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  • Jen Mylo 2:39 pm on June 10, 2013 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: , mentorship, , summer2013   

    Summer Internships Kickoff 

    Most people probably saw the post over on wordpress.org/news that announced our summer interns via GSoC and OPW.

    This summer’s WordPress GSoC/Gnome OPW interns span a number of contributor groups. Rather than create a standalone blog for all the students as we have in the past, this year we’ll be trying something different, as our community structure has changed since our last round. Each intern will post their detailed weekly updates on the team blog for the contributor group with which their project most naturally aligns, while posting about administrative things will happen here on the community team site.

    (More …)

     

  • Jen Mylo 7:45 pm on May 17, 2013 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment  

    Proposed merging this group with the /events group over on /updates, following conversation with @andreamiddleton and @sabreuse.

     

    • nofearinc 8:18 pm on May 17, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      I’m not a regular member of either group, but it would make sense to me since currently I’m browsing both groups for anything related to events or group activities.

  • Jen Mylo 4:43 pm on May 17, 2013 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: conferences, , grace hopper, ,   

    WordPress will be participating in Grace Hopper Open Source Day 2013 at the Women in Computing Conference. It’s the same Saturday as WC Europe, so will need to see who’s heading to that before choosing a couple of (preferably women) mentors to go and oversee the workshop. We’ll be guiding some first-time contributors through a first project. Told Christie (co-chair of OSD) I wanted to wait to choose our project until we were into the next dev cycle so we could pick something relevant.

     

  • Jen Mylo 4:21 pm on May 7, 2013 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: , , , sponsorship   

    GSoC and Gnome Status Update: May 7, 2013 

    GSoC’s application period is closed. I requested 9-12 slot allocations, and we’ll find out hov many we get tomorrow. The mentors are currently choosing which students/projects they want to take on, after a few days of reviewing all the applications. We received a total of 56 applications, 7 of which I weeded out for not filling in the application as needed (quasi-spam), from 49 individual students. There are about 20 mentors reviewing the proposals. UPDATE: We have been awarded 9 slots for GSoC.

    Gnome Outreach Program for Women (OPW) is a little less formal since all communication happens through email instead of through an application like GSoC uses (melange). 10 women sent in applications, of which there a few strong candidates in the areas of code, support, and documentation. There are also some women who contacted us through the form on this site asking for more specifics about projects, mentors, and how to make a contribution. Have been replying to them telling them they can still apply as long as it is before our decision deadline (May 8), so will be accepting applications from those folks for another day, and they’ll have until May 17th to make their sample contribution to the project before we make the selection decisions. If possible, I’d like to be able to take on at least 3 interns from the OPW program.

    Automattic has offered to sponsor the first intern, so I’m hoping for community support to cover the extra cost. 3 interns will cost $17,250 ($5,750 per intern), so any WordPress-based businesses willing to help offset some of this cost would be much-lauded. If you’re interested in helping with financial sponsorship, you can send a message using the Ask a Question form, or you can ping me on irc/skype/email if you already have that contact info. Every little bit helps!

     

  • Jen Mylo 7:56 pm on May 2, 2013 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags:   

    Team Rep Change 

    @andrea_r is going to be stepping back from volunteering for a while for personal reasons, so @sabreuse has graciously volunteered to fill her shoes re community outreach team. We’re overdue for a take-stock-make-plans as a number of projects that were parceled out over the past couple of months didn’t wind up going anywhere, and I’ve not been very wrangly in public. Will start being more official and consistent with posts about what’s up. In the meantime, welcome, Amy!

     

  • Jen Mylo 7:56 pm on May 1, 2013 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: , ,   

    The deadline for applying to the Gnome program has now passed. I’ll collate the applications we received and will bring in the appropriate mentors and/or team reps to review this week. We have until May 8 to decide who we want to sponsor.

    Note: GSoC’s application period lasts until May 3.

     

  • Jen Mylo 12:40 pm on April 6, 2013 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: , , interns, mentorship programs   

    Summer Mentorship Programs: GSoC and Gnome Outreach Program for Women 

    GSoC

    I submitted the WordPress application to participate in GSoC on March 29th, the deadline for applying. The mobile team helpfully added a bunch of project ideas, but core team has been so focused on 3.6 that that area hasn’t gotten much attention, so I don’t know if we’ll be accepted or not. I left in the (not yet done) ideas and mentors from a past year so that we wouldn’t look empty, but I would have liked more new projects to get in there. Will be trying to get some core peeps to help round it out today at WC Miami, and will shoot Carol at GSoC an email to let her know we’ve added more stuff (since they finished reviewing applications yesterday, and are announcing accepted orgs on Monday).

    If we are accepted I’ll be looking for 2 people to project manage the program for the season. Will talk to a couple of likely people at WC Miami about that today as well.

    Gnome Outreach Program for Women

    I applied for WordPress to be a mentoring organization for the Gnome program, and we have been accepted. Some good things and some less than good things about this one.

    Good Things:

    • Not limited to just code. We could take on interns in design, support, translation, documentation, community management, you name it. And code, of course. Much more leeway in the effort to grow the ranks of women project contributors. How awesome would it be for a budding/potential support team member to be officially mentored by @ipstenu or @andrea_r? To have a design intern that could help with all the Make site stuff? To have a pm or org management type get involved with the day to day minutiae of managing our contributor community, much of which goes undone because I and many other people all run out of time for lower-priority administrative tasks? To do plugin reviews? To work on some of the international things suggested by Cátia and Zé? Helping with WC and Meetup approvals? We have so many community jobs that don’t get the same level of attention as core contribution, and this would really put a spotlight on some of those areas.
    • It’s a small program, communication has been very easy and low-stress so far, and the women overseeing it are readily accessible.
    • Students get a stipend of around 5k for the summer, so they can work full-time on the projects.

    Less Good Things (well, not less good, but less easy):

    • Unlike GSoC, which is funded by Google so all we have to contribute is our time as mentors and admins, the Gnome program will require us to fundraise in order to cover costs. We need to cover at least one intern, and from there it seems to depend on how the general fundraising goes. Basically thinking now’s the time to start a fundraising effort aimed squarely at growing contributor diversity, to cover Gnome program, trainings, etc.
    • We don’t have a list from a previous year of undone things that we can swipe. Well, we do and we don’t. Code projects can be swiped from there, but we need to come up with a list of mentors and project ideas for the non-code stuff tout de suite. Will try to get some people together at WC Miami to help with this also, but comments on this post from anyone with a project idea and/or willing to be a potential mentor for the summer would be great.

    Anyway, on Monday we’ll know about GSoC, so we can make an announcement about both programs together. Will also be announcing some plans for WordPress’s 10th anniversary early this coming week.

     

    • Siobhan 3:47 pm on April 6, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Really exciting news! I’m sure I’ll be one of many applicants to the Gnome Outreach Program. :)

    • Mimoza 4:46 pm on April 6, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      I’m interested about this project. I’d like to know what’s the process of application and where I can apply?

    • karmatosed 3:38 pm on April 10, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      I’d love to help with the Gnome Outreach Program in whatever way I can.

    • Cátia Kitahara 3:12 am on April 11, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Very happy to hear that! :) What do you think of starting with a survey with girls who uses WordPress? We could make an effort to translate it into as many languages as possible so we can have data from non-English speakers too. If we know better who are these girls and what they want to learn maybe we can come up with some good ideas?
      I’m also curious about the 10th anniversary!

    • Ony A 1:05 pm on April 27, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      How do I find a mentor in the design category.. I’m not having much luck with the IRC, or perhaps I’m missing something.

    • Linda G. H. 10:31 pm on April 30, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Hi Jen. I applied on the official website but how do I get confirmation who is assigned as a mentor? I would like to participate in the handbooks project or event management for summer 2013. Thank you.

      • Jen Mylo 6:08 pm on May 1, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        Hi Linda. Mentors will not be assigned until we choose which applications to sponsor for the summer. Today is the application deadline, and we’ll see where we stand as of tomorrow, since we have very limited spots for the OPW program (as we have to raise the money for it). I’m not sure what the process is for notifications as it’s our first time with OPW, but I’m pretty sure everyone gets emailed. At the very least, we’ll make sure everyone who applied for WordPress gets an email.

  • Jen Mylo 11:04 pm on February 21, 2013 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags: wordpress.org site,   

    An early version of http://learn.wordpress.org/ is live, with a pre-registration form for the 1st women’s workshop. Props to Mel Choyce for design, George Stephanis for CSS, and Otto for themifying it.

     

    • Jerry Bates (JerrySarcastic) 11:52 pm on February 21, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Looks great; glad to see this site moving forward! :)

    • John Saddington 11:15 am on February 22, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      sweet!

    • John Saddington 12:23 pm on February 22, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Also….. sorry to be a lameface, but i can’t find the permalinks directly (titles aren’t linked) on blog posts. I had to “guess” to get to the “hello world” post: http://learn.wordpress.org/2010/07/08/hello-world/

      • Jen Mylo 3:11 pm on February 22, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        I repeat: early version. The theme isn’t even finished, so no need to post stuff like this, we are still working on it. The sole reason it’s up at all is to have a link that the DC meetup could give out for registration. This site has not been publicly announced, and will not be until it is ready. Please don’t post about it on wpdaily until we officially announce it for this reason.

      • Jen Mylo 3:15 pm on February 22, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        We should probably have a talk about when it’s cool to publicize stuff that we are only sharing internally to the contributor teams. We had this talk once upon a time with wptavern, then wpcandy, and I think it’s your turn. If you publish things that we have not made “public” (vs published to contributors only), then we will get pulled off course by all the subsequent public comments, emails, tweets, etc about the thing we weren’t even ready to share with the public yet. When we stop sharing with the contributor community to keep other sites from announcing things before we do, it harms the collaborative process, so it’s much better for us to keep using the make network for contributors, and try to get the community news sites to respect the difference between broad public announcements and working projects.

  • Jen Mylo 10:26 pm on February 13, 2013 Permalink | Log in to leave a Comment
    Tags:   

    Will need two volunteers to be the admins for GSoC, overseeing our application, mentor wrangling, and if we get selected, student wrangling. Good project management skills required, familiarity with core contributors a plus.

     

    • Marko Heijnen 10:29 pm on February 13, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Any idea how much time per week this will cost? I still would like to do it at least once but I have no idea what the load would be.

      • Jen Mylo 5:09 pm on February 22, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        I think you mean you would like to be a mentor, not that you’d want to be the program administrator (project management). Mentoring takes anywhere from a couple hours a week to 10 or more, depending on how involved you are/the complexity of the student project you agree to mentor. Best way to gauge it would be to talk to some previous mentors.

    • nofearinc 11:04 pm on February 13, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      +1 to Marko’s questions

    • Akhilesh Sabharwal 2:13 am on February 14, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      +1 to Marko’s question

    • David 3:45 pm on February 14, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Count me as interested. I’m not a regular Make contributor, but I am a good project manager.

      • nofearinc 6:52 pm on February 14, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        On that matter, I have mentored several young students from my class in 2010 on Java-related projects, few of them were awarded by Google.

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