[Kde-women] Women's outreach BoF at Akademy?

[Claudia Rauch]

Hi all,

I think it's time for a women's outreach BoF at Akademy. I'd like your
input on this topic, whether or not you can attend.

This was triggered by reading the blog post from Sebas about the
personas created during the Next Iteration workspaces sprint last week
[1] I was wondering how a bunch of guys can create a female user
persona. Of course, the female persona, Carla, likes " convenience of
technology but is mostly interested in how it improves her life, not
for the sake of technology". Knowing the people involved, I'm sure
they meant well :). But it also shows that we need to improve our
female quote within the community, not only for the sake of diversity
but to ultimately also broaden our user base.

Lately, there has been a great deal of buzz about how and why to get
more women into tech [2], [3] and [4] are just some examples. One
common conclusion is that you need role models to get more girls and
women involved, and that seems very reasonable. There are a few
initiatives around like the GNOME Foundation women's outreach program
or a German initiative to get more female speakers for Tech/Geek
events which is a list of women in tech that are willing to speak at
events (common excuse of organizers: we do not know enough women that
we could invite to speak at events).

I'm personally part of a women's network here in Berlin, called Berlin
Geekettes, and participated in two Railsgirls workshop that aimed at
teaching women how to code [5]. I find a great deal of solidarity and
positive energy in these groups and events and would love to see this
happen in KDE as well. I don't think we suffer from the "brogrammer"
phenomenon [6], but we can surely do more :).

BTW, there are also a lot of companies investing in women's outreach
programs, so this could even be a way to get more funding.

And one more question: I'd also like to invite guys to the BoF. What
do you think?

Thanks and very much looking forward to your feedback,
Claudia


P.S: even more food for thought: [7], [8].

[1] http://vizzzion.org/blog/2012/06/plasma-personas-carla-and-raj/
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUvRPmL61SI
[3] http://news.cnet.com/8301-31322_3-57431869-256/why-we-need-to-keep-talking-about-women-in-tech/?tag=postrtcol%3Bposts
[4] http://www.fastcompany.com/1836031/can-tech-companies-continue-to-innovate-with-no-women-at-the-table
[5] http://railsgirls.com/
[6] http://www.motherjones.com/media/2012/04/silicon-valley-brogrammer-culture-sexist-sxsw
[7] http://geekfeminism.org/2012/05/21/how-i-got-50-women-speakers-at-my-tech-conference/
[8] http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/researcher-reveals-how-%E2%80%9Ccomputer-geeks%E2%80%9D-replaced-%E2%80%9Ccomputergirls%E2%80%9D

-- 

Claudia Rauch
Business Manager
KDE e.V.
Linienstr. 141
10115 Berlin
Germany
Phone: +49 (0) 30 2023 7305 0
Fax: +49 (0) 30 2023 7305 9
Mobile: +49 178 522 3086

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please see http://ev.kde.org, and http://kde.org/