Grants:TPS/Paulproteus/Open Source Bridge 2013

User name

Paulproteus

Name

Asheesh Laroia

User location (country)

United States of America

Event name

Open Source Bridge 2013

Event Web site

http://opensourcebridge.org/

Event date(s)

June 18-21, 2013

Event location (city)

Portland, OR

Amount requested (remember to specify currency!)

US $227.79

Endorsements

Budget breakdown

• Travel: USD 227.79 (economy class airfare to/from SFO)
• Accommodation: I intend to find friends in Portland to stay with.

Note that my travel expenditures comply with the Wikimedia Foundation's Travel Policy

Proposed Participation

I am an active Wikimedia event contributor, having helped organize an all staff tech event and the 2012 hackathon, and a somewhat active Wikipedia editor. I have had two sessions accepted, both of which would affect Wikimedia and its ability to organize and grow its volunteer development community. They are:

• Training the trainers, a session on how to run effective newcomer-oriented events and especially Open Source Comes to Campus (OSTC) events.
• Quantitative community management, a session on the various ways that open source communities and wiki projects have measured volunteer activity and used that to change how their project works.

Goal and Expected Impact

As a result of Training the trainers, more people across the US will be able to run Open Source Comes to Campus and run their own successful outreach events. Open Source Comes to Campus teaches how free software works, the ethics, history, and economics behind it, the technical skills and community skills that enable collaboration, and then mentors students to make their first contribution. Of particular note, students at OSTC events have displayed an interest in in Wikimedia projects, so if Wikipedians and Wikimedians learn more about what we've learned about mentorship, they'll be able to help run more of those events. More of those events, or more training in effective mentorship, can help Wikimedians create events that attract and retain open source project contributors.

The quantitative community management talk discusses, and takes issue with, particular biases that occur from opt-in surveys that have been popular on Wikipedia so far. The talk explains how to avoid these biases, and why it is important: so that we can measure our impact on the changes we want to be creating. The talk also will show Wikimedians the state of the art in tracking contributors within free software project communities and discuss how to get involved with a Summer of Code project to give mentors more insight into which mentees need extra help.