The Ada Initiative

Panel at OSBridge: Good news for diversity in open source 2012-2013

Ada Initiative — Thu, 23 May 2013 17:28:49 +0000

If you’re like us, sometimes you get discouraged by all the bad news you hear about women in open technology and culture. It’s hard to keep fighting when it feels like you’re not making progress.

Panelist Sumana Harihareswara, (Tobias Schumann CC BY-SA)

That’s why we organized a panel discussion to focus on the good news at the upcoming Open Source Bridge conference in Portland, Oregon. The topic of the panel is “Diversity in open source: What’s changed in 2012 and 2013.” We will use this panel we will tell some of the many success stories in improving diversity in open source software in the last couple of years.

20% women attendees at PyCon US 2013
85% of JSConf attendees donated to women in open tech/culture
Up-and-coming new non-profit Black Girls Code ran several workshops
Conferences with 100% white male speakers are now called out for not trying hard enough to find the best speakers
Mozilla’s adoption of community guidelines that prevent advocacy of discrimination on Planet Mozilla and other Mozilla forums
The rapid growth of PyLadies

We are lucky to have a diverse, talented, and funny set of panelists, including:

Panelist Liz Henry

Ashe Dryden, consultant and diversity advocate (and keynote speaker for OSBridge 2013)
Sumana Harihareswara, Engineering Community Manager at Wikimedia Foundation (and keynote speaker for OSBridge 2012)
Lukas Blakk, Build and Release Engineer at Mozilla
Asheesh Laroia, Executive Director of OpenHatch
Liz Henry, Bugmaster at Mozilla

Ada Initiative executive director Valerie Aurora will be moderating.

Can’t be there in person? The session will be recorded and available for free on the OSBridge web site.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.

Ada Initiative reaches 1,000,000 Marie Claire readers

Ada Initiative — Thu, 23 May 2013 00:20:54 +0000

An important part of supporting women in open tech/culture is raising awareness of the problems that face them. We’re excited that the Ada Initiative was interviewed for an article in the June 2013 issue of Marie Claire, an international women’s magazine. We reached nearly 1,000,000 new people through the print edition alone.

Alicia Gibb, president Open Source Hardware Foundation

Written by veteran feminist journalist Alissa Quart, “When Geeks Attack” focuses on harassment of women in technology, rounding up many of the high-profile incidents in recent years as well as some disturbing statistics. Several women in open tech/culture were interviewed for this article, including Valerie Aurora, Ada Initiative Executive Director, Alicia Gibb, president of the Open Source Hardware Foundation and Ada Initiative advisor, and Valerie Bubb Fenwick, an open source developer, among many other women.

By featuring so many different women in open technology and culture, this article accomplishes two important goals. First, it sends the message that harassment of women in these fields is a major cause of women leaving them – or never joining in the first place. Second, it gives Marie Claire readers several different female role models for women in technology. For many women, the opportunity to make the world a better place while also being able to support themselves and their families is a powerful draw towards careers in open tech/culture, as opposed to technology in general. Women deserve equal access to all careers regardless of their monetary rewards: computer programming, construction work, working as an executive, serving in the military, playing professional sports, or driving a bus.

We were thrilled to work with the author, Alissa Quart, because of her long history of articles and books on feminism and free culture, such as What Does Free Culture Cost? and The Age of Hipster Sexism. Her latest book, Republic of Outsiders: The Power of Amateurs, Dreamers and Rebels, focuses on “idiosyncratic individuals” who approach social justice activism in creative ways, including transgender activists, advocates for neurodiversity, and animal rights activists.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.

New Relic sponsors AdaCamp San Francisco

Ada Initiative — Wed, 22 May 2013 05:22:47 +0000

The Ada Initiative is pleased to welcome New Relic as the newest sponsor of AdaCamp San Francisco, our conference dedicated to increasing women’s participation in open technology and culture. New Relic is the third AdaCamp supporting sponsor.

New Relic makes tools that allow developers of web and mobile apps to monitor and analyze the performance of their applications, all the way from user experience, through servers, and down to the line of application code. New Relic’s monitoring tools and platform support Ruby, PHP, .Net, Java, Python, iOS, and Android apps. New Relic has offices in Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle, and they are hiring! See New Relic’s list of job openings to learn more.

On behalf of women in open technology and culture, we thank New Relic for their generous support.

Why AdaCamp?

Women in open tech/culture

Why is AdaCamp so important to women in open technology and culture? Because AdaCamp measurably increases women’s participation in open technology and culture – in an environment that more often pushes women towards the door.

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).

Applications to AdaCamp are now closed.

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.

We thank our gold level sponsors Mozilla, Automattic and Google Site Reliability Engineering; and our silver level sponsors Linux Foundation, Red Hat, Intel, and Puppet Labs; for their support of AdaCamp San Francisco.

Join Robin Hammerman and other Ada Lovelace researchers and fans at Stevens Institute of Technology in October

Guest Contributor — Wed, 08 May 2013 18:09:38 +0000

In January, we shared with you the call for papers for the Celebrating the Achievements and Legacies of Ada Lovelace conference:

CALL FOR PAPERS
Celebrating the Achievements and Legacies of Ada Lovelace
18 October 2013
Stevens Institute of Technology, College of Arts and Letters (Hoboken, New Jersey, USA)

An interdisciplinary conference celebrating the achievements and legacies of the poet Lord Byron’s only known legitimate child, Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace (1815–1852), will take place at Stevens Institute of Technology (Hoboken, New Jersey) on 18 October 2013. This conference will coincide with the week celebrating Ada Lovelace Day, a global event for women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). All aspects of the achievements and legacies of Ada Lovelace will be considered, including but not limited to:

Lovelace as Translator and/or Collaborator

Technology in the Long Nineteenth Century

Women in Computing: Past/Present/Future

Women in STEM- Past/Present/Future

Ada Lovelace and her Circle

Please submit proposals or abstracts of 250-500 words by 14 May 2013 to: Robin Hammerman (rhammerm@stevens.edu).

Submissions are still open, and organiser Robin Hammerman shares more about the conference and her interest in Ada Lovelace:

Q. Tell us a little about yourself.

Robin: I teach Literature and Communications at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. Most of our students major in STEM. To me, it is amazing to see how well our students build on their strengths and face their challenges in humanities courses. We are a relatively small school of only around 6,000 students with a strong spirit of collaboration. Our College of Arts and Letters is an ideal venue for hosting the upcoming Ada conference. We are a warm and welcoming part of the Stevens community, dedicated to mindful exchanges and – in my estimation – a perfect match for the Ada world. My research interests include science fiction, comics and graphic novels, and British Romanticism. I am chiefly a Byronist, so my initial connection to Ada was forged through my exposure to her father’s life and works. Additionally, it has been my honor to serve the Byron Society of America as its Director of Membership and Academic Services since 2007. As you might imagine, we have many Ada fans in our membership!

Q. What motivated you to create a conference about Ada Lovelace?

Robin: The time is definitely right to bring Ada to campus. Stevens was a male-only school until 1971 and now we have a flourishing community of women on campus. We are constantly generating fantastic opportunities for women so that they might thrive here, and it has definitely been working. Within the College of Arts and Letters alone we developed an excellent Gender Studies program, and our new program for Science and Technology Studies – also within CAL – strongly anchors women in STEM. Additionally, in 1982 Stevens became the first major educational institution in the U.S. to implement a personal computer requirement for its students. Back then, a pioneering technology project resulted in the networking of the entire Stevens campus, creating one of the nation’s first Intranets. Clearly, Stevens is well-positioned to host a conference celebrating Ada’s legacies and achievements.

Q. Who should speak at or attend this conference?

Robin: I anticipate an interdisciplinary extravaganza of past/present/future with people of varying interests represented in the audience and the speakers. Really, all are welcome – faculty, students, independent and rogue scholars, enthusiasts…the call for papers is rather open. In addition to topics on women in STEM, the history of computing, etc. we are interested in developing panels on new media. I would really like to hear some work at the conference on Ada’s collaboration with Charles Babbage as well as Ada’s larger circle. She had some very interesting friends, including Charles Dickens. While we are on the subject of literary topics, we are developing a panel on Ada’s iconic status in Steampunk Literature – so you see, there is hardly a limit to what we might include. You don’t have to be a passionate supporter of women in STEM to attend or speak at this conference, but it helps!

Q. What is your favorite Lovelace fact or story?

Robin: To me, the coolest ever Lovelace fact is that NASA named its first computer program after her. As a Byronist, I think that Ada never meeting her father is an interesting part of her story. Nevertheless, this fact seems to say more about her father than it does about her.

Q. What are your plans for next year?

Robin: I am interested in seeing how our Stevens community and beyond will be enriched by the conference proceedings. Next year will provide us with unique opportunities to expand our Ada-inspired knowledge bases. If it seems appropriate, perhaps we might consider developing a publication including papers from the conference. Most of all, this conference will bring together people who might otherwise not have met. From this act of coming together, I anticipate long-term benefits in our collective thinking about what it means to have true, interdisciplinary engagement.

AdaCamp San Francisco applications closing tomorrow (May 6)!

Ada Initiative — Sun, 05 May 2013 20:46:58 +0000

Happy AdaCampers

Tomorrow is the final day for applications to attend AdaCamp San Francisco! If you want to be part of this fun and exciting event for women in open technology and culture (and their supporters), you should apply now. The AdaCamp San Francisco main track will be June 8–9, 2013 (Saturday and Sunday), with the allies track on June 8.

Here’s a few of our success stories:

Netha Hussain ran edit-a-thons to increase women editors and women’s biographies in Malayalam Wikipedia, gave her first three talks, published an article in Forbes Online, and learned how to program
Tamara Manik-Perlman won an internship at Code For America
Stephanie Alarcon first learned about the GNOME Outreach Program for Women at AdaCamp – and then won an OPW internship with the Open Technology Institute

We especially encourage applications from people living in the San Francisco Bay area who could not otherwise afford to travel to AdaCamp. AdaCamp registration fees vary from $0 to $250, depending on financial need, so if you can get to downtown San Francisco, you can afford to attend!

AdaCampers (c) Mairin Duffy 2012

We encourage people of all genders to apply to the expanded allies track at AdaCamp. This is an all-day event on Saturday, June 8th, with the popular Allies Workshop in the morning and unconference sessions in the afternoon, organized by the attendees.

Learn more and apply here. AdaCamp San Francisco will be another amazing event, don’t miss it!

Heroku, O’Reilly and the Python Software Foundation sponsor AdaCamp San Francisco

Ada Initiative — Thu, 02 May 2013 19:27:53 +0000

The Ada Initiative is pleased to welcome Heroku, O’Reilly, and the Python Software Foundation as the newest sponsors of AdaCamp San Francisco, our conference dedicated to increasing women’s participation in open technology and culture.

Heroku is the first AdaCamp supporting sponsor. Heroku is a cloud platform that allows app developers to spend their time on their application code, not managing servers, deployment, ongoing operations, or scaling. They’re presently hiring for roles from marketing to security and support engineering.

O’Reilly is the second AdaCamp supporting sponsor. O’Reilly has been chronicling technology since 1978, and spreads the knowledge of innovators through its books, online services, magazines, research, and conferences.

The Python Software Foundation (PSF) contributed $750 towards travel scholarships for Python community members. (Please note that applications for travel grants closed on April 12, the PSF grant will be awarded to existing applicants.) The PSF manage the open source licensing for Python version 2.1 and later and own and protect the trademarks associated with Python; run the North American PyCon conference annually, support other Python conferences around the world; and fund Python related development with their grants program. In late 2012, the PSF announced that all PSF-supported events needed to implement an anti-harassment policy, making their community more accessible and safe.

On behalf of women in open technology and culture, we thank Heroku, O’Reilly, and the Python Software Foundation for their generous support.

Why AdaCamp?

Sponsorship

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.

AdaCamp news: when will I hear about my application? when do childcare requests close? where can I stay?

Mary Gardiner — Thu, 02 May 2013 03:03:00 +0000

We are so excited to have received more than two hundred applications to attend AdaCamp San Francisco! Right now we’re deep in reviewing them and are sending out decisions and registration information as quickly as we can. We apologise to anyone who has been waiting for a decision. I’m basically working on nothing else until decisions are all sent!

If you haven’t heard from us yet

Applications are being reviewed progressively. If you haven’t heard from us yet, we have not reached your application in the review queue. (It definitely does not mean you’ve been rejected.) I apologise especially for the delay in notifying travel grant applicants.

We are working to the following timeline:

applicants who asked for international travel grants (applicants outside the USA, Canada and Mexico) will be notified today, May 1
applicants who asked for domestic travel grants (applicants from the USA, Canada and Mexico) will be notified by Friday May 3 at the latest
other applicants who applied before April 14 will be notified by Friday May 3 at the latest
applicants who applied between April 14 and April 30 will be notified by Tuesday May 7 at the latest, sooner if we can
applicants who apply between May 1 and May 6 will be notified by Tuesday May 14 at the latest, sooner if we can

Please contact adacamp@adainitiative.org if you were expecting a notification and have not received one by the dates above.

Childcare requests

AdaCamp is providing limited free childcare places for attendees. We need to finalise childcare numbers very soon, and therefore unfortunately need to close applications for childcare earlier than the May 6 deadline. If you want to request a free childcare place for AdaCamp, please apply by Friday May 2. After this, no more childcare requests can be taken.

If you have already applied and asked for a childcare place, our event planner will be in touch late this week or early next week to confirm your childcare needs.

Travel and accommodation information

If you have been accepted to AdaCamp, you may be interested in accommodation options and venue and transport information.

If you are interested in sharing a room with another attendee, and are willing for your name and email to be shared with other attendees for this purpose, please email adacamp@adainitiative.org.

Puppet Labs sponsors AdaCamp San Francisco

Ada Initiative — Wed, 01 May 2013 17:19:33 +0000

The Ada Initiative is pleased to welcome Puppet Labs as the newest sponsor of AdaCamp San Francisco, our conference dedicated to increasing women’s participation in open technology and culture.

Puppet Labs is our newest Silver level sponsor, and one of the original four founding sponsors of the Ada Initiative, all the way back in April 2011. Puppet Labs’ open source IT automation software is familiar to nearly every software administrator and developer working today, and used by companies like Twitter, Yelp, eBay, Google, and Disney. Puppet Labs is based in Portland and was recently named one of 25 Enterprise Startups To Bet Your Career On by Business Insider. Learn more about working at Puppet Labs here.

On behalf of women in open technology and culture, we thank Puppet Labs for their generous support.

Why AdaCamp?

Sponsorship

Your organization has the opportunity to join Puppet Labs 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

AdaCamp applications extended until May 6: apply today!

Ada Initiative — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 20:20:04 +0000

Happy AdaCampers

We’ve extended applications for AdaCamp San Francisco until Monday May 6th! If you want to be part of this fun and exciting event for women in open technology and culture (and their supporters), you should apply now. The AdaCamp San Francisco main track will be June 8-9, 2013 (Saturday and Sunday), with the allies track on June 8.

Apply as soon as you can! We’re extending the application deadline because some places remain, but applicants who meet our criteria will be accepted in order of application.

Here’s a few of our success stories:

Netha Hussain ran edit-a-thons to increase women editors and women’s biographies in Malayalam Wikipedia, gave her first three talks, published an article in Forbes Online, and learned how to program
Tamara Manik-Perlman won an internship at Code For America
Stephanie Alarcon first learned about the GNOME Outreach Program for Women at AdaCamp – and then won an OPW internship with the Open Technology Institute

AdaCampers (c) Mairin Duffy 2012

Learn more and apply here. AdaCamp San Francisco will be another amazing event, don’t miss it!

We thank our gold level sponsors Mozilla, Automattic and Google Site Reliability Engineering; and our silver level sponsors Linux Foundation, Red Hat, and Intel; for their support of AdaCamp San Francisco.

Apply today: Linux kernel internships through Outreach Program for Women

Valerie Aurora — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 17:52:32 +0000

The Linux Foundation is sponsoring the first ever Linux kernel internships offered through the Outreach Program for Women. The internships pay $5000, plus a $500 travel grant to the LinuxCon North America conference in New Orleans, Louisiana in September.

If you identify as a woman, genderqueer, or genderfluid, have ever wanted to learn to develop the Linux kernel, and have the free time to work on the internship, you should apply now! The deadline to finish your application is May 17, 2013, but please start your application by May 1.

Not sure you can write a good application? Lots of help is available: you can join a mailing list, ask questions on IRC, or email the mentors directly. You are encouraged to start your application now, and finish it by May 17th using any of these avenues for help.

We’re thrilled that the Linux Foundation and their mentors are taking this major step towards increasing diversity in the Linux kernel development community. Thank you, Linux Foundation, for creating these internships!