Events

We believe that, in technology generally and open source particularly, there are enthusiastic people waiting to get involved. Our events are about finding those people and offering to empower them with technology and tech communities.

We focus on bringing new people into existing communities; we want our outreach efforts to be visible to existing community members, and the communities form a supportive group for newcomers. Our events are tools that communities can use to grow, in size and diversity.

Anyone in the community can make an event that's affiliated with OpenHatch. And there are a few events that we have run ourselves.

The best way to stay in touch about an event, upcoming or past, is to join the Events email list ».

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A theoretical proposal about OpenHatch "affiliated events"

Affiliated events

OpenHatch refers to a movement of free software and programming communities that want to be more welcoming and diverse.

If that's you, we'd love to have you be a part of our community!

A great way to do that is to make your upcoming outreach event be "affiliated with OpenHatch." If you want to do that, our community is here to help you.

Other organizers of OpenHatch-affiliated events (including OpenHatch staff) will aim to help you as much as possible on the following things:

• Helping you set a clear outreach goal for the event.
• Helping you achieve it! That means, for example, help or advice with finding space, fundraising, website organization, finding speakers, writing a laptop setup guide, teaching your instructors how to be good teachers, the signup process, and finding attendees.
• Helping you measure it. That means, for example, help or advice creating a sign-up process, writing and interpreting exit surveys, and reaching back into the community you hope to change and seeing if your participants have been retained.
• Helping you talk about how great it was. That means, for example, help or advice taking and publishing great photos, writing blog posts, getting the word out about those posts to the relevant communities, helping you write conference talks that showcase all that.
• Helping you review what to do better next time. That means, for example, providing respectful, helpful feedback in private and on the Events list.

A key aspect of OpenHatch-affiliated events is that we aim to first improve existing communities where possible, rather than create new smaller communities. The principle guides us because we've seen how effective programs like Railsbridge San Francisco, Boston Python Workshop, and the GNOME Outreach Program for Women transform the communities they touch.

Here's what we would like from you. They're suggestions, not requirements, but they're strong suggestions.

• Join the Events list! http://lists.openhatch.org/mailman/listinfo/events
• Email the Events list when you are finding staff, so that other excited people near you can offer their assistance. (Naturally, as an event organizer, you choose whose offers to accept, so that you can build the event you want.)
• Use exit surveys as part of measuring if your event was a success, as experienced by attendees.
• Actively check up on your outreach goals by seeing if the community has changed in the ways you wanted it to.
• Take photos of the event, and put them on the web, preferably shared under a free license.
• Write a wrap-up post for your event, and post a copy on the OpenHatch blog.
• In your event website, link to this page and indicate that you are "affiliated with OpenHatch."

Two essential requirements:

• Your event must be intentionally friendly to newcomers, as part of our educational and community-growing mission.
• It should be related to programming and open source communities.

(If an event or its organizer manage to somehow do things totally not the OpenHatch way, we'll let you know that we'd rather you stop calling your event affiliated with our community. I've never heard of such a case, but I figured the idea is worth mentioning.)

We all work together, as a community, to make education and outreach part of all of our programming and open source communities.

Events that are "part of" OpenHatch

Some events are run particularly by OpenHatch the non-profit organization, and our staff. Those we call "part of OpenHatch."

We maintain that distinction so that we (the OpenHatch non-profit organization) can be clear with the community about what we (the org) "take credit" for. Events that are "part of" OpenHatch should also conform to the community norms that all "affiliated" events conform to.

This page documents the outreach events and presentations that are part of OpenHatch.

Outreach events

Ongoing efforts

In-person

• Ongoing since November 2011: Campus outreach events. These are co-hosted with various student computer clubs.
• Ongoing since March 2011: Boston Python Workshop (that inspired PyStar, PyLadies, and the Montreal workshop). This effort includes monthly Project nights. These are co-hosted with the Boston Python Meetup.

Past events

In person

• In person, Sep 20, 2011: Open Source Workshop at MIT, an outreach event that taught 30 Boston-area students how to contribute to open source software. This was co-hosted with the MIT Student Information Processing Board.
• In person, Sep 17, 2011: Software Freedom Day 2011 Boston, a day of talks and workshops aimed both at existing community members and new ones, to sharpen their community skills and showcase the active world of free software and community in the Boston area.
• In person, July 2011: Scala Crash Course for women and their friends, co-hosted with Scalathon.
• Online, May 2011: Debian-Women Build It event
• Online, April 2011: First Build it events.
• In person, September 2010: U Penn open source 2010 outreach event that taught 30 Philadelphia-area students how to contribute to open source software. This was co-hosted with Penn Computer and Information Science.

Event planning resources

We keep a set of event logistics resources on this wiki. Use them for your events!