Getting girls (and Gen Y) into IT

I’ve spoken to thousands of school kids over the last few years trying to encourage young girls to consider IT as a career choice. Along the way it has become obvious that Gen Y doesn’t really care about IT as a valid career choice generally, not just girls. I’ve come to a few conclusions that I thought might be of interest.

I think there are two parts to the women in IT/FOSS debate specifically:

1) Women already in IT/FOSS
2) Getting more women into FOSS

The former ends up being a matter of support for those that need/like it, and for those that don’t it doesn’t matter. The second issue isn’t one that many women already in FOSS/IT can answer because most of us are not representative of the majority of women due to the interesting filtering mechanism of society and school that for various reasons turns many little girls off IT and therefore off FOSS (in some countries anyway, there are several countries where this isn’t the case).

I do a lot of stuff in category 2, as I’m trying to understand why young people generally are turned off IT and thus FOSS, and I’ve come to the following conclusions:

  • Job perception – IT is seen as being anti-social, boring, and something that only “nerdy” boys get into. I always stand in front of these kids and proudly declare I am a geek (which I define as a person who does cool stuff with tech) which blows their minds. A young, extrovert female who loves travelling and trying to help make a better world. I talk to them about the variety of jobs available and about how IT is always changing and fun to get into, which is information they simply aren’t getting from school at the moment. We could all take a little bit of time to talk to schools in our local areas to help the careers advisors, teacher and parents to know more about why IT is an important option for kids to consider
  • Role models – there aren’t many female IT role models actively influencing the choices of young women. This also gives young men that come into the industry incorrect assumptions about women in IT, so women being visible is really important for young people in general. Getting more young women and men working in IT out there as role models is important in getting more young people interested in IT across the board
  • Active turn-offs – teachers and parents actively tell kids to not go into IT, as they think there aren’t any jobs. I’m not kidding. I think this has even more of an impact on girls as they are more career focused earlier in their school life and thus make subject choices much earlier that takes them away from the possibility of discovering the fun and challenges of IT careers
  • Social awareness – kids today are more socially aware than ever before, and they see IT as not a very socially beneficial jobset. This is where I usually bring out the OLPC and talk to them about using technology to improve the world and the lives of millions of underpriveleged people which gets them interested in IT more, and is also a great segway to getting them interested in FOSS

Hopefully that is a useful insight to some of the issues we are facing getting kids and particularly girls in IT today.

7 principles for improving communities

I went to a conference a while ago to give a talk about FOSS for the NGO sector, mainly speaking to cooperatives and non-profits. Another speaker there gave an excellent talk that I wrote down to blog and am only now getting around to it 🙂 He basically spoke about how cooperatives can grow their communities and capacity when they are largely volunteer driven. The ideas below are largely around how to interact and encourage new participants, so it will likely be useful to every FOSS project out there. Everything he said made a huge amount of sense for the FOSS community, which is after all one big global cooperative 🙂

  • Openness – be open to input and differences of ideas
  • Inclusion – actively get people involved
  • Relevance – there needs to be meaning behind getting involved to give participants responsibility and pride
  • Respect – respect new members. Listen, ask questions, listen again
  • Opportunities – create a positive environment full of opportunities, eg – training, mentors, facilitators
  • Collaboration – help encourage groups of peers to collaborate. Don’t have “token” participants but rather everyone participating equally
  • Fairness – ensure there is fairness and justice in the organisation, and that people consider others in their actions (like a code of conduct)

I’m sure there are many FOSS projects that could draw from all of those in growing and improving their communities 🙂

You take the high road(show)

Jeff and I are now just over halfway through our national “Meet the Open Source Industry” roadshow.

It has been an excellent turn out in most cities, with great numbers in Brisbane, Darwin and Adelaide. Canberra wasn’t as well attended as we accidentally planned the event the morning after the long weekend, and Sydney was a little low on numbers due to over-busy Sydney people being slackers. 🙂

Tomorrow is the Perth event, and then next week is Melbourne and Hobart, all of which are looking great. Soon, we’ll publish slides from the roadshow including the Open Source companies we introduced all around the country!

Today is the Open Source Western Australia Symposium, a collaboration between the Department of Industry and Resources and the Western Australian Supercomputer Program. I helped them with some of their speakers and WASP have also created a good relationship with the Perth Linux User Group, which is cool. WASP even ran the Perth Software Freedom Day event.

Today they are also announcing the first major research project into the use of FOSS in the Western Australian Government and market, based on the national AGIMO survey into the use of FOSS in Federal Government earlier this year. Waugh Partners is running the survey and assisting with the analysis, which we are pretty excited about.

So the short of it is there is a lot happening, and we need to blog more regularly (hint, hint Jeff) 🙂

Australian Open Source Census taking off!

Jeff and I launched the Australian Open Source Indsutry and Community Census less than two days ago, and already have over 60 completed community responses and 20 completed industry responses,as well as a further 50 people sign up. Wow! Thank you everyone who has contributed. Please pass the word around and lets try and really make this a true census 🙂

Just to clarify a point, the target audience of the research project is a) people/companies in Australia and b) Australians overseas. It has an Australian focus specifically so that the final report (which will be freely available to download) will help educate and inform Australian Government, corporates and education about the realities rather than the perceptions of our industry and community locally. Hopefully it will reflect the strength, diversity and opportunities presented by the Australian Open Source industry and community, so everyone needs to stand up and be counted 🙂

The Australian Open Source Industry and Community Census – now live!

Jeff and I have just launched the worlds biggest research project into the Open Source industry and community. We are looking at the size, strength and dynamics of the companies and individuals involved in Open Source. The final report will be freely available online and will hopefully show both Government and the general populace that we as an industry and community totally rock 🙂

So what are you waiting for! Stand up and be counted!

Check out the Census website for more details.

Last AUUG conference ever

AUUG have just announced that this years AUUG conference will be the last one ever:

We expect this to be the last AUUG conference, so come and have a party.

I’ve been to two of the AUUG conferences, and they are usually pretty good. Seeing this is the last one, it’s a good chance to meet and greet with people who have been involved in Unix and Linux for quite a while. The call for papers is still open till September 10, so get a paper in 🙂

It’ll be in Melbourne, 13-14 October.

Travelling with Red Hat and IBM around the country

I am participating in a Red Hat and IBM roadshow about Linux on the desktop. We’ll be visiting Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Adelaide and Perth (Perth is a private event only), so if you are interested in either coming along to the event or catching up for a drink afterwards, check out the schedule on the invitation below 🙂 I’ll be talking about Open Source generally, the business benefits, case studies and how to go about creating a strategy for Open Source deployment. Red Hat and IBM will be focusing on the Linux desktop, which is excellent timing.

Red Hat, IBM and Waugh Partners road trip invitation.

The evening of every event it would be great to catch up with the FOSS communities in each location, so please just add a comment or email me if you’d like to catch up 🙂

Dates:

  • 14th August (tomorrow) – Brisbane
  • 15th August – Melbourne
  • 20th August – Canberra
  • 21st August – Sydney
  • 22nd August – Adelaide
  • 23rd August – Perth (private IBM/Red Hat event, but open for drinks in the evening! 🙂

Sorry about the short notice! Registrations are here.

FOSS in Sydney education and busy times

A few days ago I did a short 1 hour talk on FOSS for about 30 IT teachers in Sydney. It was a lot of fun and it reminded me how spending just a little time can have such a great effect! Finding people who are keen to hear about and who can really use FOSS really helps the chances of success in your message having an impact. Thus far the people I’ve found to be most open to hearing about FOSS and also the concepts of Software Freedom, Free Knowledge and a digital democracy are teachers, activists, people in the NGO/non-profit sector and students. Politicians are also good to chat to, and there is a growing community of FOSS saavy lawyers too.

Any opportunity you get to talk to these people can often have a great flow on effect to their spheres of influence. I’ve had many occasions where someone I spoke to comes back to me months or years later to help them take it further, or to assist in some great scheme they’ve created with others.

It has been flat out recently. Jeff and I are working hard and getting some great new work (more news to come!), FOSS is really taking off in Australia in Government, corporate and education, and apart from being so flat out, life is really good 🙂

Software Freedom Day is only 5 weeks away, and the website (which is hosted by Canonical) is down and has been for 2 days. Terrible timing! We expect it to be back up soon and it isn’t slowing down our shipment or other plans, but we’ve no way to let the teams know that yet.

Maureen is in town!

A good friend of mine and very cool chick Maureen O’Sullivan is giving a talk at UNSW hosted by the Unlocking IP crew next Wednesday. Details are all here so come along if you can 🙂 She is a great speaker and has some pretty interesting ideas about copyright, IP & FOSS. Thanks to the housemates at the Unlocking IP house of commons for putting it on 🙂