[UbuntuWomen] Mark Shuttleworth's comments

[Elizabeth Krumbach]

On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 1:39 AM, Ilavenil Thirumavalavan
<ilavenil at gmail.com> wrote:
> And, is there any action planned from the group?

Thank you for bringing up this topic on-list, Ilavenil.

There isn't an "action" as such planned at this time officially from
the team, but I'd suggest any "action" from this teamp should be in
the form of us being inspired to continue on our path of Being Awesome
so we can change the culture of F/OSS so it doesn't take thought to
avoid comments like the one he made. We should continue to be
encouraging and promote each other.

This past year has shown a spike in female involvement within the
Ubuntu project, several new female Ubuntu Members. This is a trend I
think we all want to see continue and our continued positive push
within the project will help.

Perhaps we should also push harder for more women to start speaking at
and attending conferences? In the US this year I've had very positive
conference experiences, have met a lot of really amazing women
involved with F/OSS, started speaking at conferences myself, and I
know several women in the community who are attending the Ubuntu
Developers Summit next month. However, reports I've heard from
LinuxCon have not reflected my F/OSS conference experiences this year
diversity and gender ratio wise, and I can't help but think that with
a more diverse crowd at Mark's LinuxCon talk, he might not have made
the comments he did, because doing so would have just made him look
pretty silly.

It's also important to remember that this team is made up of a very
diverse group of women, with varied opinions on what Mark said, some
who have no problem with what he said, some who were bothered but
think he's been wrongfully over-attacked, others who demand an
apology, some who see his comment as a very serious one, even some who
wish to leave the project entirely over it. If you feel passionately
about this topic one way or the other, I want to encourage you to
speak out, join the conversation, blog about it! Several members of
the team are already very engaged in the discussion. But as a whole
team I want to refrain from coming out with any official position on
this particular incident because it none can properly reflect our
member base.

Cheers.

-- 
Elizabeth Krumbach // Lyz // pleia2
http://www.princessleia.com