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Women of OpenStack mentoring program: a match made in the cloud

It’s waiting-list only for the speed mentor event at the Austin Summit; there are still plenty of ways to get involved at the Summit and beyond…

April 12, 2016
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Women in tech are a scarce commodity, but the new Women of OpenStack (WOO) mentoring program has gathered plenty of steam.

The new program is designed to be a lightweight mentoring initiative to provide technical or career guidance to beginners in the community.

One of the key initiatives is a "speed mentoring" breakfast session at the upcoming Austin Summit. "This has been so much more successful than we ever imagined!" said organizer Emily Hugenbruch on the WOO mailing list. There are about 60 total mentors and mentees signed up–you can still put your name on the waiting list, though.

Who should get involved? Mentees should already be part of the community; they should have gone through, or be familiar with Upstream Training. Technical mentoring doesn’t just mean coding, the program is open for people who are a specialist in any area of OpenStack– for example docs or marketing. Technical mentors and mentees should expect to spend about an hour a week talking about projects to get involved in, people to meet, anything to help their mentees get to their next step. Career mentors could be in a completely different area of OpenStack from their mentees. They should expect to spend about an hour a month with their mentees offering more general career guidance, maybe helping their mentees make connections in the community. You can find out more about the program here.

If you’d like to get involved at the Summit, there are more WOO events, including:

Women of OpenStack working session

Join the Women of OpenStack on Tuesday morning before the keynote session to hear from other women working in the OpenStack community and discuss how we can help support each other. During the session we’ll celebrate our accomplishments over the past year and hear lightning talks from three Women of OpenStack who have recently taken on new roles within the OpenStack community. RSVP required.

Champions for change: Engaging male advocates for diversity and inclusion

This two-hour lunch workshop on the research and practice of male advocacy, including why it matters and how to take action is led by led by National Center for Women and IT research scientist Dr. Brad McLain. RSVP required.

Git and Gerrit lunch and learn

Participants will walk through how to open a bug in a test system and then submit a test patch to a repository in OpenStack. The process involves learning about Git plus a cheat sheet of the most useful commands and review process in Gerrit. Participants will walk away with working knowledge on these tools. RSVP required.

Beyond the Summit

For more info on the group, check out the WOO Wiki. You can also join the WOO LinkedIn group and mailing list.

Cover Photo // CC BY NC

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