[UbuntuWomen] On becoming an Ubuntu Member

[Alan Bell]

Last Tuesday I was accepted by the EMEA regional membership board as an
Ubuntu Member, which is pretty cool. The reason I finally got round to
putting myself forward is because I wanted to understand the process a
bit better. This is some background and my current understanding of the
process, and some of my previous misunderstandings.

I have been working with others on the #ubuntu-women IRC channel to gain
an improved understanding of the proportion of women in Ubuntu to
establish firstly if there is an underrepresentation that needs to be
fixed. We found lots of anecdotal evidence to suggest there was, but not
much hard data. I was also a little unsure of the objectives of the
group, obviously to increase the numbers of women, but by how many?
Measuring the number of women in a somewhat amorphous community is a
difficult thing, who do you count? Someone who just uses Ubuntu? Do you
count my daughters who do their homework and play Frozen Bubble on
Ubuntu? Fortunately there is the Ubuntu Member process where people who
have made a sustained and significant contribution to the community are
recognised. Those who are accepted are added to a group on Launchpad so
they are nice and easy to identify. I took the list of names from
Launchpad and made a Google docs spreadsheet with the list, everyone on
the #ubuntu-women IRC channel was invited to edit the sheet and help
figure out who was female. Not an easy task, but by looking at profiles,
wiki pages, blogs, flickr photos and asking people on IRC we completed
the list. The final result was 23 women out of a total of 520 members,
or 4.42%. I have subsequently done some further analysis on the dates
people were made members and I started a page of interesting graphs and
statistics at http://wiki.ubuntu-women.org/UbuntuMembers if anyone wants
an invitation to the spreadsheets that drive the data or the
python-launchpadlib script that collects it then mail me. I would quite
like to not be the only maintainer of the data going forward.

So the membership process, it starts with filling out a wiki page about
yourself. This is not a comfortable thing to do. I started mine quite a
while ago and kept adding to it when I did something interesting - this
was probably a good idea.

Anything you do can go on your wiki page, the approval board will look
for stuff they want to see and ignore stuff they are not interested in -
more on that later.

I made no effort to do proper wiki markup on it, it was just a list of
stuff. I had no testimonials section, because I felt an empty
testimonials section would look a bit sad, this was an error - if you
have no section then there is nowhere for someone to add one. Laura
Czajkowski helped me sort this out at the last minute, which leads me on to:

Get someone to help you well in advance. Ask them if they think your
wiki page is ready. Get them to help find you testimonials (it is way
easier to ask on behalf of someone else than directly)

When your wiki page is looking reasonably full of stuff you can add your
name to the regional board agenda, but when you add your name to the
agenda don't be first in the list, let a few other people go before you.
The approval meeting goes in the order the names are added.

It is not a job interview! There is no job at stake, no money at stake,
nothing of significant value in the list of member entitlements. You are
probably not going to go through it for the incentive of receiving an
IRC cloak. You are not doing it for the published benefits but because
you are a part of the community and the procedure of the community is
that we recognise those who contribute in this way.

It is not a job interview! They are not interested in your background,
technical or otherwise. You are not being interviewed to decide whether
you are *allowed* to join the community, you are being interviewed to
see if you have *already* joined the community. This should affect the
stuff you put on your wiki page and what you say in the interview. If
you help people in IRC channels say so, if you are on various mailing
lists then say so, if you use the forums say so. If you have written
code or done some packaging that is good too, but you may be pushed
towards the MOTU process (MOTU is a nested team in Ubuntu Members)

Rejection is an option, and it isn't final. Rejection doesn't mean "go
away, you are full of fail" it means "contribute a bit more stuff,
document it better, get some more testimonials and come back in a month
or two" it is an easy option for the board to choose, they are not
missing out on the opportunity to accept you, just delaying it a bit.

Attend a few approval board sessions on IRC before you put yourself
forward - like I didn't. Figure out who on the board is the most harshly
critical, figure out what responses they like and don't like.

Make sure you have supporters in the IRC meeting who will speak up on
your behalf and mention things you have done that you have forgotten
about yourself - that really helps.

In the end, despite all my errors, I got through with only minor scrapes
and bruises. At the meeting on Wednesday 8PM UTC #ubuntu-women there is
an agenda item to discuss the stats on Ubuntu Members and whether the
group wants to influence them and what the SMART objectives
http://www.thepracticeofleadership.net/2006/03/11/setting-smart-objectives/
should be for them.


Alan