[UbuntuWomen] Meeting Notes for Jan 11/12

Sun Jan 14 02:43:03 UTC 2007

Great job on the notes!  My "minutes" always turn into "hours"  so I  
appreciate folks with the skill to take good meeting notes.

Several things we want to keep discussing leading up to the next IRC  
meeting including ways to add new folks into the process for  
leadership and other tasks.  I've temporarily stepped to help get  
things moving forward but just don't have time for any long-term  
commitments.  Besides, I know there are lots of folks who have better  
leadership skills than I can offer right now.

My two main take away actions that I hope to accomplish before the  
next IRC meeting are:
1.) Contact and develop a path to work with the Artwork and Desktop  
Teams
2.) Begin a dialog about how to best develop our Ubuntu-Women resources

For item #2 we had some discussion/questions as to why the  
ubuntuwomen.org has a separate wiki than the ubuntu.com wiki.  It  
seems somewhat redundant.  Can someone help fill us in, how this  
developed?  and thoughts on whether we should try to merge the info  
into the main ubuntu wiki?

Along the same line, how many folks have editing rights to the ubuntu- 
women.org website?  Is there a process in place for adding  
information or updating info?

Thanks to all who stopped by the channel.  It was great meeting so  
many interesting folks.

regards,

Dinda
(Belinda Lopez, Galveston, Texas)

On Jan 12, 2007, at 9:25 PM, Elizabeth Bevilacqua wrote:

> 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
>
> -- 
> ubuntu-women mailing list
> ubuntu-women at lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-women