Tag Archives: OPW

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Flavia Weisghizzi: Ubuntu, GNOME and OPW.

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It seems hard to believe but this last OPW months flew like the wind.

My first thought is a HUGE THANKS to all the women which work behind this project, first of all Karen and Marina.

I have been lucky, and I have had the opportunity to work with Karen, who mentored me (and Sriram too, of course!) and this has been an excellent chance to prove myself in an very international environment with people of great competency, and everybody knows competency is the first quality of an outstanding ledership.

This round of OPW is closed, but another one is approaching: another opportunity for new lady rock stars to full try out their competences, in coding, marketing, design and so on

Next round will be held in june/september 2013 and submission deadline is on May 1st: complete details of next round are available here: OutreachProgramForWomen.

This program is an unique opportunity to work with awesome women in every part of the world… why don’t you take a look and have your try?

My only regret in these three months has been that I haven’t met any women coming from Ubuntu.

Participating organizations come from very different FOSS projects, from KDE and from GNOME, from Debian, Mozilla, Wikimedia, just to remember the more famous, but it’s very sad to me to realize that Ubuntu isn’t involved at all, as project and as people.

As a Ubuntu Women co-leader I really hope that my experience will serve. I found a great effort from everybody to make me feel comfortable albeit I’m not an English native speaker and I was really much more tied to Ubuntu than Fedora or GNOME communities.

I’ll be enlightened if this could encourage the build of bridges between Ubuntu Women and OPW, and, why not, be the first step to consider GNOME people as a counterpart again.

I believe every woman in FOSS really rocks, and I really hope all women will find a way to walk together again

…read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet Ubuntu

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Flavia Weisghizzi: Outreach report (part II)

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During the first part of my OPW, I spent much of my time in investigating the issues newcomers could encounter in approaching FOSS. Results of my work, are available here.
Starting form these results, I’ve spent some time in second part of my internship in studying how to apply what I’ve discovered in the GNOME environment.
I’ve tried to provide some answers to the questions I met: I share with you the result of my work.

Classification of newcomers.

I’ve try out that newcomers could be generally set in three type:

Type A: Enthusiastic

An Enthusiastic newcomer is a great passionate of GNOME, is a GNOME user and generally decides to use some of his time to give a hand.
He has not a well established idea about what he can do, but he wants to contribute.
Probably he’ll start to follow as much ML as he can, join IRC channel, proposing himself for every task.
What he really needs is a guide not only a Mentor, but someone who can address him to the right team,   supply some indication about guidelines and more important, give him some task to do, that could help him to perfectly feel himself as a part of community.

Risks and potentialities: An Enthusiastic newcomer is proud to serve the project he chose, is very participative, but his outburst risks to burn away and fall very quickly, if he doesn’t find the right way to  take part of community.

Type B: Passionate

A Passionate newcomer is a volunteer provided of some experience in GNOME world.
He could be a GNOME user, and very often he came from other FOSS projects.
He desires offer his capabilities and some amount of his time in developing some specific part of project.
What he really needs is to find well defined task to do and some people who could steer him in early days.

Risks and potentialities: A Passionate newcomer is usually a professional who has little time to spend, but can offer a significant know-how. Generally his contribute is not daily, but often very relevant and long-lasting.

Type C: Technician

A Technician newcomer approach a community bringing a great experience.
Usually he has a technical background and is a first class citizen in FOSS world.
Coder or not coder, he has a great familiarity with community tools.
What he really needs is to find well written documentation and guidelines, and some project in which he cans easily take part.

Risks and potentialities: whatever be the know-how brought by a Technichian newcomer, it will be valuable; the main risks involve only the capability of newcomer to integrate his knowledge to work-flow.

Howdy, newcomer!

A very relevant issue we should take in consideration, is how a newcomer joins GNOME.
My personal opinion is through IRC Channels.
A direct contact is always the best, IMHO, but IRC Channels can’t be enough to provide detailed info.
This should be the role of gnome.org/ gnome.org/get-involved/ pages.
I’ve been really pleased to notice that design renewal of the site occurred …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet Ubuntu

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Flavia Weisghizzi: An apple is an apple, a cigar too. (OPW Week 1)

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One week is just gone, and you can’t guess how much I’ve learned.

I’m having my OPW in Marketing team. I’m a writer, I’ve publish 10 books (I know, not very eco-friendly, the next will be an e-book, I swear) but what I really found hard, what I never thought would be so difficult, has been the difficulties I’m having in finding the correct cultural reference points.

I always believe that, more than text, context speaks, and very often, what I wrote has encountered cultural mismatches (sometimes very embarrassing, as I wrote “I can’t stand” instead “I can’t wait” :( ).

I can’t say that sometimes it isn’t frustrating, sometimes is difficult to explain something without using paradoxes, metaphors, analogies, but it’s a challenge that’s opening my mind. I feel myself in a very cramped street, and, as I teach in my writing courses, the wider you want to talk, the narrower you references have to be: it’s a very different way to write, not very deep but very essential.

And I never have needed to be more essential in my life as now. So this is a gift too.

To communicate with people whose cultural reference points are so different each other, I need to start remembering that an apple is an apple, and, as Mr Freud said, sometimes a cigar too.

So Mr. Sheldon Cooper, please help me: what’s the reference that I can’t miss?


Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet Ubuntu

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Flavia Weisghizzi: Hello (GNOME) world!

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Maybe someone will be surprised finding my blog added to Planet GNOME, but, instead, I’m really happy to announce that I’m a member of the crew :)

I’m Flavia, I’m not exactly a new girls on the block, some of you maybe could have heard about me in Ubuntu, where I’m Ubuntu Women co-leader, and as shown by my name, I’m a member of the so-called “Italian conspiracy” :)

Why I’m here?

Because I’ve been accepted in OPW 2013 and I’ve asked to join GNOME marketing team :)

What can I offer to GNOME Community?

First of all, my passion, the great thrill to face a daily challenge together with a group of people who definitely are the avant-guard in FOSS; then, a 5 years experience as media relation coordinator in Ubuntu-it community.

It seems to me the two things sound good together :)

What can you expect from me?

To be contacted, probably :)

With Karen and Sri, my beloved tutors :) , we’ve planned, among other things, to explain better new features landing in GNOME 3.8, so, if you’re working on some interesting feature, probably you could find my nick knocking at your door on IRC :)

Moreover, I’m sorry for you, I’m very talkative woman, so you’ll have a lot of words from my pen to read, but I promised not to tease you too much with my life adventures, but with GNOME (and FOSS).

And you?

What do you expect from a marketing team new member? Which feature of GNOME as code and as community do you wish to be more enlightened? And…where are GNOME secrets garden to be explored?

As journalist I swear I never say a word about them :P (Ok, I’m a liar… I know)

Really now I DO thanks all the people who gave their trust in me, I thanks Sri, Karen and Allan, I wish their trust is well put back: the journey is just begun, and I really wish to be a great adventure for all.

And… one more thing, thank you very much for your everyday work: it’s really impressive and I hope to talk about it at my best

Stay tuned

Flavia

p.s. If you please, you can peek in something about me on my wiki profile, or read something on my Italian blog :) See you all :)


Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet Ubuntu