19 posts on other publications
Posts from the OpenHatch blog (2013–2015), covering Open Source Comes to Campus, community building, and open source outreach. Originally at blog.openhatch.org.
Back in February 2013, I ran my first Open Source Comes to Campus event. It was a snowy day with a small but enthusiastic turnout. At one point during the workshop at the end of the day, a student I was pairing with said something which has stuck with me ever since: "Today has been very empowering for me regarding my computer and the ways I can manipulate it."
A year or so ago I wrote the In Person Event Handbook to help people prepare their projects for in-person events like workshops, hackathons, and sprints. With the PyCon 2015 sprints coming up, I thought I'd take a moment to write up the highlights. Want to make your project welcoming to newcomers? Read on!
A year ago I wrote a post titled 'Goals for Open Source Comes to Campus in 2014'. This is the first of the promised posts -- let's review how well we met our goals, to help us better reach our goals for next year!
## (17 of them!) Last fall, we ran seventeen events at campuses around the country, reaching hundreds of students and making abundant contributions and connections. Here's a whirlwind tour of our semester:
Would you like to present at an open source conference, but aren't sure what to talk about, or feeling shy? A poster can be a great way to get started. Not only are they less nerve-wracking to present, they're often more likely to be accepted than talk proposals. Yesterday evening, October 1st, we held a meetup on our IRC channel to brainstorm poster ideas for PyCon 2015.
I spent weeks going back and forth with Hanne Paine, a student and open source enthusiast at SUNY Stony Brook. For every date she suggested, we already had an event planned. Finally, we decided to wait until the fall to hold a full workshop. I felt badly, though. I knew I'd be passing through New York City in April, right around the dates she'd been pushing for. "How about I just stop by for a couple hours on a week night and do a short intro presentation?"
It's the heart of internship application season, and we want to spread the word about opportunities to contribute to open source this summer. The following list of internships are all funded, open to (though not always limited to) students, and taking place over the summer.
On Tuesday night we had our first official setup sprint -- an IRC get together where OpenHatch volunteers test an open source project's installation and contribution process and documentation. Our inaugural project was Oppia, a tool which helps non-technical users create interactive educational activities online. Three volunteers (Carol Willing, Anurag, and myself) spent two and a half hours working with Oppia maintainer Sean Lip testing and improving documentation. The quick, casual feedback process meant we made a bunch of changes, including restructuring the documentation to be easier to navigate, adding explanations (and/or links to tutorials/guides) where documentation was too terse, and changing the output of the testing suite to be more understandable. We also managed to create the project's 100th issue.
At OpenHatch we have big dreams. One of them? Keeping better track of our dreams.
The list of talks, tutorials and posters accepted to PyCon 2014 was announced yesterday. Excitedly, we took to Twitter to congratulate the many OpenHatch community members who had their proposals accepted -- only to realize there's no way they'd all fit in a single tweet! We decided to write a blog post instead.
Today, we're releasing a handbook to help open source projects prepare themselves for events.
Contributing to existing open source projects isn't just about improving those projects -- it's a chance for contributors to grow, too. When we run Open Source Comes to Campus events, we love seeing students exposed to their first projects that aren't throwaway coding exercises. Working on open source projects can teach anyone a lot about software engineering and collaboration. Here's some of what *we've* learned:
A little less than a year ago, I was asked to direct OpenHatch's Open Source Comes to Campus event series. Open Source Comes to Campus is a workshop designed to introduce college students to open source, to teach them how to use tools like version control and issue trackers, and to guide them through making their first contributions. When I joined, OpenHatch was averaging two events a year. I was asked, hopefully, if I could run seven events in 2013.
*At each Open Source Comes to Campus event, participants ask unique, thought-provoking questions. We decided to write down these questions and answer them more fully on our blog. If you have any additional suggestions or advice, please add them in the comments!*
For Ada Lovelace Day this year, we decided to profile some of the women who have helped us organize and run our Open Source Comes to Campus events. The five women below are just a few of the dozens of amazing hosts and mentors we've had the honor of working with.
!bostonsummer On Saturday, June 22nd we ran our tenth Open Source Comes to Campus event, at Northeastern University. Many thanks to Ali Ukani and the Northeastern University ACM for hosting.
*At each Open Source Comes to Campus event, participants ask unique, thought-provoking questions. We decided to write down these questions and answer them more fully on our blog. If you have any additional suggestions or advice, please add them in the comments! *
On Sunday, April 14th, we ran our ninth Open Source Comes to Campus event, at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Many thanks to Tariq Ahmad, Andy Yee, UMass IEEE and UMass ACM. Check out the photo gallery!
TransparencyCamp is a yearly unconference to celebrate, and work toward, government transparency. It's run by the Sunlight Foundation, and we're honored to be a sponsor! Asheesh Laroia and I will be attending, and Sunlight Foundation has set aside a special area to help open government-oriented open source projects build stronger communities.
