Grace Hopper

I was on a panel on women and open source computing at the grace hopper conference. Interesting bits (although unfortunately I don't have sources for the figures):

• learned about http://www.linuxchix.org/
• apparently open source developers are ~2% women, which is much lower than in other areas of computing
• math majors are close to half women, suggesting that low numbers of computer science majors (~20% women) are not a result of women not being interested in quantitative fields
• The panel was well attended and well received -- many were students (I'd guess that a majority of the conference attendees were students). One woman asked a question about open source projects and opportunities for user experience work. I wish I'd answered this way:
  • Get involved now, on an existing project. As a student, you could try and work it as a class project, or you could do it on your own time as a way of getting real world experience.
  • Do a usability study. Get a group of friends together to help out. Practice the skills that you are learning in classes.
  • Write up the results and submit them to the project. Include suggestions for improvements to the product. Whether or not the suggestions will make an impact depends somewhat on the merit of your work, and somewhat on whether or not folks on the project have the time/energy/enthusiasm to do something with it. At worst it will be ignored.
  • Take one of the suggestions and implement it yourself, or with a group of friends. Submit the patch to the project. Again, whether or not it is accepted will depend on the merit of your work. At worst, it will be ignored and you've potentially learned a lot from the project.
  • The point of the suggestions above is that initiative is rewarded. Its unlikely that folks on the project will guide you if you just show up, but if you offer work to them (a usability study, a patch that improves the user experience in some way, etc.), your work might be appreciated and incorporated to the project in some way. As a student, you don't have much to lose by jumping in and giving it a try. At best, you've made an impact on a real project with lots of real users, and you have something cool to add to your resume to boot.
• Being at the conference reminded me of the book Unlocking the Clubhouse, which I've been talking about with some of the folks at LPFI

-- KatieCappsParlante - 17 Oct 2004