Open Source Day at the Grace Hopper Celebration

Joanie Diggs and I have been working on a project for the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.  Saturday is the Open Source Day and we have identified a series of contributions for our Making Applications Accessible project. This project contains a variety of contributions that people with a range of backgrounds can make to evaluate and improve the accessibility of applications used in the GNOME desktop. Come join us as I think we’re going to have a blast!!

In addition to the Open Source Day, I’m involved in a Birds of a Feather meeting on “Finding your Community and Changing the World” Thursday late afternoon which will focus on the kinds of contributions you can make to FOSS projects. I’m also on a panel titled “First Experiences in Open Source Software: How to get involved”that meets on Friday morning on getting started in FOSS. I’ve been looking at the schedule and it is jam packed with things that I’d like to see and so many activities for students. It is going to be really difficult to decide between so many attractive options! Will make for a busy conference!

Perhaps the most exciting part is that I am able to bring at least a couple of my female students with me to the conference. I’m working hard to bring a few more. Right now I’m working on contacting  students and figuring out financing. I see this as one step towards increasing the number of women in our CS and IT programs and I’m excited to give my students a peek at the possibilities that there are for them in computing. I also had the thought that it would be good to bring a few of my male students. It would be eye-opening for them to experience being in the minority and broaden their perspective on gender in their profession.

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