[OH-announce] OpenHatch newsletter, November 2013

[Mike Linksvayer]

Welcome to OpenHatch [0]newsletter number 16.

   We're soon to launch a fundraising campaign to support Open Source
   Comes to Campus through 2014. Take a [1]peek! We'll provide compelling
   stories and reasons during the campaign, but if you're reading this
   newsletter you probably already "get it". Donate early and often. ;-)

   [2]Open Source Comes to Campus: Princeton was held November 24.

   As part of our activites funded by a [3]Python Software Foundation
   grant, Asheesh Laroia remotely coached Python Dominican Republic
   through [4]holding its first project night (Spanish). Exciting to see
   this welcoming community building methodology spread!

   We've been continuing our efforts to thoroughly document how we run our
   events. One part of that is creating screencasts of our curriculum. You
   can see our Open Source communications tools lecture, as well as a
   transcript, source slides, and walkthrough [5]on the OpenHatch wiki. We
   welcome feedback!

   A very practical thread on the OpenHatch events list: [6]Strategies for
   getting information from venue hosts .

New projects in the OpenHatch volunteer opportunity finder

     * [7]Adaptive Image Deconvolution Algorithm (AIDA), a way to clean up
       photos, especially for scientific applications such as astronomy
       and microscope images.
     * [8]OpenSpending, which "aims to build and use open source tools and
       datasets to gather and analyse the financial transactions of
       governments around the world", supported by the wonderful [9]Open
       Knowledge Foundation.
     * [10]Stratagus, "a free cross-platform real-time strategy gaming
       engine", with several games that run on this engine (and [11]a long
       history!).
     * [12]Zero-K Multiplatform RTS, another real-time strategy gaming
       project, aiming to be "full of clever strategies and constantly
       moving combat with games lasting an average 20-30 minutes".

OpenHatchy but not OpenHatch things around the web

   David Revoy's illustrated [13]Building Krita for Cats is fun to look
   at, and a great example of the kind of friendly and
   leave-nothing-to-guessing documentation that helps newcomers be
   successful in making their first contribution. For context, [14]Krita
   is an open source paint program, with an emphasis on artistic
   illustration, and Revoy was [15]art director for Blender's third open
   move, Sintel.

   The Ada Initiative has a great [16]interview with Karen Sandler on the
   impact of the Outreach Program for Women:

     One of the things that I love about the program is that many of the
     women who come through it wind up being our best advocates. Some of
     our former participants have gone on to speak about the program at
     conferences and in their communities. Some other participants become
     mentors in future rounds. One participant now serves on GNOME's
     board of directors and is our treasurer. So as the program
     progresses more people become active in shaping it. We've been
     growing it organically within GNOME infrastructure so as the program
     expands beyond GNOME it benefits from the influence of new mentors
     and advocates.

   John Mark on the [17]social responsibility of open source communities:

     If we really want to rid the world or proprietary software, I donât
     see how we can do that without adding in people who currently do not
     actively participate in open source communities.

     ...

     This holiday season, letâs think about the social responsibility of
     open source communities and its participants. Letâs think about ways
     we can bring the under-represented into the fold.

   [18]The Allocation of Talent and U.S. Economic Growth:

     In 1960, 94 percent of doctors and lawyers were white men. By 2008,
     the fraction was just 62 percent. Similar changes in other
     highly-skilled occupations have occurred throughout the U.S. economy
     during the last fifty years. Given that innate talent for these
     professions is unlikely to differ across groups, the occupational
     distribution in 1960 suggests that a substantial pool of innately
     talented black men, black women, and white women were not pursuing
     their comparative advantage. This paper measures the macroeconomic
     consequences of the remarkable convergence in the occupational
     distribution between 1960 and 2008 through the prism of a Roy model.
     We find that 15 to 20 percent of growth in aggregate output per
     worker over this period may be explained by the improved allocation
     of talent.

   Perhaps this gives an indication, purely in labor maket/productivity
   terms, of how huge the costs are of lack of diversity in IT, and its
   cutting edge, open source. In addition to primary concerns of fairness
   and justice.

   Also check out links submitted to [19]/r/openhatch, and add your finds!

Get involved

   (Suggest other recommended action if you're bored of
   contribute-to-newsletter link)

   You can help write this newsletter! The December newsletter will be
   edited at [20]htmlpad may be [21]previewed there as well. Join our
   [22]publicity list or hop on [23]#openhatch with suggestions and
   questions.

   Thanks to Britta Gustafson and Shauna Gordon-McKeon for contributing to
   this edition!

   [24]Read previous newsletters.

   [25]Like [26]+1, follow @openhatch at [27]identi.ca or [28]Twitter.

References

   0. http://openhatch.org/blog/2013/newsletter-november-2013/
   1. https://openhatch.org/donate
   2. http://princeton.openhatch.org/
   3. https://openhatch.org/blog/2013/psf-funds-openhatch-to-reach-out-to-and-help-python-user-groups/
   4. http://python.do/blog/reunion-30-noche-de-proyectos/
   5. https://openhatch.org/wiki/OSCTC/Tools
   6. http://lists.openhatch.org/pipermail/events/2013-November/
   7. http://openhatch.org/projects/aida
   8. http://openhatch.org/projects/openspending
   9. http://okfn.org/
  10. https://openhatch.org/projects/Stratagus
  11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratagus
  12. https://openhatch.org/projects/Zero-K%20Multiplatform%20RTS
  13. http://www.davidrevoy.com/article193/building-krita-on-linux-for-cats
  14. http://krita.org/
  15. http://www.davidrevoy.com/article45/sintel-concept-arts
  16. http://adainitiative.org/2013/11/outreach-program-for-women-the-impact-that-the-program-has-had-on-the-participating-free-software-projects-has-been-profound/
  17. http://www.gluster.org/2013/11/do-open-source-communities-have-a-social-responsibility/
  18. http://www.stanford.edu/~chadj/papers.html#talent
  19. http://www.reddit.com/r/openhatch
  20. http://htmlpad.org/oh-newsletter-201312/edit
  21. http://htmlpad.org/oh-newsletter-201312
  22. http://lists.openhatch.org/mailman/listinfo/publicity
  23. http://webchat.freenode.net/?nick=openhatch_....&channels=openhatch
  24. https://openhatch.org/blog/tag/newsletter
  25. https://www.facebook.com/openhatch
  26. https://plus.google.com/115325121477337042677
  27. http://identi.ca/openhatch
  28. http://twitter.com/openhatch