Since joining the group well over a year ago, and having become an active member, I’ve seen it grow both in numbers and in an unmeasurable way where we help newcomers join and get active within the larger Ubuntu community. Within such a community, we have vast and varying degrees of opinions on matters, but I think that can be said about most groups in Open Source? The project has ran pottering along in the past, it existed, some people knew about it, it had some activity. In the last few months, it seems to have consumed some caffinated injection of life and now loads more people are helping where they can and jumping two feet into the project and taking on board tasks, asking for help, delegating and working together as a team.
During, UDS Lucid, we had 3 sessions. They were long thought provoking and in many ways I found them mentally draining. It was worth it. A plan came from it, we’ve had a good meeting after this on IRC, more discussion on the mailing list and now, now we’re getting closer to having a leader of the project. All of this is change, and change is good, I’m not saying the old way was bad nor did it not work. I’m stating it’s good to try new approaches to things and see if they make a difference, review them, and change where necessary.
We do look to encourage more female members of the community to join us, either via IRC, the mailing list or the Forums. The project is not IRC based, and I do worry at times, people think that’s the only way to take part in the team, and also this can be seen as a barrier to joining, if people don’t want to or like to use IRC. We need to remember the Ubuntu community is LARGE, spread across many countries and languages, for example, while I speak French, there is no way I’d be able to join a French channel, or I’d be lost. The same can be said about any English channel. With this in mind we’re actually working on a document at present to define the role of our IRC channel within the team.
Again, there are other areas of the team that people don’t know about, we have a great Resource page, helpful hits on IRC, but also the #ubuntu-women channel , Projects that we’re involved in and how you can get more involved. There are many of us involved in the project, Interviews have been written on some of us and I do know there are more to come, If you want to meet more of us, get to know us, and find someone in your area of interest see who is active in the team.
As I said, we’ve come a long way and there is lots more we want to do, and 2010 is going to be a fun packed year, so please encourage your team mates, you LoCo community team members to join us! I did get a giggle out of this, I for one could never be considered a poster child for anything, but Elky did up a great poster for the Ubuntu women project which is also on our resource page. So Thank you! I’m a poster child !
Ubuntu Women - UDS Lucid Dallas November 2009
