On 29 June 2016 at 15:05, Priyanka Nag <priynag(a)gmail.com> wrote:
[1] Apologies that this part wasn't well explained previously but
the list
of talks that you see on the pirate pad, mainly under the 'Getting Started
with your Fedora contribution' section are going to be flash talks for 5
mins each. Since we couldn't find existing female contributors in all of
these different contribution pathways, to share their experience with us; a
group of volunteers decided to try finding out details about these different
contribution pathways, how to get started, the related IRC channels and
mailing lists for each and finally give a 5 min presentation about their
findings. This can save the rest of the audience's effort to do a complete
research on the different contribution pathways (which is often the first
barrier in contribution) and they should have most of the data at hand to
now go back and start contributing. The FWD event was also thought of as a
first step to initiating a consistent women contributor community, where
each month we could take up one of these contribution pathways and make it
as the flavor of the month...doing some actual hands-on contribution
together for that chosen project or pathway. This can probably even be
clubbed with the monthly Fedora meetups that we have in Pune. That ofcourse
can be discussed in more details with the local ambassadors.
While getting local ambassadors in loop is useful from a logistics
and/or budget perspective, what's more important here is to reach out
to as many *existing* women contributors as possible (and as early as
possible) so that you exhaust all of your options of getting qualified
speakers (local or remote) before you resort to doing it yourself
within Red Hat by reading up the wiki pages.
[2] The new speakers can try and do some actual contributions before
the FWD
event so that they can also share their experience (and blockers) at the
event. They could also join the upcoming Fedora monthly meetup and release
party, planned on 9th July, at Pune.
I can't see how that will work in practice. It surely took me more
than 2 weeks to get myself into the various groups I am currently in,
so actually doing something useful will have to come after that. In
any case, that doesn't solve the issue I pointed out.
That said, please don't misunderstand my objection as an objection to
anybody participating in the community. My point is that people
should be encouraged to participate for the right reasons. That is,
join the community to pitch in, learn and grow and not just gain
credentials as a speaker, that too on the basis of being employed at
the company that is hosting the event.
[3] The organizers are suggested to try reach out to college students
(not
just via emails or messages, but by physically going down to colleges) since
this event can be a good place for new contributors to know how to get
started with their contribution as well as meet other existing and
experienced community members.
+1. I believe Red Hat has contacts in Cummins College for example.
They have been active in the django and/or python community in the
past IIRC, so I am sure they will look forward to the event. There
are a number of women teachers in MITCOE who I am sure will be
interested too. I'm sure there are other colleges we can reach out
to.
[4] The organizers are also suggested to do more social media posts
about
the event, so as to create more awareness around this event.
Sure, but my first point stays: please make a bigger effort to reach
out to existing women contributors to share their experiences.
[5] The new contributors and speakers can also join the Fedora
telegram
group, since not all of us are big IRC fans.
/me grumbles about these younglings not getting it...
Siddhesh
--
http://siddhesh.in