[Actionchix] Some discussion?

[Mel Chua]

I'm new and quiet on these lists (...up till now) but here goes.

>>1. What projects would you like to work on that fits in with LinuxChix's
>>goals (supporting women in Linux)?

> Helping to mentor student programmers (of any age) getting started
> with contributing to open source.

Speaking as a young student, this would be terrifically welcome. I'm 
still learning my way around Linux and hoping to get proficent enough to 
contribute to the Open Source community someday (right now I'd qualify 
myself as a decent user, but not comfortable or knowledgeable enough to 
play with anything major - though I'm getting more fearless as time goes 
on). I'd love to help organize the student side of this. Perhaps we 
could pair mentors with the newcomers - still use the mailing list for 
all sorts of general questions, but having a specific person to talk to 
would lower the "But I can't ask, I don't know what I'm doing!" 
threshold and result in the newbies learning how to ask more and better 
questions.

>>2. What projects would you like to work on that you think LinuxChix
>>could help out with?

Writing educational material is one of the things I do for fun in my off 
time. (Wow, that sounded dry and boring. But it's really not.) Since I'm 
working through this stuff myself, I want to create/edit tutorials, 
FAQs, walkthroughs, and other sorts of documentation to be beginner 
friendly without being solely "Just imitate me and it will magically 
work." LinuxChix has a wonderful community with a lot of knowledge, and 
it could benefit from adding tutorials alongside its courses and 
augmenting/converting its current courses to be more independent-study 
friendly.

>>3. What are your experiences in previous volunteer projects?

All three years of high school, I wrote math and science curriculum for 
the student-run summer camps (which I also helped teach). I've lost 
count of how many years I've been tutoring others (mostly in math, 
science, writing, and now some programming as well), and this year I'm 
volunteering to help out with a local high school's FIRST team (having 
never touched a robot in my life, but being reassured by my schoolmates 
that they'll teach me things and it will go fine), so we'll see how that 
goes...

-Mel