not quite an Ada Lovelace post

[samvara]

I just realised the Archive of Our Own ohloh page was out of date - not any more!

Now stay with me for a moment, ohloh is a place where open source software projects can register themselves and it gives us a chance to compare our projects, how long they live, how active they are, how much code they're producing and so on. As of today there are 538,687 projects registered (that's a lot). Within that community the AO3 is one of the largest open-source teams in the world, and is in the top 2% of all project teams on Ohloh is a relatively large team, putting this project among the top 10% of all project teams on Ohloh. (ETA: updated now I've aliased all the duplicate names which removed a good 10 - seems our devs like to contribute under multiple identities). For context, Mozilla is in position #1 on that list ;p

The AO3 team self identifies as 83% female, which, given that the Open Source community has something like 1.5% women participation (although I seriously hope things have improved over the last 5 years) is, well, fantastic.

For myself, being part of the project has been a source of passionate love, great companionship and constant learning. It was also an opportunity to do something I'm good at - and get better - that I could not get in my paid job. In my (new) paid job what I learned from the AO3 project has heavily influenced my knowledge, my skills and my confidence and it contributed significantly to my getting said new job.

I just want to stop for a moment and celebrate the drive, creativity and staying power of this project.

Comments

[stephbg]

That's a really great achievement, and I'm so glad you managed to successfully transmute all that practical experience into your career. I also appreciate the added difficulties of what you've all done with so many distributed and volunteer team members. Congrats to the whole team, I am *majorly* impressed.

You know, this would make an excellent case study presentation at an ACS (Australian Computer Society) monthly forum. I can put you (or another rep) in touch with the person who arranges them in Perth, and via him to the other states as well. Any interest?

[samvara]

I have so much love for this project :)

Right now no, I'm so busy the thought makes me want to cry - I'd love to share the project with more people though...

[zooey_glass]

That explains it! I thought it was out of date, and then when I looked again today it wasn't - you were the wizard!

You have contributed so so much to making the AO3 what it is ♥. I'm so glad that it has contributed to you personally also! We miss you, but the things you made live on!

*loves muchly*

[samvara]

I looked and thought... clearly someone technical needs to fix this... maybe if I google it... darn... maybe it's easy... oh look that's how SVN was set up... Git must be the same right?... I wonder if I need to add a special URL... oh look, it's in the github emails... PASTE... SAVE... angst.... oh look it's doing a MAD IMPORT of over 45,000 lines Yay!

I am totally fantasising about coming back... especially with all I'm learning about Agile Project Management. The MBA is due to be done in Dec 2012... that's only one more year right?