gentle, Documentation Coordinator, Rackspace - Stefano Maffulli, Community Manager, OpenStack Foundation - Russell Bryant, Red Hat - Alex Maier, Nebula
Next edition will start in December 2012. The results of the internships will be ready by Spring 2013 OpenStack Summit.
How to apply
TODO
Add your ideas for internships.
