Ubuntu-Women IRC Meeting February 11th 15:00 UTC 2007
Meeting began with the usual introductions, attendees were: dinda, pleia2, ubuntu_newgal, bapoumba, Susana, NurseGirl
dinda began the meeting asking if anyone was going to UbuCon which is being held in NYC on Friday February 16th.
- No one else is able to make it, but dinda will be there, and said "It's an "unconference" format but I've offered to lead a BOF session or answer questions about UW or other topics"
bapoumba mentioned that there will be an UWN announcement about it.
Numbers of women in FLOSS were discussed.
Has there been a poll since the FLOSSPOLS results last year? We do not believe there has been, the official number we are standing by is 1.5% of contributers to FLOSS are women, slightly higher (around 2%) for Ubuntu specifically.
ubuntu_newgal asked about how she could get involved with Ubuntu
- pleia2 posted two helpful links on getting involved with Ubuntu
dinda is thinking of trying to build something about Women in FLOSS/Ubuntu-Women for Ubuntu Live in July
dinda mentioned that some of the discussions lately on the LinuxChix mailing lists have offered some valuable insights into issues women are facing and how to handle them
- pleia2 asked "what exactly would your focus be? A general women in FOSS? Something more specific about how to help get more involvement?"
- dinda replied "I think I'm looking for more Ubuntu specific ideas"
One of the most commonly asked questions regarding projects like Ubuntu-Women is why we exist, dinda felt that beginning her discussion by answering this would be helpful, pleia2 suggested using copy from the Ubuntu-Women.org homepage
- dinda suggested "perhaps, one presentation could be a general, "Why is there an Ubuntu Women's Project" or similar ... Short paper or presentation on some of the issues the project hopes to address"
dinda said "and then the other question that always comes up is, "Are men welcome too?"" - some discussions on LinuxChix of late have also can help with this.
- Many women have had negative experiences withing FLOSS, dinda asked "how can use these experiences to present information to the greater community?" her suggestion was to spend a few months collecting stories.
- pleia2 believes that real examples would be important to any presentation as it may be hard to "get" the problem without such examples
- bapoumba said it would be helpful to have stories for developers AND non-developers
NurseGirl said "I wonder whether there would be a way to compare women's experiences in the Ubuntu community with experiences in other tech communities"
- dinda: "Real Women, Real World Experiences in FLOSS/Ubuntu?"
- dinda: "So if I propose two topics for the Ubuntu Live conference, I can count on you folks to help gather materials/stories?"
- Several in attendance agreed to help out
- A wiki page will be created in order to gather material/stories
bapoumba brought up the U-W forums.
Ubuntu-Women does have a forum outlet: http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=76
- bapoumba was recently made a mod on this forum - hooray!
- There was some discussion about general and U-W forum history and leadership. Today Ubuntu-Women on the forums and the official Ubuntu-Women group have merged and work closely together.
pleia2 brought up the need for Administrative access to the website
- In the last meeting it was believed that both Robin and Vid had access, pleia2 contacted both of them and discovered that Robin no longer has access and she has not heard back from Vid
- both dinda and pleia2 contacted the Community manager at Canonical and he suggested the issue be brought to the Community Council
It was agreed to bring it up at the next CC meeting, Tuesday February 13th, dinda added a note about this to the CC Agenda, pleia2 said she'd try to make the meeting and ubuntu_newgal was also interested in attending.
- pleia2 will contact the list admins listed on the Ubuntu-Women website to make sure they are active as well.
It was decided that the next meeting will be held on Sunday February 25th at 15:00 UTC - this is the same time as this Feb 11th meeting, please email the mailing list if you have other meeting time suggestions.