My personal approach has been to work with pragmatic career-focused women (like myself) because it helps to have some singularity of motivation. I can't solve all of the diversity in tech issues, but I contribute in my own way by running the SF Women's JUG and partnering with organizations such as Women who code. So from that perspective, here are my 2 cents fwiw: 1. Career-development angle: personally I would start with organizations such as Hackbright whose primary goal is to train and put women in the workforce. As I feel is pretty established among engineering managers and that Jessica McKellar emphasizes (https://youtu.be/IXnNgLmd6BM), having open source contributions on your resume definitely helps during the interview process. I'm sure that this is part of the ASF recruiting language, but I think it would help to actively inject that into partnership activities with organizations such as Hackbright. I specifically mention Hackbright as well because one of our VPs at my last job mentioned that among all of the code schools hires, he's been most impressed by the quality of Hackbright graduates (who are women if you didn't know). They've hired 7 Hackbright women to date with great results.
I reached out to my Hackbright contacts and they've said that they don't have an open source program in place, but they are pursuing it and would love to consider partnerships with the ASF. I'd be happy to connect you. Women who code is also committed to getting women jobs in engineering, but their meetups tend to have a lot of beginners from my own experience (I've attended and hosted many). It may be more difficult to inject the "contribute" message through their meetups, but they are helpful to spread the word through their NL. Also, in the very least, if there isn't one already, there should at least be one talk on making contributions at their new annual conference. If you don't hear back from them, I'm happy to connect you again. 2. Focused sprints? PyCon and the Python community in general has better diversity numbers from what I've seen. I feel that they do a pretty good job at making the sprints at the event fun and inviting (https://youtu.be/hOtKgFaFcz0) for many. The next one is coming up (https://us.pycon.org/2016/community/sprints/) so if any of you are there, it may be worth checking out. They always do an intro to sprints session (which you can see in the above Jessica McKellar video). Since you're already talking with PyLadies, you can get more details on how they and DjangoGirls are involved in recruitment for that. WWC meetups and Railsbridge immediately introduce their women to Git and GitHub, but from what I know they are dealing with beginner coders so they don't talk about contributing to Ruby or Rails. 3. Featured projects and mentorship I often feel overwhelmed by the myriad of projects that get put forth and then I'm told "pick one and start contributing!" Personally, if you did some type of partnered session with Hackbright students or at a contribution-specific WWC Meetup, I would see value in doing a weekend sprint where you select a couple of key projects to walk people through the steps to contribute. One of Hackbright's strengths is their mentoring structure that continues after graduation. Perhaps having some ASF project owners to volunteer as mentors specifically to walk a group of new students through a series of sprints would be one way to go. 4. Code of Conduct and diversity ownership I'm glad that this thread is here because as Sarah Sharp emphasizes (https://youtu.be/ZCvK_7FagGE) diversity is everyone's responsibility and so often the minority is tasked with unpaid/after-hours work to represent a company's diversity or even build its diversity program. The topic came up at this year's women in leadership conference (http://www.wilconference.org) in a very disturbing way as well. We heard a good number of stories of women (already getting paid less than their male counterparts) being asked to put in extra unpaid time to go to some recruiting event to be the (female or female of color) face of the company. It's important to understand this as a shared responsibility. Finally, since I mention Sarah Sharp, let's hope that after all of this recruitment that we don't have the same debacle that happened with her, Linus, and other foul-mouthed community members (http://m.slashdot.org/story/188877). At least from what I've heard from other Linux community members, her work is greatly respected and it seems a loss to the technology that she is no longer contributing. Similarly, Rod Johnson made remarks to the Scala community a few years ago that it will have challenges growing healthily if they continue their trend of showing disrespect in the forums and strongly criticizing people who are just getting started with Scala (https://youtu.be/DBu6zmrZ_50). Members who receive a great deal of generosity during their growth are likely to pay it forward. Hope this helps! Best, Tamao Nakahara @mewzherder devrelcon.com On May 23, 2016, at 9:27 AM, Sharan Foga <sharan.f...@gmail.com> wrote: > Thanks Alex. It all helps :-) > > Thanks > Sharan >> On 23 May 2016 18:08, "Alex Harui" <aha...@adobe.com> wrote: >> >> Also, not specific to software: http://leanin.org >> >> HTH, >> -Alex >> >>> On 5/23/16, 6:36 AM, "Patricia Shanahan" <p...@acm.org> wrote: >>> >>> Systers, http://anitaborg.org/get-involved/systers/ >>> >>> More generally, the Wikipedia article on "Women in Computing", >>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing, has some possible >>> resources. >>> >>>> On 5/23/2016 3:45 AM, Sharan Foga wrote: >>>> Hi All >>>> >>>> Just a quick update. I've sent out an email to the following groups so >>>> far: >>>> >>>> - Pyladies >>>> - Phpladies >>>> - Women Who Code >>>> - Girls Who Code >>>> - Black Girls Code >>>> >>>> I'll post any feedback I get. Also if anyone thinks of any other groups >>>> they'd like me to contact then please let me know. >>>> >>>> Thanks >>>> Sharan >>>> >>>>> On 20/05/16 14:26, Sharan Foga wrote: >>>>> Thanks very much to everyone for their feedback and support. >>>>> >>>>> Rich - I will contact these groups to see what feedback and advice >>>>> they can give. >>>>> >>>>> Thanks >>>>> Sharan >>>>> >>>>>> On 20/05/16 14:05, Rich Bowen wrote: >>>>>> I would suggest that the most constructive thing we could do would be >>>>>> to >>>>>> reach out to pyladies and phpwomen and other similar organizations >>>>>> and ask >>>>>> for recommendations and assistance in setting up a similar entity >>>>>> here. >>>>>>> On May 19, 2016 11:18, "Sharan Foga" <sharan.f...@gmail.com> wrote: >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Hi All >>>>>>> >>>>>>> I'm interested in finding out how we could encourage more women to >>>>>>> participate on Apache projects. It's a discussion topic that came up >>>>>>> last >>>>>>> week while I was at Apachecon. My understanding is that we don't >>>>>>> have any >>>>>>> current strategies in place so I think it could be good to look at >>>>>>> gathering some ideas about how to tackle the problem and also hear >>>>>>> about >>>>>>> any lessons learned from any previous or similar strategies. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> What do people think? >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Thanks >>>>>>> Sharan >> >>
