The GNOME project has been an amazing leader in expanding opportunities to underrepresented voices in open source. Through the FOSS Outreach Program, GNOME facilitates paid 3-month internships for women (cis and trans) and genderqueer on open source projects. Past participants in the program include The Open Technology Institue, the Tor Project, and Debian.
I’m really excited that Mapzen is sponsoring the addition of another amazing open source project to the program’s roster–Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. HOT is an example of the OSM community at its finest–not only supporting on-the-ground work in crisis zones (such as their current work mapping regions affected by the Ebola epidemic in west Africa), but also supporting and nurturing new OSM communities in places like Indonesia and Senegal. This internship opportunity is a really great way to get more involved with an awesome team featuring some incredible women.
What You Need to Know to Apply
- Check out HOT’s wiki page, which has more information about potential projects for the internship.
- Get involved! Reach out to the folks at HOT through their mailing list or visiting their IRC (select the #hot channel here).
- GNOME has a fantastically detailed guide to applying (complete with super-cute illustrations) that you should read!
Having more diverse voices in the OpenStreetMap community has been a passion of mine for a long time, and OSM’s own issues with diverse representation aren’t unique within the open source community. As I’ve described previously, the ramifications that lack of diversity has on OSM’s data is kind of a big deal. GNOME’s work is an awesome instance of the open source community genuinely putting its principles into practice, and I’m excited that Mapzen can contribute to this mission.
