March 23rd, 2011, 7 comments
After working in technology for 17 years now, I can assure you: constantly being the only woman in the room stinks. Since I usually am, one of my career goals is to surround myself with capable women technologists as well as men. It's not easy, but it's important—and not just because I'm lonely, but because I make stuff, and creations reflect their makers. The tech industry is by and large a boys' club, and that's a shame, because homogenous teams turn out one-dimensional products. Diverse teams are better-equipped to make things that shine because they serve a wide range of people. (Related: The Case Against Drop-down Identities.)
At Lifehacker, my original vision was to create a new kind of tech blog, one that wasn't yet another "boys worshipping tech toys" site, one that was helpful, friendly, and welcoming versus snarky, sensational, and cutting. (That was no small task in the Gawker-verse, and I learned much in the process.) Today at ThinkUp, I have a similar goal. We encourage contributions not only by women, but open source newbies and non-usual suspects of all stripes: designers, user experience experts, writers, students, and enthusiastic users. We explicitly identify inclusiveness as one of the best characteristics of our small, up-and-coming community. Still, uptake is slow, the on-ramp steep, and for me, it constantly begs the question: what we can do better?
That's why an essay by UX designer Vitorio Miliano, Designers and Women in Open Source, caught my eye. Miliano theorizes that there aren't many designers in the open source world for the same reasons there aren't many women: because open source communities alienate non-coders and newbies by design. He writes:
I believe the problems with open source not being able to handle non-programmers in their projects is the same problem as the rampant sexism: open source culture is not feminist. Feminism is fundamentally about equality for everyone, not just women, and designers of any gender are just as alienated as women programmers, because it’s not an equally welcoming environment. There’s no perceived value in open source for mentoring, facilitation, disciplining of unruly users, training of newcomers or non-technical users, etc., which are needed to support both designers of any gender and women in any role.
That's a punch in the gut for OSS leaders who work hard, often in their spare time, to create a democratic process and collaborative workflow for total strangers located around the world to create something as complex and technical as software. (Especially those of us who identify as feminists.)
But Miliano's right. And as far as I can see, it's up to OSS leaders to work even harder to redesign their communities to encourage diversity instead of prevent it. Because it helps me to think aloud and write things out, here are some approaches we've implemented, discussed, or are considering at ThinkUp.
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March 9th, 2011
I don't have any experience with open source bounties, but I'm about to get some thanks to my employer, Expert Labs. We're offering some special motivation to ThinkUp contributors as we work our way to ThinkUp's 1.0 release: Get a wow-worthy contribution accepted into ThinkUp and earn yourself a brand new iPad 2 on top of "I made a great open source project better" bragging rights.
Expert Labs is offering a new iPad 2 (16GB, Wi-Fi only) to a community member who makes a significant contribution in the next month and a half. Here's how it will work:
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Debunking the Lone Genius Myth
August 5th, 2009
During their session at OSCON, Google programmers Ben Collins-Sussman and Brian Fitzpatrick say that it's coders who can collaborate with others, not lone ranger geniuses, who are best at what they do.
July 6th, 2009, 13 comments
At some point along the road I must've become one of these zealous open source nutters, because a debate about the GNU General Public License got stuck in my craw this weekend. The GPL is my license of choice. When you license software under the GPL, you're saying it's free for everyone to use, modify, and redistribute as long as everyone makes their modifications free to use, modify and redistribute under the GPL as well. Developer Daniel Jalkut argues that this "share alike" requirement stifles GPL-licensed code adoption by developers who don't want to (or can't) GPL their work. Jalkut writes:
GPL communities are open and embracing of other GPL developers, but generally off-putting to liberal-license and closed-license developers. [...] Many GPL developers take comfort in the fact that their hard work can’t be quietly taken and incorporated into a commercial product, without any payback of time or money to the original project. But you’re piloting an open source project, and the first step of building a community is to get people in the door. [...] If you operate from the presumption that great developers love to build great projects, the first step in any successful open source project is to get as many great developers in the door as possible.
Jalkut's right about one thing: Great developers do love to build great projects. He may be right about another: Some developers may have to pass on using GPL code because they're not willing or able to share-alike their changes to it. But the one really attractive part of using the GPL that he's missing is this: Great developers love to build projects that more people will use. The GPL is my software license of choice because "share and share alike" spreads the impact of my work. What motivates great individual developers isn't always money, it's ego.
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February 5th, 2009, 28 comments
Several people have asked why I switched from the iPhone to a G1 running Android. My reasons are both practical and philosophical.
The practical ones:
- I'm a heavy Gmail user, and Android offers up-to-the-second push Gmail, and a Gmail interface that far surpasses Mail on the iPhone. Reading, searching, labeling, and otherwise processing my email is the most important thing I need to do on my smartphone besides make calls, and it's simply easier in Android.
- Android lets me manage my contacts in one place: Gmail, and syncs them automatically to my phone. No more local address book!
- Android is better than the iPhone software in a few ways: it's way more customizable, it offers copy and paste, the pull-down "window shade" is a better notification mechanism, and in general it gives you that feeling that you're in control of every setting.
- Android doesn't run Safari, but it will likely run Chrome someday.
- I love the trackball on the G1 for scrolling and clicking. From an economy-of-motion standpoint, it's a way more efficient way to interact with the device than swiping and tapping the screen. The snap-out keyboard is sweet, too.
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