LFCS: The Outreach Program for Women

LFCS: The Outreach Program for Women

I'd recommend that you watch the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5lGKcDQCCs .... It's not that the work that the participants do is in any way different, it's that the program specifically reaches out to women interns, and they tailor the marketing accordingly, based on figuring out what research indicates does not draw female applicants to the existing, more general internship programs (like GSoC). In other words, it's the outreach part of OPW that is more specific; one would assume that similar results could be had by tailoring other outreach programs to other populations that are not well-represented in FOSS projects. Figuring out how the tailoring should differ is the tricky part (well, that plus getting good mentors for the participants, of course). It would be interesting to hear more specifics about how the program managers adjusted messaging and things in the relaunch, but that would probably require a much longer session.

But outreach is always hard, and there are certainly lessons to be learned for every outreach program about the benefits of being specific and asking participants what does and doesn't work.

Nate