[Actionchix] Re: [Issues] OK that *was* a little negative - here's the positive side of me!

[Máirín Duffy]

>  Google's Summer of Code sounds wonderful. (App deadline is over now, but
> the page and explanations are still up at
> http://code.google.com/summerofcode.html) Why not sponsor
> something like it - don't necessarily go for a full-fledged distro right
> out, but have the experienced programmers volunteer as mentors to the less
> experienced ones, have everyone post project suggestions - start with small,
> very doable things that we can actually do well; have a three-month (or so)
> "project time" so everyone feels like they're pulling together and we'll
> help each other along towards the same goal of Get Project Done By X Date
> (as opposed to having projects start and end pell-mell), and... go from
> there? Kind of like an apprenticeship. One thing I've seen, being a teenage
> girl with an interest in open source, is that it's really, really hard to
> find a good mentor. And nothing against males at all - I have had wonderful
> male teachers - but it makes a difference, really, to have a strong female
> mentor that really knows her stuff.

There are a number of open GNOME bounties
(http://www.gnome.org/bounties/) funded by both Novell and Google (no
deadlines, just pick a project and do it) with monetary rewards that I
think would be good for a mentor and mentee to take up - they are
clearly defined and useful, mostly small projects that many people
would like to see happen.

>  For those who want to get computer (or Linux) comfy, I've had a design
> project in mind that could turn into the Linuxchix distro, possibly. I'm
> really into user interface design,

Me too. :) I'm an interaction designer with Red Hat.

 and I'd love to have a design team made
> of folks across all skill levels - from "what's a mouse?" to "I can patch
> kernels in my sleep!" (leaning more towards the former) to work with,
> objective being to create a killer open-source "family machine." You know,
> the computer you'd have in your living room or by the kitchen or otherwise
> acting as your "general house computer." Everything from the physical
> hardware to the software interface to the... heck, you could wire it to your
> bathroom lights, if you really wanted - would be open to questioning and
> overhauling, and the goal would be to make it as "hack-friendly" as
> possible. To be so friendly and intuitive as to encourage people to play
> around, make their own things - because that's how you get interested,
> that's how you learn.

Make computers actually function the way Microsoft advertises them :)
E.g., the magazine ads, http://www.windows.com/Passion/main.html,
although that URL has some issues in Firefox on RHEL. A first step
would be to figure out a list of tasks to support (e.g., family recipe
software, instant messaging, sending photos to grandma, printing out
greeting cards, etc.) prioritize them and maybe start working on the
low-hanging fruits.

>  Now, I don't know a lot about anything, and I could be talking crazy here.
> I'm a student, I'm new to this, and I probably rank near the bottom in terms
> of Linux knowledge, but... I'm trying to learn, and I'd like to Do
> Something. Something to help out. Any thoughts? 

Mel, I think your ideas are wonderful. I'd like to encourage you to
get involved with the gnome-women project - we're just in the
defining/organizing stages now, but a mentoring program of the likes
that you're discussing is one of my major goals for the project. It
seems to have worked well for the debian-women project and I think
it'd be great to have women working on GNOME. Details about our
mailing list and IRC channel are at: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWomen.
If you have any questions please feel free to ask, either on the
mailing list, irc (my nick is mizmo), or you can email me!

~m