[campus-JHU-staff] More information, and volunteer positions

[Denise Paolucci]

On Aug 16, 2012, at 5:03 PM, Asheesh Laroia wrote:

> https://openhatch.org/wiki/Open_Source_Comes_to_Campus/JHU
> 
> Do give it a read, and let me know what you think, and if you'd recommend schedule changes, and if you have questions, and if you want to volunteer for anything in particular.


this is a reminder that in the initial conversation i had with asheesh about participating in the event, i offered up a talk on overcoming impostor syndrome in yourself and in helping others to get past their own impostor syndrome!

the reason being, on dreamwidth i'd say i spend about 40-50% of my time helping people to work past their impostor syndrome, and i credit our helpful/welcoming environment where it's always ok to ask a question and it's always ok to make a mistake with being the main reason why we're so successful in attracting and retaining newcomers. i've learned a lot of techniques that projects can do to help bypass impostor syndrome in their contributors, but i've also learned a lot of things that people suffering from impostor syndrome can do to help boost their self-confidence.

it may be out of scope for this particular event, but it's something i feel passionate about and i thought i'd offer it for consideration! many open source projects out there can be pretty "newcomer hostile" and make people feel like crap for asking questions, so i think equipping people with the skills to overcome self-doubt and impostor syndrome can really be valuable.

if nobody else is available/willing, i can also volunteer to teach or to TA one of the command line skills workshops, assuming you mean unix command line. (we have a page on the dreamwidth developer wiki -- http://wiki.dwscoalition.org/wiki/index.php/Command_line_tutorial -- called "help! my dreamhack has a command line!", "dreamhacks" being the hosted developer environments we provide for people so they don't have to get enmeshed in dependency hell; the whole wiki is CC-BY-SA, so even if i don't wind up being the person to do the workship, whoever does it should feel free to steal from any of that page with impunity.)

best,
 d

-- 
Denise Paolucci
denise at dwscoalition.org
Dreamwidth Studios: Open Source, open expression, open operations. Join us: www.dreamwidth.org