The Ada Initiative is pleased to welcome Automattic as the second Gold sponsor of AdaCamp San Francisco, our conference dedicated to increasing women’s participation in open technology and culture.
Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, Akismet, Gravatar, VaultPress, Jetpack, Polldaddy, and more, is sponsoring AdaCamp San Francisco – and they’re hiring! Their sponsorship is part of a larger commitment to improve women’s participation in open technology. On behalf of women in open technology and culture, we thank Automattic for their generous support.
Most women who attend AdaCamp “lean in” to their careers and community work after AdaCamp. In our post-conference survey, 92% of survey respondents said AdaCamp increased their commitment to open technology and culture.
AdaCamp also increases women’s professional connections: 100% of survey respondents said AdaCamp increased their network in open tech/culture. Several AdaCamp attendees landed new jobs in open tech/culture through the connections they made at AdaCamp, and at least two won prestigious internships with Code for America and the GNOME Outreach Program for Women. One of the benefits of attending AdaCamp is joining the AdaCamp alumni mailing list, which members use to recruit job applicants, advertise events, and share career advice.
AdaCampers learn new skills at AdaCamp as well. Past AdaCamps included tutorials in Wikipedia editing, Python programming, and other open tech/culture topics. The tutorials were so popular that we are expanding them this year, and adding a “hackathon” (for all open tech/culture projects, not just coding).
Sponsorship
Your organization has the opportunity to join Automattic in sponsoring AdaCamp San Francisco, and reach 250 women leaders and future leaders in open technology and culture. Contact us at sponsors@adainitiative.org for more information about becoming a sponsor.
Apply to AdaCamp
Applications are open to attend AdaCamp San Francisco, to be held on Saturday June 8 and Sunday June 9 in San Francisco, California. All women who are interesting in meeting other women in open technology and culture, and learning and sharing about efforts to improve women’s participation in and the community environment of open technology and culture, are invited to apply. An allies track open to attendees of any gender will be held on Saturday June 8.
The Ada Initiative is very pleased to welcome Mozilla as the first Gold sponsor of AdaCamp San Francisco, our conference dedicated to increasing women’s participation in open technology and culture.
Mozilla, best known for the Firefox browser, is a non-profit organization that promotes openness, innovation and participation on the Internet. Mozilla gave travel scholarships to several attendees of our last AdaCamp, and is pleased to come on board as a headline sponsor of AdaCamp SF, supporting and growing women’s participation and leadership across open technology and culture as a whole. We’re thrilled to be one of Mozilla’s many outreach partners and projects.
Most women who attend AdaCamp “lean in” to their careers and community work after AdaCamp. In our post-conference survey, 92% of survey respondents said AdaCamp increased their commitment to open technology and culture.
AdaCamp also increases women’s professional connections: 100% of survey respondents said AdaCamp increased their network in open tech/culture. Several AdaCamp attendees landed new jobs in open tech/culture through the connections they made at AdaCamp, and at least two won prestigious internships with Code for America and the GNOME Outreach Program for Women. One of the benefits of attending AdaCamp is joining the AdaCamp alumni mailing list, which members use to recruit job applicants, advertise events, and share career advice.
AdaCampers learn new skills at AdaCamp as well. Past AdaCamps included tutorials in Wikipedia editing, Python programming, and other open tech/culture topics. The tutorials were so popular that we are expanding them this year, and adding a “hackathon” (for all open tech/culture projects, not just coding).
Sponsorship
Your organization has the opportunity to join Mozilla in sponsoring AdaCamp San Francisco, and reach 250 women leaders and future leaders in open technology and culture. Contact us at sponsors@adainitiative.org for more information about becoming a sponsor.
Apply to AdaCamp
Applications are open to attend AdaCamp San Francisco, to be held on Saturday June 8 and Sunday June 9 in San Francisco, California. All women who are interesting in meeting other women in open technology and culture, and learning and sharing about efforts to improve women’s participation in and the community environment of open technology and culture, are invited to apply. An allies track open to attendees of any gender will be held on Saturday June 8.
As part of our preparations for AdaCamp San Francisco, our unconference for women and allies in open technology and culture, we’re very pleased to welcome two new AdaCamp San Francisco sponsors: Intel and GitHub. Both sponsors are returning after sponsoring AdaCamp DC in 2012 and we thank them for renewing their support.
Intel, long-time technology leader, was founded in 1968 to build semiconductor memory products, and introduced the world’s first microprocessor in 1971. Intel joins us as our fourth silver sponsor of AdaCamp San Francisco.
Code-sharing site GitHub, founded in 2008, is supporting an AdaCamp in their home town of San Francisco, as our second bronze sponsor. We’re very excited to be hosting our third AdaCamp in the Bay Area and to have the support of local companies like GitHub.
About AdaCamp
Applications are now open to attend AdaCamp San Francisco, to be held on Saturday June 8 and Sunday June 9 in San Francisco, California. All women who are interesting in meeting other women in open technology and culture, and learning and sharing about efforts to improve women’s participation in and the community environment of open technology and culture, are invited to apply. An allies track open to attendees of any gender will be held on Saturday June 8.
Organizations who would like more information about sponsoring AdaCamp San Francisco, and reaching 250 women leaders and future leaders in open technology and culture, can contact us at sponsors@adainitiative.org for more information.
This year, journalling/blogging service Dreamwidth — whose co-founder Denise Paolucci is a member of the Ada Initiative’s board of directors — again donated a percentage of their December revenues to the Ada Initiative. We’re so grateful to Denise and her co-founder Mark Smith for their support of women in open technology and culture.
Mark talked with us about how Dreamwidth gives to charity and why they specifically support the Ada Initiative.
Dreamwidth co-founder Mark Smith
Tell us about yourself and your work at Dreamwidth.
Mark: I’m one of the two founders of Dreamwidth Studios. I generally like to paint myself as the technical half, although that’s not completely accurate as Denise helps with the coding and I lend a hand with business things sometimes. :-)
How does Dreamwidth organize its charitable giving?
Mark: December is our best month for us in terms of revenue, so a while back we decided that we would take 10% of the month’s revenue and donate it. Recently, we’ve started dividing up the 10% and giving half to a charity of our choice (the Ada Initiative this year) and half split among a few charities based on user voting.
Why at this point in your development as a small business have you decided to donate to charitable organizations?
Mark: Because the future matters, and I want Dreamwidth to be a part of supporting a better one. It’s as simple as that for me.
I also believe that the habit of giving really matters and that the aggregate effect of millions of small businesses is important. To me, small is not an excuse for not giving and I stand by that by making sure Dreamwidth gives.
Which of the Ada Initiative’s projects are the most important to you?
Mark: I think the conference harassment policy program has been fantastic and directly relevant to my day to day life. It is important to me that all people — of all identities, gender or otherwise — can attend industry conferences without harassment and that when it does happen (because it will) there is a policy and process for dealing with it.
Getting people to change and acknowledge the problem is a really hard thing to do, and I feel that the Ada Initiative has been doing very well on that. They have been working tirelessly to make the entire industry a better, stronger one — and that is a goal worth supporting.
One reason we founded the Ada Initiative was a belief that the majority of people in the open source community wanted more women involved in open source, but didn’t know how to make their voices heard. The JSConf donation system is one way to give that often invisible majority a voice. In this case, 85% of the people who attend JSConf US were able to say that they would rather give their $10 to a non-profit supporting women in open tech/culture than uncheck a box and keep it for themselves. Without the creativity and support of the JSConf US organizers, we might never have known that 85% of the people at this conference supported women in open tech/culture at this level.
Conferences as agents of social change
Almost imperceptibly, open tech/culture conferences have gradually become agents of social change. Conference organizers and participants alike have realized this simple truth: Either we are supporting the status quo by doing things the “normal” way, or we’re trying to change it by consciously making better decisions. No matter which way we go, we’re still making a choice.
Many people joined the open tech/culture movement to make the world a better place. So it’s no surprise that many open tech/culture conferences are making their choices in favor of social justice: serving environmentally responsible food, cutting down on wasteful schwag, reducing unconscious bias in favor of white male participants, and now partnering with and donating to charitable organizations that support the community’s goals. JSConf US, and the Javascript community in general, are at the forefront of this change in the way open tech/culture conferences interact with their communities and the world as a whole.
A mandate for diversity and equality in the Javascript community
If 85% of JSConf US attendees support women in open tech/culture, that’s a strong argument for a similar level of support in the Javascript community as a whole. If you’re part of this community, you may have thought about speaking up in favor of including women or increasing diversity in other ways but kept quiet because you thought you were in the minority. If that’s the case, this is your signal, both to speak up in the future, and to support people who speak up as well. Consider this an encouragement to reply with a “+1″ to a statement you agree with, or a “I disagree entirely,” to an opinion that doesn’t reflect your view of the community. Learn more about how to support women in your community as an ally through the Allies Workshop.
More about the JSConf family of conferences, in the words of the JSConf organizers:
JSConf is a unique conference organization, because we aren’t really a conference organization at all. We are a very loose federation of developers who share the same general idea about how a technical conference should be held. We don’t believe that one model or process fits all communities, in fact we are big advocates of locally run events driven by passionate individuals dedicated to the community. We make events that aren’t from the standard conference playbook because we believe you (attendees, speakers, and sponsors) deserve more than that. We focus on two things, pushing the boundaries of what is thought to be conceivable with JS and providing exceptional human social activities that encourage community and friendship building. That sets the general tone for each of our events and from there, local individuals from each region drive the conference to its own incredible level of excellence. Our mission is to make the technology community better, more diverse, and more human; in short, we just want to make things better. JSConf does not focus on what is popular or cool now, but on topics that define and revolutionize the following year of technology. We have been the launching point for some of the most revolutionary products, services, and technologies on the web. We have also been the inspiration point and support base for a wide range of conferences beyond the “JSConf” name, but still retain the very essence of what makes JSConf special.
The Ada Initiative thanks the JSConf organizers again for making this generous donation possible, and for showing the depth of support for women in open tech/culture in the Javascript community!
Why is December the biggest month of the year for giving to charities? No matter how many times it plays on TV, “A Christmas Carol” can’t explain everything. Donations to some charities are tax-exempt in the U.S., but only the most Scrooge-like folks donate just because their accountant recommended it. ‘Tis the season – but why?
We decided to interview two Ada Initiative advisors about end-of-year giving and how they decide which charities to support year-round. Lukas Blakk is a release engineer for a popular open source company, and Kellie Brownell is a professional fundraiser for a prominent open technology non-profit.
But first, here are seven of our favorite open tech/culture and/or pro-women charities (yes, we included ourselves – we’re biased).
Black Girls Code: Giving girls and young women of color the opportunity to learn programming and STEM skills
Hollaback: Fighting street harassment around the world
Python Software Foundation: Supporting the growth and diversity of the Python open source community (and leading the way on welcoming women)
Wikimedia Foundation: Bringing the sum of human knowledge to the world for free – including women’s knowledge
Scarleteen: Creating sex-positive online sex education for teenagers
Creative Commons: Enabling the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge
Ada Initiative: Supporting women in open technology and culture (that’s us!)
Now to our interview with Kellie and Lukas:
Q: What’s the general idea of end-of-year giving? Why do people do it?
Kellie: According to nonprofits that took part in a survey by Charity Navigator, they receive on average over 40% of contributions between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve. Non-profits tend to go all out during this time. We’ll send more appeals to more people in one month than we will have during the rest of the year. To a certain extent non-profits condition all of us to give during the holiday season.
Here are some of the reasons why people prefer to give now:
My family makes our philanthropic decisions when we are all together during the holidays
I love to procrastinate and December 31 is the final deadline for making tax deductible donations for the year
I receive my bonus in December
It’s a better time for me to assess my financial situation
I think about what I can do to make the world a better place around the end of the year
Combined, these reasons make year end giving a pretty important time for the non-profit sector. As a fundraiser, it’s obviously my favorite time of the year because I get to meet and thank some people with great generosity of spirit and hope for our success defending the rights of technology users.
Q: What’s your strategy for donating to organizations?
Lukas: I have a few monthly giving amounts set up for organizations because I know that having a steady, reliable source of income makes a big difference for small organizations trying to do big things. These are organizations whose missions I feel closest to. Then I also donate to some organizations at one-offs like yearly fundraisers. Finally there are several annual memberships that I renew every year.
Q: What are some ways to increase the impact of the money you donate?
Kellie: This is a really important question for anyone who gives to the non-profit sector. It has one common answer and one uncommon answer. More often than not you would probably be told to support one out of two charities that more efficiently fulfills its mission. For example, if you want to support animal shelters, your donation will have a greater impact in the hands of a shelter that places more kittens in homes per dollar spent. That’s the common answer and companies like Guidestar and Charity Navigator are there to help you assess things like financial management (which is different than mission fulfillment, but in the absence of better metrics, many donors use financial management as a proxy).
Sumana Harihareswara, Ada Initiative matching donor (Tobias Schumann CC BY-SA)
But talking about your donation will increase the community of support for a cause you value. I have thought back many times to the extraordinary gift Sumana Harihareswara and Leonard Richardson gave the Ada Initative in October. Their commitment to a future in which women are supported and thrive in open source communities inspired a great deal of generosity in other people. Sumana and Leonard’s pledge to match up to $10,000 was fulfilled within 24 hours. If supporting a good cause adds meaning to your life or brings you joy in any way, share that with people who you think might also care. It can be a tweet, it can be a blog, it can be a conversation over coffee. One of the most powerful forces I see at play in civic society is someone simply saying: I believe in this and have staked by time or money to see it happen, won’t you join me?
Q: What do you get out of donating to these organizations?
Lukas: Many things. In the organizations I donate monthly to, I just am glad to know they exist and continue to do the hard work that I alone cannot put the appropriate focus on doing. The amplified impact of those organizations isn’t necessarily something I benefit from in my daily life but I never have doubts that the areas they touch are greatly impacted and I love being a silent patron to those shifts and improvements in our society. For one-off fundraising I will sometimes get art or other physical items that have been donated to the org, so it’s more tangible benefit in terms of having something to ‘show’ for my contribution. Then with yearly memberships to organizations I get member privileges as well as knowing I’ve helped support an organization in a sustainable, dependable way. I enjoy getting membership benefits at these places – like discounted admissions, member-only events, and feeling like I’m part of the organization’s fiber.
Following the success of last year’s pledge, journalling/blogging service Dreamwidth is again donating a percentage of December revenues to the Ada Initiative.
Dreamwidth’s code-base is open source and they are well-known for their successful approach to a friendly and diverse contributor community, as highlighted by Alex “Skud” Bayley in her 2009 OSCON keynote. In addition, Dreamwidth co-founder Denise Paolucci is a member of the Ada Initiative’s board of directors.
Last year, we donated 10% of our proceeds for the month of December to the Ada Initiative, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the experiences of women in open technology and culture… This year, we’re bringing back the December charitable giving, with a twist:
5% of our gross income for the month of December will once again be donated to the Ada Initiative.
5% of our gross income for the month of December will be donated to several other nonprofits doing awesome work.
Thank you to Denise, Mark, and the Dreamwidth community for their second year of support for the Ada Initiative.
We’re delighted to share the support of JSConf US 2013, who have launched the #15forAda appeal for their attendees to each donate $10 to the Ada Initiative, to which the conference will add a further $5 donation. JSConf organizers write:
We, the entire JSConf organizer family, care deeply about the tech community at large. From the start, we have had a strong mission component to our US events. We want to be an example for how conferences can be both fun and impactful. In 2010, JSConf US raised and donated over $3,000 to gender, racial, and financial diversity outreach programs in the computing sciences with our JSConf Diversity In Computing Drive. In 2012, we helped raise and donate over $25,000 to Feeding America as part of the TeamJS initiative. We have a great track record for not just putting on amazing conferences, but also for doing it in a fashion that improves the world in which we live. This is something that we are filled with pride about and look forward to every year.
For 2013, we want to continue our trend by bringing awareness and donations to the amazing Ada Initiative, which has the mission of supporting women in open technology and culture, something we fully support and believe in.
… We contacted the Ada Initiative and committed to conducting a sponsorship drive as part of our ticket purchase process. This year when you purchase your ticket(s) (regardless of level), there will be a checkbox that is already checked for you. This will add $10 USD to your ticket price and that $10 will be donated to the Ada Initiative as one lump sum from JSConf. Now you might be asking yourself, but why is the title “15 for Ada Campaign”? Well, we would be remiss if we asked you to help out with $10 and were not willing to assist as well, so for every donation made we will be matching $5 from the JSConf US budget to bring the total donation up to $15.
JSConf US 2013 will be held from May 29–31 2013 in Amelia Island, Florida. Registration for the conference will open shortly. The Ada Initiative is glad our work has contributed to the JSConf and JavaScript communities, and thank JSConf US and its attendees for their support!
Thank you to our generous donors and sponsors, who are helping with the Ada Initiative’s work every day! Make a difference for women in open tech and culture: support us by making a donation or becoming a sponsor today!
Launched: conference booklet template designed to welcome women
Organizing a conference is a lot of work, and one of the least pleasant tasks is writing the program booklet. The Ada Initiative wrote the best program booklet we knew how for AdaCamp DC, with lots of help from the Geek Feminism Wiki, and in October we released it under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike license, making it into a reusable template including all the information you’ll need for your conference. You are welcome to reuse it for your conference!
Anti-harassment: why starting with conferences makes sense
We at the Ada Initiative know that the abysmal numbers of women in open technology and culture (2% of open source software, 9% in Wikipedia) are not caused by harassment of women at conferences alone. Women are staying out of open technology and culture for hundreds of reasons, some more obvious than others.
Find out what BruCON, the first security conference to accept our challenge to adopt an anti-harassment policy, feels about the effect on their conference culture: “Having a policy didn’t change the overall atmosphere of the conference AT ALL! If anything, I would say that it helped to create awareness of the issue and allowed everybody to discuss it.”
What do you do when there’s a harassment report at your conference?
Unfortunately, having an anti-harassment policy does not mean harassment won’t occur at your event! The Ada Initiative has helped several conferences respond to harassment reports at their event, and we’ve drawn our experiences together into a wiki page: Responding to harassment reports. Our tips include ways to collect reports, respond quickly, and communicate effectively with your community afterwards, increasing the safety of everyone at your event. Leading open source conference PyCon US has already adopted response guidelines based on our work.
In addition, find out why you should have a public anti-harassment policy rather than a secret one: people use a published policy to judge whether to attend a conference, whether to report harassment, whether to engage in harassing behavior themselves, and whether they can safely challenge harassing behavior. For conference organizers, a published policy is a tool to improve their conferences’ image, increase attendance, reduce the chance of harassment, and increase the likelihood they will hear about harassment.
Courtney: Assuming that [conference organizers are] actually doing it to add value to the industry/community/etc, then I think on some level they know [speaker diversity is] necessary work. Otherwise, you end up with a narrower and narrower slice on stage (and in the audience) of who your community really is, and that way is death.
Successful Ada’s Angels campaign
Our generous donors in September and October helped make our vision — a world in which women are equal and welcome participants in open source software, open data, and open culture — a reality. Thanks to you, there will be more women writing free software, more women editing Wikipedia, more women Internet infrastructure and more women shaping the future of global society.
If you were unable to give in this drive, the Ada Initiative still needs your support to advocate for women in open technology and culture and we welcome your crucial donations year-round!
Ada Lovelace Day, October 16
Ada Lovelace Day is a project launched by Suw Charman-Anderson in 2009, to combat women’s invisibility by highlighting heroines in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Ada Lovelace Day is independent of the Ada Initiative, but both are named for Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace and the world’s first computer programmer, and our missions are complementary.
This year the Ada Initiative held an Ada Lovelace Day party in San Francisco for Ada Lovelace Day participants and our supporters, jointly hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. Thank you for joining us!
Many new sponsors joined us in our mission to support women in open technology and culture as part of the Ada’s Angels donation campaign! We’d especially like to welcome our first individual donors who have become Bronze sponsors, Sumana Harihareswara and Leonard Richardson, who contributed a $10,000 matching donation to the Ada’s Angel campaign!
Other new sponsors generously supporting us in October were:
Microsoft‘s employee gift-matching program, which reached Venture Philanthropist sponsorship status by matching Microsoft employees dollar for dollar;
VirtuStream, an enterprise cloud provider, a new Contributing sponsor;
the Red Hat employee gift matching program, which reached Contributing sponsor status by matching employee donations; and
PalominoDB, a woman-owned database consulting company, also joining us as a Contributing sponsor.
Sponsorship opportunities
Instant sponsorship of the Ada Initiative is available through our Venture Philanthropist sponsorship program for sponsorship amounts between $2000 and $9999 (USD) with a minimum of hassle. Other donations of $500 or more are eligible for Supporting Sponsor recognition.
To all our supporters: thank you so much for your generosity during this fundraising drive. We’re thrilled to announce that we exceeded our fundraising goal of $80,000, which we chose to allow us to work without additional fundraising until at least March 2013, and raised an extra $11,576.
Especial thanks to our matching sponsors: the Linux Foundation; Sumana Harihareswara and Leonard Richardson; and Caroline Simard, whose inspirational examples helped us reach and exceed our goal in the final week of the drive. Thank you to our 99 Ada’s Angels and 66 Ada’s Anchors for their generous contributions.
Ada Initiative founders Mary Gardiner and Valerie Aurora thank you for your support
And a second thank you to all our donors, including donors earlier in 2011 and 2012! The Ada Initiative relies on your donations to continue our work supporting women in open technology and culture.
If you were unable to give in this drive, the Ada Initiative still needs your support to advocate for women in open technology and culture and we welcome your crucial donations year-round!
What now?
We will be emailing all donors shortly to confirm shipping addresses and, where selected, their t-shirt size. And we’ll be getting to work: we have several projects to brainstorm with our board and advisors that we’ll be announcing in December and January. We look forward to sharing our next steps with our generous supporters.
