Czajkowski

Folks may have missed this or indeed just don’t know the new shape up for the Ubuntu Women Project.

Since UDS Lucid we’ve been working on some changes as a team, most know about the Ubuntu team leader, but also a big change was the decision to have a LOGGED CHANNEL. These came about from discussions and meetings discussing the IRC purpose, as again the team is more than IRC.

Many many conversations were happening on IRC and not on mailing list of indeed the forums.  If you weren’t on IRC you missed the information or indeed the lengthy and interesting discussions taking place.  The idea to create a logged channel means if you don’t IRC, not on IRC at the time, and perhaps you don’t run a screen session you don’t lose out on these conversations and discussions, you can catch up and read the logs like many other teams.

We now have two channels and I’d like to point out to folks to perhaps join and update their autojoin

#ubuntu-women-project is the new channel created, it is the logged channel for the Ubuntu Women Project This is the Ubuntu, technical, and project discussions take place, of course social chat is going to happen.

#ubuntu-women is the non logged channel should there be a need to discuss private issues that people may not want logged, it is also marked as the social channel.

If anyone has any questions pop onto IRC and chat to us there

Last year in Dublin I ran a Girl Geek Day event to celebrate Ada Lovelace day.  It was an afternoon of discussions where we got some feedback on issues we faced at college, in the workplace and how we thought we could help one another.

This year, the Ubuntu Women project has decided to celebrate International Women’s Day in a unique way.

International Women’s Day (IWD) is marked on March 8 every year. It is a major day of global celebration for the economic, political and social achievements of women.

Started as a political event, the holiday blended in the culture of many countries (primarily Russia and the countries of former Soviet bloc). In some celebrations, the day lost its political flavour, and became simply an occasion for men to express their love to the women around them in a way somewhat similar to Mother’s Day and St Valentine’s Day mixed together. In others, however, the political and human rights theme as designated by the United Nations runs strong, and political and social awareness of the struggles of women worldwide are brought out and examined in a hopeful manner.

What we are doing is going to collect  stories from people who are involved in the project. Everyone gets involved in different ways, and we want to hear your story.  Were you involved in your LoCo before this, a member of a different team, heard about Ubuntu in college, or were you looking for help an answers with a project you were working on.  No story is going to be there same. Your story is important to us, as a community so we can share it with others, and encourage them to join and take part.

To hear how you got involved, shows us there are numerous ways to stumble into our world and take part.  This is what we want to hear about.

Now, how do you do it, how can you take part, here’s the information, read it and do circulate it. Share it amongst your friends.

There will be two (2) prizes up for grabs. One (1) prize pack will be given to the story that the community votes is their favourite. One (1) prize pack will be given to a randomly drawn entrant. Jono Bacon, the Ubuntu Community Manager will be drawing this entrant in a videocast, and announcing both winners to the world on March 8th.

Please email your stories to ubuntuwomen.competition at gmail.com by UTC  23:59 22nd February 2010.

By submitting a story, you acknowledge that it will be posted on the Ubuntu Women website under the Creative Commons Attribution No-Derivatives [0] licence. If you prefer that your story be posted under a less restrictive licence such as Creative Commons Attribution [1] or Public Domain [2], then feel free to let us know when you submit. All stories are to be non-fiction and of a family-friendly nature. The  organisers also reserve the right to interview prospective winners over
the phone or other voice chat at their discretion.

We will celebrate International Women’s Day by announcing the winners, who will receive gift packs (which are still in negotiation — we will announce when it is confirmed!).

[0] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/
[1] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
[2] http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain

Looking forward to reading all the stories about how you got involved in Ubuntu! Remember it can be any length, it can be about anything you want, don’t feel your story has to be technical to enter! We just want to hear it from you!

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

With a large team spread over numerous time zones and commitments, it can be difficult to find a suitable time to meet.  I used doodle to find a time slot most suitable.  7 days and 15 time slots spread over a week should be enough.  We had 12/21 (though a lot more turned up ) people agree on Wednesday 9th December at 20:00 UTC.  Our meetings for future reference take place on #ubuntu-women on freenode.

With a large strong minded and vocal group such as this, it was interesting to chair.  So many opinions and comments flying about and trying to keep it in order, with moving the discussion along and due to time constraints get the big topic of Governance covered. We have outlined the path we’re hoping to taking, nominating or putting yourself up consideration to be the team lead on this project.

We have asked the CC to chose one of us, once we’ve given them the list of candidates.  The reason for this, as we need some guidance to help the team, this is the only time the CC will have input into the choosing of a leader.  As we feel for the Lucid cycle this is needed, after 6 months the role of the leader shall be evaluated.  The process has been laid out here

Moving onto the topic of a logged channel and a separate channel lead to a  heated discussion.  A lot but not all Ubuntu channels are logged.  For me, personally I think it’s good to see. It is useful for people who don’t, or cannot irc and as a lot of discussions takes place on IRC rather than IRC it’s nice to be able to go back in and read the logs.   For those who suggested asking them for their logs, I’m sorry but for a new person who don’t know you or know to even ask it’s not really an option. If you exclude members of your project just because they don’t use IRC I don’t think that’s fair or what we should be doing.

I also have no trouble in saying stuff in a logged channel, if I don’t want it to be logged I consider, do I need to say it, if so, possibly say it in pm  or rephrase what I’m going to say. The notion of not having it  logged and logs coming up when you’re googled was mentioned, again, if you feel what you’ve said is ok, then you should have no problem with this, if you feel it may come back and bite you in the ass, then don’t say it. Simple as to be honest.

This got so heated, I found people to be extremely rude and rather off putting to be honest, bar I was chairing I’d have left. If anyone took time to come to the meeting, I’d expect their thoughts, words, opinions to be listened to the same way I would yours, regardless if I agree or disagree with them.  Being rude is off putting to work with and doesn’t endear me at all.  The logs by the way for the meeting are here.  It came up in a previous IRC meeting, this channel needs to be more respectful of others opinions being expressed in here.

The idea of a second channel came up at UDS, the naming of this alone cause hair ruffling, from #ubuntu-women-safe to -asside or renaming #ubuntu-women to #ubuntu-women-offtopic. Both the topic of Logging and a second channel has been/will be taken to the mailing list for further discussion.  To be decided at the next meeting.

I’d also like to state I’ll not be nominating myself for the Ubuntu-women Leader, as I don’t feel I’d be suitable, I’d be more black and white when it comes to a lot of things and  while I feel it’s needed in some cases, I know this will also piss some people off and that’s not going to help matters. (Though sometimes, being nice and trying to please everyone doesn’t always work). I wish others the best of luck with this and will help where I can.   I feel I can better help the project by encouraging people to join and take part and help where I can.  I look forward to working with the Ubuntu women for the lucid cycle and really strengthening the project.