[OPEN-ILS-DOCUMENTATION] Project ideas for Outreach Project for Women

Tue Sep 2 14:44:12 EDT 2014

Hi all,

Perhaps we can discuss this at Thursday's DIG meeting, but with the OPW 
deadline looming, it would be great if we could get some of this 
discussion done via e-mail.

As you may have seen, the starter projects I put on the wiki page for 
potential OPW projects were both related to documentation. I wanted to 
share my thinking on each of these projects with the rest of DIG to see 
if others agree that these are worthwhile projects to pursue and also to 
see if there are people who might be willing to step up as mentors for 
the project. Since mentoring can take quite a bit of time, I would like 
to see at least two mentors for a project before officially listing it 
as a potential project.

Also, if you have a documentation-related project in mind, feel free to 
add it to the discussion.

The first project idea I posted is to bring somebody in to take a 
birds-eye view of our official docs and make improvements in any or all 
of the following areas: the doc site's stylesheets, the organization of 
content, the layout of the content (for example, maybe displaying more 
than one section on each HTML page), improved navigation, etc.

A while back, Dan Scott shared a link in IRC to the PosgreSQL 
documentation site, and I was thinking that something as simple as 
providing links along the top to help users to navigate to the same page 
for other releases would be a big improvement, particularly for users 
who enter the site through a Google search and don't necessarily know 
what release they are looking at. Those were the types of changes I 
thought might come about from this project.

One thing I like about the project is that, although an intern would 
need some familiarity with Evergreen if looking at ways to reorganize 
content on the doc site, they could make a lot of improvements to the 
way documentation is presented without needing to know the ins and outs 
of how Evergreen works.

I added my name as a possible co-mentor for the above project.

The other project I identified was for an intern to work on 
documentation on circulation for the new web client. However, I'm on the 
fence with this project. I added it because it is a large documentation 
project that needs to be done. However, I think the first project would 
be much more interesting for a potential intern and require a bit more 
creativity.

What does everyone else think of these projects? Are there other 
documentation projects we should add to the list?

Thanks!
Kathy

Kathy Lussier
Project Coordinator
Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative
(508) 343-0128
klussier at masslnc.org
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kmlussier
#evergreen IRC: kmlussier

On 8/25/2014 12:49 AM, Kathy Lussier wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Please excuse the cross-postings.
>
> At its meeting last week, the Executive Oversight Board discussed the 
> possibility of participating in the GNOME Outreach Project for Women - 
> http://gnome.org/opw/. The goal of OPW is to increase the 
> participation of women in FOSS projects by connecting interns with 
> communities that need help for specific projects.
>
> It is similar to the Google Summer of Code program in which Evergreen 
> has previously participated, but the internships provided through this 
> program can extend beyond coding. Interns could also work on user 
> experience design, graphic design, documentation, web development, 
> marketing, translation, or any other task that would help sustain the 
> project.  The EOB agreed to put forth the funds to cover the intern's 
> stipend if, as a community, we could come up with some strong project 
> ideas that will help the community and mentors willing to commit their 
> time to the project
>
> I have started a page at http://wiki.evergreen-ils.org/doku.php?id=opw 
> where we can start collecting potential project ideas. I had a couple 
> of doc ideas that I have already added to the list. If you can think 
> of anything that you think would be a worthwhile project, feel free to 
> add it to the page.
>
> Please remember, though, that the projects need to be something that 
> serve as an entry point for somebody who is entirely new to Evergreen. 
> In talking about how to define a project, OPW suggests starting  with 
> smaller tasks (i.e. bugs) with a shared them and progressing over time 
> to more complex tasks (i.e. features). They also ask that we select 
> projects where the intern is likely to see their contributions 
> incorporated in the project before the internship is over.
>
> Also, we need to make sure we have committed mentors on any project 
> that is ultimately posted. The next OPW round starts September 8 when 
> the names of participating organizations are released. The application 
> deadline is October 22. During that application period, mentors may 
> need to commit as much as 10 hours per week on the program since 
> you'll be working with multiple potential applicants. I expect that it 
> wouldn't be 10 hours per week for the entire application period, but 
> that it will become more demanding as the application deadline 
> approaches.
>
> The internship dates then run from December 9 to March 9, during which 
> time you may need to spend up to five hours per week working with the 
> intern. Due to the time commitment, I think we should shoot for two 
> mentors on each project so that the commitment does not fall on just 
> one person.
>
> There is more information for potential mentors at 
> https://wiki.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen/Admin/InfoForMentors.
>
> We need to let OPW know by September 8 if we plan on participating, so 
> we have about two weeks to see if we can pull together some strong 
> projects. However, I think this is doable if we have some willing 
> volunteers and good project ideas.
>
> Feel free to let me know if you have any questions!
>
> Kathy
>
>