Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Meet Your Mentors: Women in Open Source

Prompted by an off-hand remark during an IRC conversation about how many women were mentoring for the Google Highly Open Participation Contest, we decided it would be great to chat with several of our women mentors and find out more about how GHOP is going for their communities. During our latest podcast, you'll hear from:

You'll likely recognize several of these names as mentors for Summer of Code. Among the many topics we covered, the phenomenal contributions of our GHOP contestants made up the better part of our conversation. You'll also hear more about best practices for encouraging women to participate in open source and some thoughts on women and community management.

Many thanks to Addison, Amy, Angela, Elin and Noirin for joining us.

You can download the podcast in mp3 or ogg formats. Alternatively, you can subscribe to it.

We always love to hear from you, so if you have thoughts on the podcast or tips for helping communities be most welcoming to female contributors, post a comment and share your thoughts with us.

10 comments:

Unknown said...

Great podcast. This is an amazing program run by an amazing group of people :)

Thank you for sharing experiences and thoughts.

Kai said...

Leslie, it seems to me as if the .ogg file is broken. At least the "file" utility doesn't recognize it as an ogg file, neither does my player.

Stefan said...

Ogg is broken to me too.

Leslie Hawthorn said...

Sorry for the late replies, everyone - I've been out on vacation.

@ louis.landry: You are most welcome. Glad you enjoyed the podcast.

@ kai & recover: I'll look into it. Thanks for letting us know about the problem.

Nur Aini Rakhmawati said...

inspiring women :)

Leslie Hawthorn said...

@ nur aini rakhmawati: Thanks for your comment. I think your work is pretty inspirational, too! ;)

Leslie Hawthorn said...

@ kai & recover: New ogg file uploaded and confirmed working. Sorry for the delay.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Kaity G. B.; et. al. said...

I've just found this podcast,

I really hope that there will be podcasts from 2008's SoC as well. I did want to reiterate that the ogg version of "Meet Your Mentors: Women in Open Source" seems to be incorrectly encoded. However, the mp3 version plays fine.

One other note regarding the entry for "Meet Your Mentors: Women in Open Source". The feed's not including/creating an enclosure tag for this entry.

Thnx again for providing this resource. I am wondering one other thing. I'm launching an online audio show, yup a podcast. Its going to be focused on women's contribution to OSS.

I'm also working toward creating &hoping to have another podcast that will be released either weekly, every-ten-days, fort-nightly, or at least monthly. I'm going to make this a round-table styled discussion of F&OSS news & development. Especially focused on development projects, tools, news, writings, &etc.

Okay, after trying to explain some of the online audio projects that I'm working on. While working on getting these started &running I'm trying to gather together as many preexisting podcasts featuring women's contributions to the fields &communities of OSS, CIS, IT, &etc from other sources. I'm hoping to use these to demonstrate that contrary to popular, i.e. male, belief. That actually there are women in these communities &we're far more prevalent than, I imagine, most men believe are even aware of.

In that regards I'm hoping I could at least link to this particular podcast, or preferably just redistribute it, unless you don't mind the possible extra load of bandwidth.

Okay, yeah I've babbled a ton about this subjects. But its a subject I'm very passionate about &thus my dedication &excitement over creating &birthing these projects.

So I', deeply hoping that this podcast is licensed under some creative commons license. At the least I'm hoping that I can use this podcast to demonstrate my podcasts validity, necessity, &eventual purpose. So may I redistribute the podcast in whole. Than in portions, bumpers, &etc?

Sincerely,
Kaity G. B.; et. al.
My projects(i.e., pre-alpha works in progress)
http://uberChicGeekChick.Com/: My page &podcast about: art &self-expression through->OSS->creating art(graphic design, animation, video, audio, &more).
http://uberChicks.Net/: Highlighting womens' OSS contributions &projects.  Includes writings, interviews, &podcast.

http://openSuSE.uberChicks.Net/: openSuSE's official women community.

@ irc://irc.opensuse.org/openSuSE-women & irc://irc.opensuse.org/openSuSE-uberChicks

http://Dystonia-DREAMS.Org/: support group for any one whom, like myself, is thriving in spite of living with Generalized Dystonia, any type.

Kaity G. B.; et. al. said...

[Correction on previous comment],

Sorry, got ditzy &excited &posted before I saw the 'correction' reply with a link to the corrected ogg file. *w00t!*, thnx &I really hope that I'll be able to use this excellent podcast to help raise awareness, build community, &attract even more girls &women into OSS &CIS.

There are so few podcasts focused on women in CIS, let alone OSS dev.. This podcast would just be an invaluable resources.

That said I'm still absorbing all of the 2007 SoC podcasts & I'm really hoping that we'll get to hear more behind the scenes podcasts from this years(2008) SoC projects.

In closing . . . *wishing* I were part of a project large &useful enough to be part of SoC. *Ah*, someday.

Sincerely,
Kaity G. B.; et. al.
My projects(i.e., pre-alpha works in progress)
http://uberChicGeekChick.Com/: My page &podcast about: art &self-expression through->OSS->creating art(graphic design, animation, video, audio, &more).
http://uberChicks.Net/: Highlighting womens' OSS contributions &projects.  Includes writings, interviews, &podcast.

http://openSuSE.uberChicks.Net/: openSuSE's official women community.

@ irc://irc.opensuse.org/openSuSE-women & irc://irc.opensuse.org/openSuSE-uberChicks

http://Dystonia-DREAMS.Org/: support group for any one whom, like myself, is thriving in spite of living with Generalized Dystonia; of any type.