Re: Git in Outreachy Dec-Mar?

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Aug 30, 2018, 19:42 UTC
Message-ID: <20180830194223.GD19685@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <87sh2wcak4.fsf@evledraar.gmail.com>

On Thu, Aug 30, 2018 at 02:18:19PM +0200, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:

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> > It doesn't need to be. As far as I know, the main reasons (from the
> > perspective of a project) to do it through Outreachy are:
> >
> >  - being part of a larger program generates attention and gets the
> >    interest of intern candidates (free advertising, if you will)
> 
> I was wondering if we couldn't do it through Outreachy *and* also do our
> own advertisements / possibly recruit candidates outside of the
> Outreachy pool. In that case we'd still get the attention/outreach
> benefits, in addition to our own...

True. I'd worry about spreading our mentor resources too thinly (which I think are probably a bigger bottleneck than actual money). But I guess you're proposing to issue a larger call for candidates, and then we pick from the result (so in the end we'd end up with the same number of actual interns, just from a bigger pool).

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> Yup, but just as a clarifying point here wouldn't the participants also
> get all the same benefits of this in the case of Outreachy+OurOwnProgram
> if we ran OurOwnProgram concurrently to Outreachy?
> 
> I.e. I was assuming that once candidates are "handed off" to a project
> they're communicating within that project (possibly with other
> candidates), and Outreachy is no longer very involved (except maybe for
> progress reports / final report, but wouldn't we also do that for a
> OurOwnProgram?).
> 
> I may have that completely wrong though, which is why I'm asking, which
> b.t.w. I'm doing mostly just to get an idea of how what Outreachy's role
> is in this exactly, not to strongly advocate for a OurOwnProgram.

I think there _is_ some contact and group resources between Outreachy and the interns. But I'm actually not sure of the extent. I know they encouraged interns to blog (and read each other's blogs). I don't know if there's an intern mailing list, irc, etc. I had the impression that there is, but I don't actually know the details.

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> >   - it naturally limits the candidate pool to under-represented groups
> >     (which is the whole point of the program, but if you don't
> >     actually care about that, then it's just a complication)
> 
> I'm fine with doing selection discrimination of under-represented groups
> through such a program. Particularly if, as you mention, there's
> earmarked funding for it which otherwise might not be available, so it's
> not zero-sum when it comes to a hypothetical alternative of casting a
> wider net of our own (and as you mention, that would be more work).

Yeah, just for reference, my "you" there was a hypothetical "one might or might not care about...", not responding to your particular email.

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> I do think it's unfortunate that the selection criteria for the program
> privileges U.S. citizens and U.S. residents above other people,
> particularly since they're also accepting worldwide candidates (and
> we've had at least one non-American participant that I know about), so
> it's not e.g. for U.S. administrative or tax reasons as one might expect
> if they only accepted Americans.

I assume you mean this bit from the eligibility rules:

  You must meet one of the following criteria:
    - You live any where in the world and you identify as a woman (cis
      or trans), trans man, or genderqueer person (including genderfluid
      or genderfree).
    - You live in the United States or you are a U.S. national or
      permanent resident living abroad, AND you are a person of any
      gender who is Black/African American, Hispanic/Latin@, Native
      American/American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, or
      Pacific Islander

So there are more categories for the US, but I think that is largely because under-representation is somewhat regional. Being black in the US is different than being black in Africa. Certainly one could argue that Africa as a whole is under-represented in the tech world, but I think you'd probably need to draw different boundaries in different places if you want to extend opportunities to those who are least likely to already have them.

I don't know what those groupings would look like in, say, Europe. If you're suggesting that the program would be better off having region-specific rules for more regions, I'd certainly agree with that. I don't know if it's something the Outreachy folks have considered or discussed; it might be worth bringing it up.

-Peff