OpenHatch newsletter, March 2014
Welcome to OpenHatch newsletter number 20.
French translation of the OpenHatch In-Person Event Handbook.
SpinachCon Zero == A Huge Success! for free software user testing hackathon:
We also have some exciting plans for the future. As you may have guessed by where this blog’s been posted, OpenHatch is going to be the official organizational home for SpinachCon going forward. Once we’ve sorted through the data and suggestions we gathered at the first event, we’ll improve the tests and materials so they can be shared and used at other events. OpenHatch has long been interested in finding more ways for non-technical contributors to participate in the creation of free software, so this is a great fit! OpenHatch already hosts the very popular Open Source Comes to Campus events at schools around the country. We often get asked, “What can we do next?” and hosting a SpinachCon will soon be one of the answers we can give.
Two Open Source Comes to Campus events this month, at UMass-Amherst and City College of San Francisco. Blog posts coming soon. Coming up in April: George Mason University (April 19th), Northeastern Illinois University (April 26th) and MIT (April 26th and 27th). Contact us if you want to get involved!
List of Summer Internships for Open Source Enthusiasts. Still time to apply for several!
How we prepared an open source sprint that converted friends into new contributors. Scroll to the bottom for a bonus ASCII patch-review flow chart.
Two new wiki pages: Contributing to Python and Triaging Python tickets. (“Python has 800 patches stalling on a review. Want to help me review them? Great way to start contributing.“)
New projects in the OpenHatch volunteer opportunity finder
- ProteanOS is a fully-free operating system distribution of binary packages, configurable for a wide variety of embedded systems. It invites newcomers to help with making and updating software packages, developing distribution tools, drafting technical documentation, and more.
OpenHatchy but not OpenHatch things around the web
Outreach Program for Women wins the Free Software Foundation’s Award for Projects of Social Benefit!
Selena Deckelmann’s slides and speaker notes on What Beginners Teach Us.
RIT launches first minor in free and open source software and free culture.
Introduction to Linux MOOC starting 3rd quarter 2014.
Open Sourcing Feminism: The Challenge of Collective Intelligence in 2014 by Vivien Maidaborn, one of two female founders of Loomio.
Ask HN: Best OSS Projects for Beginning Contributors
Knight News Challenge entry from Sandra Ordenez: Increasing Diversity in Open Source for a Better Internet.
Wikimedia series on Seeing through the eyes of new technical contributors.
Lukas Blakk, Project Ascend Kickoff:
I had an idea to create an open source version and specifically target participants who come from underemployed, LGBTQ, Latin@, and African American populations – aka: people who are terribly underrepresented in tech but also very much more so in Open Source. The idea was that instead of people paying to come learn to become developers in the capitalist, Startup-focused, feeding-frenzy the Silicon Valley promotes we could instead seed other towns, other communities with open source and create an in-depth technical contribution training program that more mirrored the experience I had with Dave Humphrey at Seneca College.
Opensource.com: Academic computer science education group puts focus on open source.
Also check out links submitted to /r/openhatch, and add your finds!
Get involved
You can help write this newsletter! The April newsletter in progress (preview). Join our publicity list or hop on #openhatch with suggestions and questions.
Thanks to Britta Gustafson and Shauna Gordon-McKeon for contributing to this edition!