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- [Fedora-women-list] What can the Fedora Women
program do for you? (Patrick W. Barnes)
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Now that this new program has been announced and the mailing list has gathered a few members, it's time to kick off some discussion.
First, I'll introduce myself and the reasons I'm here. (I invite each of you to do the same.)
My name is Patrick W. Barnes, and I'm a community contributor to the Fedora Project. I've been working with the project since 2004. I've got a larger profile on the Fedora Project wiki:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PatrickBarnes
I handle many of the mailing lists and IRC channels, I'm one of the primary editors of the wiki, and I work with Fedora's infrastructure. After I heard that there was some interest in a program like this, I picked up the torch in getting the infrastructure for it set up and making the world aware of the program. I will continue to handle the infrastructure needs of this program, and will be happy to assist wherever else I can. I will handle many of the management duties until some of the members of the program are ready to take over. If you have any questions about me or my involvement in this program, don't hesitate to ask.
To the subject of this message, I'd like to know what each of you feels that this program can do to benefit the women in the Fedora Community. I'd also like to hear how you vision this program working and what you see it providing. This program is here for you, and you can decide what it will do and where it will go. The Fedora Project will pledge its support in every way possible.
I plan to further advertise the existence of this program in the near future, so you can count on more members showing up soon. As the size of the program grows, the group can take on specific tasks and could begin holding meetings. In the meantime, if there's something you'd like to see happen, you don't need to wait or get approval. You can get started immediately and let the community do what it will with your work. If you need anything, let me know.
-- Patrick "The N-Man" Barnes nman64@n-man.com
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/nman64
Have I been helpful? Rate my assistance! http://rate.affero.net/nman64/ --
I am Jeanette Russo, I am a Fedora Core 5 user and I have been using Linux since RedHat 5.0 back in 97 or so I believe.
Anyway Linux is mostly a hobby and my preferred OS. I work as a Novell and Windows Lan Admin but I prefer Linux on my own systems.
I have been watching the distribution and the Linux community grow over the last 9 years and it has come a long way.
Anyway what I would like to see is a growth in the use of Linux among women. I would like to see us stratagize how to make this possible.
Thanks
Jeanette A. Russo
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Hey, I'm Máirín Duffy; I'm a Fedora Core 5 user and I first started using Linux when I was in high school with Red Hat 5.1. One of my major goals is to make computers easier for people to use, thus I'm an interaction designer with Red Hat. I work on Red Hat Network. [1] I also contribute to GNOME and Fedora with some interaction design and graphic design [2] in my free time. I'm pretty heavily involved with the Fedora Art Team [3] these days.
I am also very interested in helping more women get involved in computers in general, although more women specifically in open source would be fabulous. ;-) To this end, I co-founded the GNOME Women group [4] with Hanna Wallach and am somewhat involved in Linuxchix [5]. I agree with Jeanette and think we should try to strategize how to get more women involved!
~m
[1] http://rhn.redhat.com/ [2] http://pookstar.deviantart.com/ [3] http://http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork [4] http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWomen [5] http://www.linuxchix.org/
Máirín Duffy wrote: and am somewhat involved in Linuxchix . I
agree with Jeanette and think we should try to strategize how to get more women involved!
Personally, I had a very cold reception from the chix last year.
We were opening up our Developers Portal [1] and asked if we could be listed in their "contributing to Linux" [2] (FYI it took us 10 months of sales to top $3000 for our developers including PCLinux and Knoppix, GoblinX, and on and on)
The person who responded to my emails left me feeling very put off and I didn't bother going back.
[1] http://portal.on-disk.com [2] http://www.linuxchix.org/content/recommends/sites/contributing
Karlie Robinson wrote:
Máirín Duffy wrote: and am somewhat involved in Linuxchix . I
agree with Jeanette and think we should try to strategize how to get more women involved!
Personally, I had a very cold reception from the chix last year.
We were opening up our Developers Portal [1] and asked if we could be listed in their "contributing to Linux" [2] (FYI it took us 10 months of sales to top $3000 for our developers including PCLinux and Knoppix, GoblinX, and on and on)
The person who responded to my emails left me feeling very put off and I didn't bother going back.
Yeh, I say 'somewhat involved' because I've tried to help and to contribute but I usually end up getting involved in long, drawn-out, pointless flame wars. :) It is somewhat disorganized though, but the right person to talk to probably would have been Mary, and I'm guessing based on your description she is *not* the one you talked to. :)
Anyway sorry to hear you had a bad experience. :(
~m
On Monday 24 July 2006 17:04, Máirín Duffy duffy@redhat.com wrote:
Karlie Robinson wrote:
Máirín Duffy wrote: and am somewhat involved in Linuxchix . I
agree with Jeanette and think we should try to strategize how to get more women involved!
Personally, I had a very cold reception from the chix last year.
We were opening up our Developers Portal [1] and asked if we could be listed in their "contributing to Linux" [2] (FYI it took us 10 months of sales to top $3000 for our developers including PCLinux and Knoppix, GoblinX, and on and on)
The person who responded to my emails left me feeling very put off and I didn't bother going back.
Yeh, I say 'somewhat involved' because I've tried to help and to contribute but I usually end up getting involved in long, drawn-out, pointless flame wars. :) It is somewhat disorganized though, but the right person to talk to probably would have been Mary, and I'm guessing based on your description she is *not* the one you talked to. :)
Anyway sorry to hear you had a bad experience. :(
Hopefully we can avoid those kinds of experiences in this program. ;-)
I really do hope that we can coordinate our work in a lot of areas with some of the other FOSS Women groups, including GNOME Women and eventually LinuxChix. I can also see great opportunities in working with Debian Women and Ubuntu Women. Even PostgreSQL and Apache's Women groups would be good to work with. Perhaps we can benefit from the lessons they have learned, and perhaps they can pick up some new ideas and learn how to be more friendly from us. The Fedora Community has a decent track record of being a friendly community, and that's something we can all help to advance. I'd also be open to pooling resources with the other groups to advance our common goals.
Focusing on that point for a moment, have any of you had poor experiences with the Fedora Community? In what areas is the Fedora Community lacking in a way that this program might be able to fix?
I'd also like to address the idea of mentor programs. Ubuntu Women has a dedicated mentoring team for women. The Fedora Project has the Fedora Mentors Project, which is not targeted in any particular way. Would it help to create a smaller mentor program within Fedora Women (which would also be a smaller women's program within Fedora Mentors.) Unfortunately, we don't have the budget for a program like GNOME's Women's Summer Outreach Program, but a mentoring program would provide a similar service, just without the extra incentive. ;-)
Hello everybody, I am Sasikala, a freelance programmer from Kerala, India. I am now working as a freelance PHP programmer. My first acquaintance with GNU/Linux is with RedHat 7.1 in the year 2001. Since then I have been using RedHat/Fedora versions in my desktop. Currently I am using Fedora Core 5, which turns to be a good experience. I am an active member of several online groups(Free Software). I would like to exploit this mailing list in the most productive way.
regards Sasikala
Hi. I'm Anne, in England. I dabbled with Red Hat 5, long ago, but had to give up through hardware problems and lack of cash at that time to replace unsupported hardware. It was 2000 before I discovered Mandrake 8, and dual-booted for about 6 months. Linux has been my working environment ever since.
I'm retired, a home user with a fairly wide range of interests. I look after all the computers for the 3-generation family, including the mixed architecture LAN.
I'm a member of two LUGs. In the biggest one, I'm the only woman member. I've thought a lot about this, and about the reluctance of other women in my family to consider linux. I think that the truth is that most women are task-oriented, when it comes to computing. Writing a letter is much the same in any environment. Photo editing, camcorder output editing, or creating a DVD just looks that bit harder than in Windows, and it's frightening to someone who has little tech understanding, and no interest in gaining it. 'I just want it to work', is the reply. I suspect that there are lessons to be learned from relatively cut-down Windows programs. For instance, Gimp is powerful, but many Windows-users will prefer to use a much simpler program such as iPhoto Express which leads through a wizard that says something like 'move the two boxes until the eyes are covered, then click "Continue"' when they want to correct red-eye.
I would love to get involved in projects aimed at winning these reluctant, frightened users. I have no programming skills, but as an ex-teacher my communication skills are quite good. If such a project was started I would like to be involved from the start, in the belief that you need to be very familiar with every aspect if you want to write good, non-geeky documentation.
Anne
My name is Karlie Robinson. I'm the owner of Webpath Technologies in Rochester, NY USA.
I've only been around Fedora for a few months and continuted to stick around to see that the Sponsored Media Project [1] got off the ground and would thrive.
Though I'm also a member of the Distribution team and help out whenever possible.
My involvement with Linux is discs and money and that brings me in touch with a lot of developers and projects. ~Karlie
[1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Distribution/SponsoredMedia
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Anne Wilson -
Jeanette Russo -
Karlie Robinson -
Máirín Duffy -
Patrick W. Barnes -
Sasikala P A