Tag Archives: ubuntu women

Feb4

Sin é – You win some you lose some

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Sin é – You win some you lose some
Sin é You win some and you lose some.

On the planet we’re all Ubuntu members, at least I’m pretty sure that’s the case. We voted the CC into term by selecting them and voting based on our impressions and knowledge of them +/-, 1 or 2 you get my idea.  So I fully respect their opinion, many have been around a long time, others are new and bring to it new ideas and a new view point to things.
Change  is good in any organisation or group.  You cannot function with the same people the whole time, the exception being possibly Mark Shuttleworth there on the team. However, even Mark shows the community that chage is good as he announced earlier this year than Jane Silber would be taking on the role of Canonical CEO. It can become stagnant and deadlock sometimes happens. Yes I also see the benefit for a decent length of a term. It takes time to get used to others opinions and gain from their experience and contribute back.

Recently enough I was appointed to the LoCo Council. It’s a learning curve for me, so I still run a lot of things past the others in the team as it’s good to sound ideas off them.  The re-approval process is something I’m really enjoying at present as it gives me a chance to see how other LoCo teams do things, and meet more people. Everyone does things so differently, somethings work and somethings don’t.  It’s how we learn from these that make us progress and offer solutions back to the community that really help.

At UDS Lucid the Ubuntu Women team asked for the CC’s assistance in selecting a leader for us.  It was documented well, advertised and explained -  questions were answered and dealt with.  It was posted to the list, it was voiced on IRC.

Amber was selected and I think the CC had a tough decision, it’s not your every day request, but again we chose these people so we should trust them and their experience and knowledge of the Ubuntu Community.  So  thanks CC, I’m rather happy with ye!

As I said at the beginning, Sin é you win some you lose some. I applied for the EMEA  Regional Board memberships and Jonathan  Carter (see I can spell your name right!) – was successfully chosen. So kudos to him! So I have no qualms with the CC and not being selected, you cannot win them all.
Jan10

International Women’s Day – Competition

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International Women’s Day – Competition

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!

Jan5

Ubuntu Women project growing in strength

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Ubuntu Women project growing in strength

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

Ubuntu Women - UDS Lucid Dallas November 2009