Trying to use my post-GHC energy wisely
Nov. 15th, 2011 12:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terrikoHonestly, I think I make more resolutions after GHC than I do at new year's. I'm always so inspired!
Two things came together for me at the conference:
1. One thing I heard frequently while working the free and open source software booth is that there are plenty of folk interested in getting involved with open source, but they're not sure where to start.
2. I came home with a suitcase full of paper prototypes and pictures from the Mailman 3.0 part of the codeathon for humanity on Saturday. I was looking at spending my evenings digitizing them and turning them into functional prototypes.
So... I asked for help! Transcribing paper prototypes isn't the most glamorous of work, but it's a great place for a beginner to start, and given that we're hoping to have a Mailman 3.0 release as soon as possible, new contributors would have a chance to ramp up to doing real code commits very quickly. Plus they'd be able to see their code go out and be used in the real world sooner rather than later!
I posted to the Systers list knowing I wasn't the only one feeling the post GHC rush, and I posted to the Mailman list knowing we had a would-be contributor who wanted to help.
What I wasn't expecting was that I'd have talked to NINE volunteers in less than 24 hours. How awesome is that? And most of them are women as well!
Now I have the problem of making sure I have enough for everyone to do, but with a variety of skill levels I'm sure we won't have any trouble finding stuff for everyone. I'm so excited, and I hope they are too!
Associated goals:
- Allocating more of my time to serious Mailman development.
- Getting more women involved in open source.
- Improving the usability of Mailman 3.0
- Speeding up development of the Mailman 3.0 UI.
- Doing some teaching/mentoring since I love it but won't be doing it at work this year.
The first thing I did after I got home from GHC11 was sleep. But when I woke up in the middle of the night, the second thing I did was order stuff from SparkFun. :)
I've ordered a couple of simple e-textiles kits and the goal will be to play with them. I made an awesome monster at the GHC e-textiles workshop and I was eager to do more. The end goal is to build a set of lights into my new coat that respond to my movement in some way (See the tentative wishlist), but for now I'm going to make a lit cuff/armband for walking at night and experiment with the neat little aniomagic chip 'cause it looks like so much fun!
Associated goals:
- meeting more people in the local community
- actually becoming a member of a hacklab to support my projects
- making it safer for me to walk home in my beautiful-but-not-visible new black coat
- experimenting with e-textiles
- doing some more hardware-oriented projects
- making sure I had a project that would take me away from the computer
A common theme at GHC is reminding people that we have to really be careful about time management so that we don't get overloaded, so I'm choosing those two things that cover lots of my personal goals, and I'll aim to do them well and save the other things I want to try for later. Wish me luck!
I'd love to hear how other people are using what they learned at GHC11!
Thing 1: Pushing the development of the GNU Mailman UI
Two things came together for me at the conference:
1. One thing I heard frequently while working the free and open source software booth is that there are plenty of folk interested in getting involved with open source, but they're not sure where to start.
2. I came home with a suitcase full of paper prototypes and pictures from the Mailman 3.0 part of the codeathon for humanity on Saturday. I was looking at spending my evenings digitizing them and turning them into functional prototypes.
So... I asked for help! Transcribing paper prototypes isn't the most glamorous of work, but it's a great place for a beginner to start, and given that we're hoping to have a Mailman 3.0 release as soon as possible, new contributors would have a chance to ramp up to doing real code commits very quickly. Plus they'd be able to see their code go out and be used in the real world sooner rather than later!
I posted to the Systers list knowing I wasn't the only one feeling the post GHC rush, and I posted to the Mailman list knowing we had a would-be contributor who wanted to help.
What I wasn't expecting was that I'd have talked to NINE volunteers in less than 24 hours. How awesome is that? And most of them are women as well!
Now I have the problem of making sure I have enough for everyone to do, but with a variety of skill levels I'm sure we won't have any trouble finding stuff for everyone. I'm so excited, and I hope they are too!
Associated goals:
- Allocating more of my time to serious Mailman development.
- Getting more women involved in open source.
- Improving the usability of Mailman 3.0
- Speeding up development of the Mailman 3.0 UI.
- Doing some teaching/mentoring since I love it but won't be doing it at work this year.
Thing 2: e-textiles
The first thing I did after I got home from GHC11 was sleep. But when I woke up in the middle of the night, the second thing I did was order stuff from SparkFun. :)
I've ordered a couple of simple e-textiles kits and the goal will be to play with them. I made an awesome monster at the GHC e-textiles workshop and I was eager to do more. The end goal is to build a set of lights into my new coat that respond to my movement in some way (See the tentative wishlist), but for now I'm going to make a lit cuff/armband for walking at night and experiment with the neat little aniomagic chip 'cause it looks like so much fun!
Associated goals:
- meeting more people in the local community
- actually becoming a member of a hacklab to support my projects
- making it safer for me to walk home in my beautiful-but-not-visible new black coat
- experimenting with e-textiles
- doing some more hardware-oriented projects
- making sure I had a project that would take me away from the computer
Not-quite-a-Thing 3: Not biting off more than I can chew
A common theme at GHC is reminding people that we have to really be careful about time management so that we don't get overloaded, so I'm choosing those two things that cover lots of my personal goals, and I'll aim to do them well and save the other things I want to try for later. Wish me luck!
I'd love to hear how other people are using what they learned at GHC11!
e-textiles Resources
Date: November 15th, 2011 10:46 pm (UTC)http://www.fashioningtech.com/
Also check out "How To Get What You Want" (make it) for awesome tutorials:
http://www.kobakant.at/DIY/
And 3lectromode from the Concordia Textile Makerspace in Montreal. They have an enormous set of amazing links on the bottom right:
http://www.3lectromode.com/blog/
These three are like the tip of an iceberg - lots and lots of neat stuff to link to from there. But one more standout person to follow: Diana Eng (http://www.dianaeng.com/) and her amazing FairyTale Fashion series, encouraging young women to explore Math & Tech as a way to build on their fashion interests. http://fairytalefashion.org/
LEDs and Mobius Strips and Biomimetics, oh my! :)
-Jay
no subject
Date: November 28th, 2011 06:12 am (UTC)Re: hacklabs, I think there's one called Quelab that someone I Internet-know is involved with. They seem more makerish than the local 2600 chapter is.