The reason we need to have information and opportunities targeted specifically towards women is that this will get more of them involved.  It will allow more of them to learn how exciting, varied and valuable work on GNOME can be and how inclusive the community really is.

We already have a good list of mentors for the program and would love to have more sign up, so please add your name to the list if you are interested. A couple women have already come across the information about the program and gotten in touch with the mentors. Their involvement with the projects and guidance from the mentors can start now, which means that the program is basically providing them with the information on how to get started contributing to GNOME and a friendly contact for the questions they will likely have. We are encouraging students and mentors to work together before the application period, so that the students are well familiar with the projects before they apply for the internships and the mentors have the contributions they can take into account during the selection process.

Having summer internships with GNOME will create an opportunity for women to dedicate more time to their work on free software and make a greater contribution to the project. We would like to have these opportunities available in addition to the Google Summer of Code because this will allow us to have a more focused program and will ensure that more women learn about and participate in it. Moreover, we would like the new program to include non-programming projects such as graphics design, interaction design, documentation, and marketing. We are also considering organizing the program so that participants can work as part of the team starting with smaller contributions and progressing to larger ones, rather than working on stand-alone projects. This is more similar to the way companies run their internship programs and will ensure that contributions get incorporated into GNOME throughout the summer.

The GNOME Foundation would like to be able to provide stipends to several students similar to the ones offered in the Google Summer of Code and we need to raise funds for this purpose. I’d like to ask you to consider contributing towards this program or to make a comment that you’d like your contribution to be used towards this program when contributing through Friends of GNOME. We are also seeking corporate sponsorship for the program, so please let us know if your company would like to participate.

GNOME Outreach Program for Women will allow more women to learn how exciting and approachable the free software is and to gain the necessary qualifications to work in the free software industry, contribute to and create free software projects. I am personally very excited about having this program in GNOME because the knowledge and experiences that I have gained by working in the free software community have greatly enriched my life and I believe it is important that more women have such similar opportunities.

Here are some questions that I was recently asked by friends or asked myself as I was contemplating the subject. Please share any additional questions or answers that you can think of.

What are the benefits of open source?

• Better and easily modifiable code
• Internet-connected worldwide community
• Low-barrier entry as all the educational tools and mentorship is available online
• Low-barrier for implementing an idea and making it widely available
• Software products that are available to people who can’t otherwise afford them

What are the benefits to women of getting involved in open source?

• Being part of a great community, transparent way of getting things done, and a powerful inclusive movement
• Opportunity to affect development in areas such as education, science, usability, accessibility, and access to computers in poor countries and communities
• Rewarding and flexible jobs

What are the benefits to the open source of getting more women involved?

• Input from all segments of population will result in products that appeal to wider markets “The power and capacity of an open source community is determined by the quantity and quality of its social capital. If a community fails to invest in either – if it turns off or away qualified people because its culture (however unintentionally) discriminates against a gender, race or group – then it limits its growth and potential.” From “Women in Open Source – the canary in the coal mine” by David Eaves
• Bigger community – addressing some of the issues that result in fewer women in open source will also improve the experience for all newcomers
• More gender-balanced work environment

What are the activities that people take up in the open source community?

• Software development
• System administration
• User interface design
• Graphic design
• Documentation
• Community management
• Marketing
• Identifying issues and reporting bugs
• Helping users
• Event organization
• Translations

Why are women staying out?

• Lack of knowledge about how to get involved
• Lack of spare time and different cultural hobbies and responsibilities
• Lack of knowledge about how important and valuable the free software movement is
• Lack of open source recruitment events

What are the things that can be done to get more women involved in open source?

• Outreach programs that sponsor women who are considering careers in open source
• Open source companies hiring more women
• Promoting open source as a rewarding field to volunteer in to create something that has social value and strengthen the resume
• Increasing visibility of women who are already involved in open source
• Documenting the process for getting involved better
• Publishing comprehensive overviews explaining the process, the products, the industry and the user stories

I’ve been working on implementing the new design for the Overview mode for the GNOME Shell based on these mockups by Jeremy in the weeks leading up to the conference. The Overview mode is intended to give the user a quick way to switch activities, organize windows among workspaces, and find and launch new applications and documents. Essentially, this mode is a zoomed out view of all workspaces plus menus for starting new tasks. Some advantages of having such mode are:

• Having an interactive view of all workspaces
• Being able to focus on what needs to be launched when starting a new task
• Plenty of space to easily get details about applications and documents
• Having favorite and recent items one click away, but not cluttering the main desktop view

The recent changes to the view include:

• Adding distinct looking panes to contain the information
• Displaying additional results in the new panes and keeping the content of the main pane on the left constant
• Using slightly transparent panes to display additional results above the workspaces area instead of moving out the workspaces to the right when more results or details are requested (as was the case in the original implementation)
• Adding an area for the user to place their favorite applications in and displaying all running applications, which was done by Colin

These changes make using the Overview mode feel more stable and predictable because different areas no longer shift around.

Here are the two screenshots of the Overview mode. The user can get to this mode from the main desktop view by clicking the Activities button in the top left corner, pressing the System key or Alt+F1. The first screenshot shows off a single workspace with open windows, favorite applications, non-favorite running applications, and recent documents. The second screenshot shows off search results along with a details preview for one of the results.

GNOME Shell Overview Mode

GNOME Shell Overview with Search Results

There are still a lot of enhancements based on the mockups that need to be done in this view, such as indicating which applications are running with a glow around the icon, showing more details for an item, including “Places and Devices” section in the left side pane, and adding more polish in general. However, I feel this is a good start that shows off the intended behavior.

We look forward to getting more people involved with the design and development of the GNOME Shell, so be sure to check out Owen’s Introduction to the GNOME Shell talk on Sunday and the GNOME Shell Design BoF Jon and I are hosting on Thursday. Of course you are welcome to come discuss stuff with us any time during the conference and try the GNOME Shell for yourself.