12 February 2013

California! (Help! I need somebody!)

Let's go back a few months - let's say, September. Marina Zhurakhinskaya writes me an idea: Tiffany Antopolski and/or I could present something at PyCon about the tutorial for GTK+ in Python I wrote last summer. Unfortunately Tiffany could not make it, so it came down to me. My first reaction was obviously "Who, me? Am I really good enough?", followed by a "If Marina thinks I am good enough, why not?" (Marina has this amazing ability to make you feel you can do it, as every OPW intern knows).

It seems I was good enough to get a slot for a poster! I even got a contribution that partially covers my travel expenses.

A first draft of the poster is ready. But here is where you readers come in: is it there something you think I should absolutely put in? Leave out? And, most important: how can I advertise GNOME in general and the OPW in particular? Is there any material I can use? (For instance, and sorry for the very basic question: how can I use the GNOME logo?)

Please, let me know, possibly before the 21st of this month since I have to print the poster and send it to California. I am also planning to hand out a sheet with some more details on GNOME, the OPW, GTK+3 - same questions, but since the sheets are coming with me on the plane there is more time.

To conclude, once more, Thank you Marina!... and thanks to anyone who is going to help me in this adventure!

UPDATE: the draft of the poster. Sorry for the size, but I have a board of 4 by 4 ft, and I am not afraid to use it! Any comment is more than welcome...

9 comments :

  1. Why don't you send me your draft so I can usefully comment? ;-) [Ja]

    [by the way, your other blog seems to have some malware associated to its hosting]

    ReplyDelete
  2. So glad you are going and will have a poster there! Perhaps if you post the draft of your poster people will be able to provide more feedback about it.

    We will have OPW flyers by mid-March, so it would be great if you could bring those. You could also bring GSoC flyers http://code.google.com/p/google-summer-of-code/wiki/GsocFlyers , though the participating organizations will only be announced on April 8. I just e-mailed the marketing list with an idea for a GNOME Love poster - https://mail.gnome.org/archives/marketing-list/2013-February/msg00026.html - I hope we will have it by mid-March too.

    https://adainitiative.org/2013/02/ada-initiative-at-pycon-come-to-our-feminist-hacker-lounge talks about some women's events at PyCon you might be interested in and another OPW intern, Aleta Dunne, will be there too http://dtiburon.wordpress.com/2013/02/02/im-going-to-pycon , so I hope you will have a chance to meet each other.

    Btw, it would be really awesome if you added your blog to the Women in Free Software planet http://planeteria.org/wfs :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. 1) Draft posted! :-) Click on the image for a bigger one...

    2) I am leaving for PyCon on the 12th of March, I hope it will not be too soon...

    3) Thank you for the links!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I love the flow! The text is very clear and has good advice! Could you share your proposal too? Is it about the experience, rather than the GNOME API? In any case, I think it would be very helpful to fit a small sample of the code and a widget it creates as an illustration :).

    ReplyDelete
  5. Congratulations Marta! So glad you are going!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Congratulations, Marta!
    I like the poster a lot! It's very clear and has interesting content.

    I have some advice: (1) Choose a justification for your text and use it throughout the poster.
    (2) It might be nice to add some color, either to the backgrounds of your text boxes, or to the text itself, so the viewer's eye moves through the space. Right now the color is in the background so my eyes are drawn away from the text.
    (3) It might be nice if the pitfalls section had a different shape (like a circle?) since it isn't part of the process flow
    (4) I wish there was more vertical padding around the text in the boxes.
    (5) I think it would be nice if the text boxes were moved a bit closer to the top and bottom of the poster, so you can make your title larger. Rather than aligning the text with the boxes, you could move it a bit towards the center and add the GNOME foot to the left of the text (you can find marketing materials here: https://live.gnome.org/GnomeMarketing/MarketingMaterial/Resources)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Tiffany: Thank you for all the help you have given me!

    Marina: My proposal was in "Education", so more about my experience as a learner and teacher at the same time. But I think that it is a good starting point to show how GNOME is easy to use and to develop for even for beginners - a point that I would make mostly in the "spoken" part of the poster!

    I will try to fit in a sample of code in the handout sheet (I am working on that now, I will upload it when it is decent). The problem is to find something that is not too complex but not too simple... the Button?

    Meg: Wow, how many comments! Thank you *so* much!
    (1), (2) & (4): Good idea, I trust you - I will change it (I would justify the text in the boxes at the centre).
    (3): I was thinking of giving it a different colour as well, red. What do you think? Too distracting? Too obvious?
    (5): I was thinking of adding the GNOME foot near the title. *Thank you* for the link, that was exactly what I was looking for!

    ReplyDelete
  8. I second the others' comment. The poster text is perfectly fine, I'd change only the colour scheme (maybe a background image?) and typography :-)
    Content is king, but a content that is pleasing to the eye has its purpose. It's easier to get attention. [Ja]

    ReplyDelete
  9. It would be great to have sample code and the result on the handout sheet. You could have a Button, or a Label if you want the code to be even shorter. I think either will provide the flavor of what coding in Python for GNOME looks like. There are many fine examples on http://developer.gnome.org/gnome-devel-demos/unstable/tutorial.py.html.en ;).

    ReplyDelete