Re: Outreach Program for Women: next round

2013/9/3 Stefano Zacchiroli <zack@debian.org>

On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 02:54:09PM +0200, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:

> 1. find people willing to act as "admins/organizers". Many people have
> expressed their willingness to help, but we still a least one person
> to do the coordination.

I can't volunteer myself (sorry about that), but I think the most
pressing need is sending out a call for project proposals *specifically*
aimed at attracting submissions of non-development tasks. This is
because we are quite good at attracting development task proposals
(repeated GSoC successes testify that), but we have basically zero
experience in attracting other kinds of project proposals.

Of course we can decide to participate in OPW with development tasks
only, but given OPW is at present the only initiative I'm aware of that
also encourages applications for non-development tasks, it would be a
pity to give up on that.

I don't have any experience participating in this kind of projects, so I'm not sure how to articulate some aspects in which I might be interested, and where I might need help, or even if they could be defined as a project, so don't take this as a proposal, but more as thinking aloud. We're trying to set up an interest group inside Debian [1] focused on kids [2], following the excellent work made ant the time by the Debian Jr project. Probably linked to that, or as part of it, I want to finish defining a rating system, especially for games [4], currently based on debtags [5].

There's a lot of things to do, both regarding infrastructure and understanding of kids. The ultimate goal is to get, in words of the Debian Pure Blends project itself: "a subset of Debian that is configured to support a particular target group out-of-the-box". I feel that the project would be somehow between the Games Team [6] and Debian Edu [7]. Whereas Debian Edu targets whatever might be useful for kids at school, Debian Kids should target what they might be using at home. There might be some slight overlap with both projects, but I think there is some space not covered by any of them.

While there will be many tasks that are technical in nature, there will be many others that require skills and knowledge that the average Debian Developer/Maintainer/Contributor might not have, regarding the definition of both the criteria for classification and the analysis of the programs itself, as well as knowing about kids growing up and having an eye with kids to know what might interest them. I'm thinking mostly about people who are used to work with kids, some way or another.

If anyone thinks that some interesting project might come out of this, I could probably be able -maybe with some help- to define it better, so feedback is welcome.

Greetings,

Miry

[1] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianPureBlends
[2] https://wiki.debian.org/Kids
[3] http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-jr/
[4] https://wiki.debian.org/OpenRating
[5] https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DebTags
[6] https://wiki.debian.org/Games/Team
[7] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu