[UbuntuWomen] Meeting Notes for Jan 11/12

Sat Jan 13 03:25:21 UTC 2007

I spent some time putting together notes from our meetings yesterday.
The following text is also posted on the wiki, where you can also
download a log of the entire day:

http://wiki.ubuntu-women.org/Meetings/20070111

The next meeting will be held in two weeks, on January 25th at 13:00 and
1:00 UTC.

- Lyz/pleia2

= Ubuntu-Women IRC Meeting January 11th-12th GMT 2007 =

This first meeting was a bit of a meet-and-greet with other women using
Ubuntu. We are excited to report several women new to the channel
dropped by!

As such, much of the conversation was getting to know each other and
discussing ways in which we use Ubuntu

== Session 1: 15:00 UTC, January 11th ==

This session was quite an international one! We had people from:
Philippines, Portugal, United States, France, Canada, India

Topics discussed:

 * Using Ubuntu with [http://www.parallels.com/ Parallels]

 * Why we chose Ubuntu: 

  * bapoumba commented saying "the philosophy, the stability, no
  viruses"

  * Nightrose explained that she chose kubuntu "because of its community
  and the idea behind it all"

  * ambimom said "I chose ubuntu because I tried a couple of other
  distros and nothing else booted on my laptop" (Seems like all that
  hard work on the installer paid off!)

 * Sexism on UbuntuForums. As with many forums in the F/OSS world, many
 of us have encountered sexism. Bapoumba mentioned that moderators on
 the forums look out for sexism and deal with it when it is
 discovered.

 * General excitement about connecting with other women using Ubuntu

dinda (who spearheaded the organization of these meetings) joined the
discussion around 16:00 and began working to direct conversation. She
began with a quick statement detailing the point of this meeting (and
others to come): 

'' "Basically we're trying to get this group a few projects so we can
start to help with the greater community" ''

 * Loco Teams - Should Ubuntu-Women be considered a
 [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoTeams Loco team]?

  * Two types of Loco teams: Localized based on country/city/area &
  Project based teams - Obviously Ubuntu-Women would the one of the
  latter

  * Becoming a Loco team gives us access to certain resources

  * Since there is overlap between -women and other groups, there is
  fear of duplicate effort

  * Susana piped up to say she is involved with the Loco team in her
  area

 * dinda explained that the Ubuntu-Women project currently has "lots of
 helpers and few chiefs - a good problem to have" she outlined a major
 goal of the group right now is to get organized and start tackling
 small projects within the Ubuntu community

 * [http://linuxchix.org/ LinuxChix.org] was mentioned as a fantastic
 resource for women globally and locally - indeed, many of the
 organizers of Ubuntu-Women and early members are part of LinuxChix

 * cyberix brought up discussion at Debconf about the low participation
 rate of women in Debian/Ubuntu but had to unfortunately report that
 no conclusion as to how to solve it was arrived at. Many people still
 believe that it's because "women just aren't interested in these
 things"

 * After hitting himself for playing to stereotypes, cyberix added: "I
 feel Ubuntu is probably more atractive to women thatn many other
 operating systems" and that it's more attractive to him as well,
 "Mainly because it concentrates on user experience and not bits" - to
 which ulinskie eventually replied "what I like most about ubuntu is
 the humanness itself that it promote"

 * meatballhat joined the conversation with a comment about how
 important the development of the group is to him as, in his words
 "most of my peers that I've converted to Ubuntu are women, including
 my wife and sisters"

== Session 2: 3:00 UTC, January 11th ==

Many of the attendees at this meeting were from the United State
(Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Texas, Colorado) but also included a woman
from the Philippines and another from Australia

 * dinda and pleia2 discussed the IRC channel

  * IRC channel was previously owned by a forum member who is no longer
  involved with the project

  * pleia2 tracked down owner and became contact for channel due to her
  willingness to take responsibility for it and extensive experience
  with IRC

  * Susana and LadyFrost became the two other Ops (mods) for the channel
  due to their involvement with the channel and the project

  * Currently we have no "process" for adding new Ops to the channel

  * We would like more help with moderating the channel, due to "real
  life" obligations the 3 ops cannot always be around to handle
  problems in channel

  * pleia2 will be putting together a course to train existing and
  potential channel ops

 * We need to work toward more women taking leadership positions in the
 group becoming Ubuntu Members, pleia2 mentioned that she
 [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Pleia2 has an Ubuntu wiki page] and is
 considering applying within the next year as her experience with the
 project grows

 * dinda's suggestion for getting the Ubuntu-Women project moving
 forward more was choosing a small project and gathering women in the
 group together to work on it in a "safe" environment with
 encouragement and help from each other

 * dinda discussed her thoughts on making an Ubuntu-Women HCI team

  * A quick rundown of HCI (Human Computer Interaction) was discussed

  * dinda explained that the art team currently needs people testing
  their themes

  * dinda has worked on an
  [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Human_Computer_Interaction HCI Page on the
  Ubuntu Wiki]

  * dinda said her reasons for moving Ubuntu-Women into tackling this
  project was: "it really won't take alot of technical skills and it's
  an area that really need some dedicated help" additionally, "we're
  not necessarily looking for folks to have an HCI background, just be
  willing to do some testing for us"

  * It is thought we can develop this project now and do a little work
  on feisty and then have a more well-structured base for tackling
  this in future releases

  * It was decided we'd like to organize a core team to work with the
  Artwork and Desktop teams

 * dinda suggested we should have some specs proposed for the next
 Conference

  * dinda quickly explained the specs process, and what they are

  * pleia2 offered up a link to current
  [https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+specs Ubuntu specs]

  * dinda encouraged others to develop and submit specs

 * The importance of developer summits was discussed, as were
 sponsorships to attend the summits - elkbuntu is a woman who was in
 channel who benefited from a sponsorship because of her Loco work!

 * There was casual discussion about the important women already working
 within the Ubuntu project

 * In order not to lose momentum, it was decided that the first few
 meetings should be every two weeks, with meetings after that going to
 monthly

 * Our next meeting will be January 25th at 13:00 and 1:00 UTC

 * dinda mentioned that she's going to the pilot for the Ubuntu Sys
 Admin course Jan. 28th

 * mchua mentioned that she doesn't currently have a lot of time, but
 "if there are any low-key short-term tasks that pop up I'll try to
 jump on them"

  * dinda confirmed that she will be developing such a list: "the hope
  is to develop a type of "job jar" list so folks can go to one
  webpage, sign up for a task and get it done" 

  * Nursegirl agreed it was a good idea "Particularly if there's both
  coding and non-coding job lists"

  * dinda said "task one will be:  "Develop a web page that has all
  these tasks listed"!"

 * It was brought up that we might also want to have a suggestion wiki
 for things people need mentoring on, as dinda said "Like 'Mentor
 Dinda on how to be an IRC Op/Moderator'"

 * The Ubuntu-Women.org website was discussed - we need to contact the
 admins to get edits made and things with the wiki done.

-- 
Elizabeth Bevilacqua // Lyz at PrincessLeia.com
http://www.princessleia.com