[wikitech-announce] Fwd: URGENT call for geographical diversity in Wikimedia @ GSoC

[Quim Gil]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: *Quim Gil* <qgil at wikimedia.org>
Date: Thursday, March 13, 2014
Subject: URGENT call for geographical diversity in Wikimedia @ GSoC
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org>


Please forward this email wisely. Yes, we need your help getting the word
out.

So far, all our GSoC candidates come from only two (neighbor) countries:
India and Sri Lanka. While we are very happy seeing how popular Wikimedia
is among technical students in the Indian subcontinent, we are concerned
about the lack of candidates from anywhere else.

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code_2014#Candidates

GSoC 2013 had accepted students from 69 countries [1], and we have
participants from eight.[2] We can discuss about the deep causes of this
situation but... Considering that we have less than 9 days before the GSoC
deadline for students (March 21 @ 19:00 UTC) we should focus on finding new
candidates.

There is still time to become a strong GSoC candidate for Wikimedia. Many
project ideas in our GSoC page (linked above) have mentors available and no
candidates yet. Go for them! Also, since our evaluation of candidates is
based on their proposals published in mediawiki.org, Google's deadline is
not a hard stop to keep improving your plans together with your mentors.
April 7 is when we need to decide how many slots we will request, meaning
how many teams (candidates and mentors with a common plan) we believe that
can complete GSoC 2014 successfully. That date is more than three weeks
from now.

Diversity is an important factor for Wikimedia. We are putting a lot of
effort promoting gender diversity in our outreach programs, and we are
seeing good progress. It would be surprising to realize that a global
project like Wikimedia has a serious problem with geographical diversity.
Your ideas and actions to fix this situation are welcome.

[1] https://code.google.com/p/google-summer-of-code/wiki/ProgramStatistics
[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Summer_of_Code_2013

PS: in comparison, FOSS OPW is doing a lot better, with five candidates
from four countries
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/FOSS_Outreach_Program_for_Women/Round_8#Candidates--
coincidence?



-- 
Quim Gil
Technical Contributor Coordinator @ Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil
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