The LinuxChix LA will be demonstrating Hacking Debian Linux on the Zipit Z2 Wireless Messenger

For a small $2 dollar donation we will be raffling off a Zipit Z2 Sunday afternoon!

And for a $1 dollar donation we will also be raffling off two Hasbro I-CY Penguins, one Saturday and one Sunday.

Please visit LinuxChix LA at Booth #8!

Yours in Tux,

Jill Bryant (jillix), Betty Chung, Sharon Lake and the rest of the
LinuxChix LA team!

Here are some of Beth Lynn Eicher’s candid pictures from SCALE 8x uploaded to Flickr

And here is my LinuxChix LA slideshow that was running on my Chumby at our LinuxChix LA Booth at SCALE 8X!:

LinuxChix LA Chumby Slideshow

Also, this is another post on SCALE 8x WIOS by Scott Ruecker at LXer.com that will fill in the gaps that our LinuxChix LA live WIOS blog post missed:

SCALE 8x: Day 1 – WIOS Talks

These are just the first SCALE pics and articles online . . . wait another few days and there will be hundreds more
To be continued . . .

/JilliX

“This is what we have, and this is what we’re going to win with.” How to be a web developer, graphic designer, u/i research, sysadmin team, as one person.

• Plan and prioritize your site goals and organize your plan of attack accordingly.
• Version control is necessary (!) even as a one-person developer.
• Set realistic time milestones
• Accept and move on when you’re not PERFECT.

.

Notes: Cheap and easy U/I feedback. Buy a bunch of non-geek friends a pizza and watch them tear your site apart. Find the community in which you can ask/receive help … LUGS, Regional events, IRC.

Pitfalls for the solo web team include featurtis creep … feature curve -> too many features can actually diminish usability.

Observation: Finding it easier as a female to ask another female for help. RTFM issues. Discussion on gender hiding, yes, it happens for various reasons.

Some resources: drupalchix, phpwomen, .51, women who tech.

Multidisplinary approach draws from resources in other fields. Quick poll … how many came from a non-tech field into tech? Many. (Flosspols point of interest … acknowledge non-coding contributions as just as valuable as code contributions as a way on increasing diversity.)

KD personal path … came from art field and followed inclination into web development, and here she is.

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Sarah Mei

Gender activitism in Ruby started with RubyCon in SF … presentation would have been different with 150 men/150 women as opposed to 292 men/6 women ration. Increasing gender diversity means changing the environment by changing the ratio.

1 year ago 2% women, this year 18%, target 50%

Process in Ruby community: Set goals, Do events, Cultivate people. All three necessary, most just focus on ‘Do Events’. Important to work on attainable goals, i.e, increase participation for monthly meetings. Picked specific target, 1) women who were not programmers, but worked at companies who were tech focused, and tech women who have been out of the workforce for a period of time and were looking to update skill sets.

Logistics tips: Offer childcare. Technical women are more likely to have a technical spouse (Anita Borg Inst statistic) and would be likely to attend same events. Just the fact that it’s offered sends positive message -> low cost high signal message. Social component important … after party incorporates women into wider community.

Visibility -> put name on events makes a difference, contribute to mailing lists, and do talks.

Expected outcome: After year more women have attended monthly meetups, and more women at events.
Unexpected outcome: mailing list activity has picked up with more signal than noise., more interesting talks, more women giving talks, and MEN are feeling more comfortable in not knowing everything. (Guess not wanting to appear ‘dumb’ is one of those universal traits , and events have become more newbie friendly.

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Rikki Kite
Pretty In Print
Associate Publisher, Linux New Media

10 Tips for Getting Published

1. Don’t be afraid!
2. Writing samples optional
3. Know your topic
4. Know your publication
5. Know your editor
6. Write
“Don’t try to be clever. You use Linux so you already are clever. Write about the trivial things . . .”
“Revise, Revise, Revise!” –Rikki Kite
7. Submit . . . & wait
8. Be clear on compensation
9. Know your rights
“Review your freelance agreement carefully.” –Carla Schroder
10. Repeat

One of the comments to the article reads

Subject: An average male nerds take on this. “Hmmm…could it be that the low numbers of women in software in general is that most women, not persons, but women, happen to be not interested in this particular field?”

And I’m so freaking tired of “women aren’t in X profession because they are not interested,” horsesh*t. Eerily similar to this which “explains” why women didn’t need the vote.

Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by man and woman in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence than ours. Grover Cleveland, 1905

Women ARE interested in open source development. Really. Women wouldn’t be so frustrated with, in its best light, the overall lack of gender diversity in the open source community if we weren’t interested in open source. Really. Women, and some men, continue to talk about the sexism that exists in FLOSS because sexism poses a barrier to participation by women in open source. Really.

In the U.S., the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was created under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to enforce Federal anti-discrimination laws. The EEOC defines sexual harassment as a form of sex discrimination. Per the EEOC definitions of sexual harassment can include:

• The harasser can be the victim’s supervisor, an agent of the employer, a supervisor in another area, a co-worker, or a non-employee.
• The victim does not have to be the person harassed but could be anyone affected by the offensive conduct.
• Unlawful sexual harassment may occur without economic injury to or discharge of the victim.

What does this have to do with women’s participation, or lack thereof, in Open Source software? Can you imagine this post by a Debian developer being distributed via a company’s email system to his coworkers? I suspect not. And why? Because it could be used to establish a pattern of sexual harassment and thus fall under EEOC guidelines of sex discrimination.

Businesses, including (most) proprietary software companies, work to prevent and eliminate workplace discrimination, including discrimination based on sex, and generally have policies and procedures in place to deal with allegations of sexual harassment. EEOC guidelines for sexual harassment policy include:

Prevention is the best tool to eliminate sexual harassment in the workplace. Employers are encouraged to take steps necessary to prevent sexual harassment from occurring. They should clearly communicate to employees that sexual harassment will not be tolerated. They can do so by providing sexual harassment training to their employees and by establishing an effective complaint or grievance process and taking immediate and appropriate action when an employee complains.

Now, the ummmmmmmmmmmm part. Remember, proprietary software has 25% woman developers and Open Source software has less then 2% of woman contributors.Think there’s a link?

P.S.
Kudos go out to the Ubuntu development community for establishing a Code of Conduct by which contributors are expected to adhere.

It is no secret that a deep chasm based on gender currently exists in the computing fields. A recent article in the NYTimes entitled What Has Driven Women Out of Computer Science? noted a trend up in all technical fields, with the notable exception of computer science, which is trending down. And this is fairly recent. According to the article:

“At least we know one thing: it’s possible to have about the same number of men and women in computer science classes. That just about describes classrooms of 25 years ago.”

The visibility of women in open source communities is even more dismal. According to the 2006 Free/Libre/Open Source Software: Policy Support (FLOSS-POLS) report, a mere 2% of women are active in open source projects as compared to a 25% participation rate in proprietary software development. (The FLOSS-POLS report will be discussed in more depth with later posts.)

Why? There is no easy answer, but there can be no answers at all, easy or otherwise, if the question isn’t asked. And in asking the question, the hope is to increase both the visibility and participation of women in all aspects of  open source development while at the same time exploring the strength, the knowledge, the commitment, and the diversity that women can bring to the community.

Let’s ask, let’s explore.

A Little Something that all of us LinuxChix Love

Thought everyone might like this pic

Also, like the new theme for our blog Sharon!

/JilliX