[ubuntu-uk] Women, LinuxWorld, Stuff

[Alan Pope]

On Tue, 2006-09-12 at 19:47 +0100, Adam Bagnall wrote:
>     I was thinking earlier that as far as I'm aware the LoCoTeam has no 
> female members. There must be some women in the UK who use Ubuntu?

Oh of course there are, but using it is one thing, spending time
advocating the use of it is another. I'll speak to my wife who uses
Ubuntu on her computer, but I suspect that given she gave birth to our
son under a week ago, I'd be willing to bet her answer is "no, not right
now darling" or words to that effect :).

>  I've 
> posted in the Ubuntu women section on the Ubuntu forums to see if I can 
> generate any interest. I'm sure some of you have converted 
> wives/friends/sisters/girlfriends/daughters etc.

Yes, under some small duress I converted my wife's computer from XP to
Debian some time ago then more recently to Ubuntu (for consistency
across all our machines).

>  who could get involved. 

Again, not sure she would be willing to get involved.

I have been meaning to write an article for some time about how we
converted her from XP to Linux and what obstacles were encountered.
Unfortunately it's so long ago now I've almost forgotten the early ones.

> I'm sure that if there are women who need support for Ubuntu they would 
> feel more comfortable meeting up with another woman.

Definately. We (Hampshire Linux User Group) have run a number of
InfoPoints and two women in the LUG have attended and helped run many of
them. (as a side note I know one runs Suse and the other runs Ubuntu). I
understand from speaking to them that they do indeed find people (of
both sexes) often find the women more approachable. We actually also
have some very approachable guys in the team too, but preconceptions of
visitors often means they go to the women first I guess.

>     I was also thinking that maybe it would be good to have a woman or 2 
> at the LinuxWorld booth to show that it's not just geeky men who use 
> linux? 

I'll ask on my local LUG to see if any women are willing to help.

> /me awaits inevitable comments about booth babes .
> 

I'd stay well clear of comments about booth babes. 

Cheers,
Al.