[Kde-women] KDE women meeting

[Frauke Oster]

Hi!
Sorry for the late answer...


> There are also plans to have another KDE conference next year, either late 
> August and somewhere in central Europe (Netherlands, France, Germany) or in 
> late September south Europe (Spain),  but it's not decided yet.

I heard about this plans and I am glad to hear that it should be located
in central or south europe. I think a lot of developers can meet there
next year. Maybe more then this year. I hope that it will be a great
conference and that there will be made a lot of improvements.

  What about
> joining the efforts here? 
> 
> As this year we again want to have a conference part first and a one week 
> hacking session afterwards. I don't think it would be any problem to get a 
> seperate room for kde-women activities. Financial as well as human ressources 
> are very limited in KDE e.V. and I really suggest to join the meetings. 
> 
> Tell me, what you think about it.

I personally think that we should have a seperate meeting and I will
give some reasons for my opinion. I had a long discussion about the
suggestion to merge the two meetings and I see positive and negative
aspects as well. In the end I made up my mind that it would not be a
good solution for kde-women.

The kde-women meeting should have is own program and I don't think that
this would be realisable at the Conference because there will already
be a whole conference program and you won't be able to participate at
both programs. I don't think that it would be possible to get both
programs in one schedule. The kde-women meeting should get talks,
workshops and irc meetings as well. I think there will be a lot more
than this, but that has to be worked out later. This all should happen
in a special atmosphere. All women should get the chance to get known to
each other and to have a good time together and become friends. And I am
not sure, if that is possible in an atmosphere with hundred male
developers around. That is a big crowd and I don't think that the
kde-women meeting is meant like this.

I know that a lot of people fear that kde-women would become seperated
from KDE, but I don't think that a kde-women only meeting means that
this will happen. We want to invite every woman to join us and we hope 
that you all get involved with KDE. Contributors are needed in all 
sections and the kde-women meeting isn't only a meeting for women who 
already work on KDE. The goal of KDE women is still to help each other 
and we are all very glad when new women join us and we want to help them 
especially with such a meeting to get involved in KDE.

I have another reason why I think that merging the meetings isn't a good
idea. The conference includes a one-week hacking session. The
kde-women meeting should be for every woman who wants to contribute to
KDE and is interested in KDE. But that doesn't mean that all of us are
able to code. Some may want to learn coding, therefore we plan a little
workshop to find a starting point with C++/KDE/QT. Others are more
interested in translation or webdesign or writing What's This and so on. 
I hope that a lot of new women will join kde-women and start to
contribute, but they haven't to be a developer and I don't know why we
should have a whole week hacking session. I think we should use the time 
of the kde-women meeting without saying we have a one-week hacking 
session and do what we are planning.

I know that the financial part isn't easy and that the KDE e.V. has a 
financial limit. Nevertheless I would prefer a seperated meeting for 
kde-women, because it should be a kde-women meeting and not only a room 
for women activities at the conference. I think we should try to find a 
sponsor and organize the meeting seperately from the conference.

I would be glad to hear any comment and any ideas for a meeting program, 
a location or a sponsor. And I still like to get mails who is interested 
in a meeting.

Cheers,
Frauke

-- 
Frauke Oster
KDE/Kivio developer
A KDE Woman
oster at kde.org