[gnome-women] Round of introductions

[Marina Zhurakhinskaya <marinaz redhat com>]

Hi!

The broader free software community has restarted the discussion about women participation in open source by a series of interviews in the ROSE Blog [1], plans to host a women in free software mini-summit [2], and approaching the GNOME project about running another women outreach program [3].

Running another women outreach program is a very concrete way of getting more women contributors, and I'd like to ask you to review the current ideas for the program on the wiki and share any feedback you have.

http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWomen/OutreachProgram

This also sounds like a great time for re-vitalizing the Women in GNOME community. So I would like to propose we do a round of introductions. The first bullet point on the GnomeWomen wiki page is "providing role models by increasing the visibility of active women in GNOME" and I think it is a particularly effective way of attracting new contributors. By sharing what we love about our involvement in GNOME, we can show that it really is a women-friendly environment and serve as a starting point of contact for women who want to get involved.

Finally, please join the Women in GNOME group I created on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=118943919669

As for my introduction, I work as a software developer on the GNOME Shell project [4] at Red Hat. Working on the GNOME Shell is particularly exciting because it is the next generation of the GNOME desktop or GNOME 3. I get to code many parts of the desktop interface, weigh in on the design decisions, and make sure that our project is friendly to new contributors by updating the wiki and offering answers to anything I know about on IRC. Because GNOME Shell is a community project, I get to work with people from Red Hat and with anyone from the GNOME community who decides to contribute. Everyone is top-notch and motivated, and while people have strong opinions, they are generally polite. I have recently started blogging [5], and hope to keep my blog updated with the GNOME Shell news and posts that will encourage women to get involved in GNOME.

Now it's your turn :)!

Marina

[1] http://www.linuxpromagazine.com/Online/Blogs/ROSE-Blog-Rikki-s-Open-Source-Exchange
[2] http://www.fsf.org/news/summit-on-women-in-free-software
[3] http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWomen/OutreachProgram
[4] http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell
[5] http://blogs.gnome.org/marina