Re: [gnome-women] gnome women webpage

["Hanna M. Wallach" <hmw26 cam ac uk>]

Hi Máirín, hi everyone!

> I think we all need to have a discussion about the specific goals we'd
> like to achieve and tailor the website towards supporting that.

I agree. I think our high-level goal is pretty simple: "Encourage more
women to get involved in GNOME development."

There are a number of ways we can go about this. Personally, I'd like
to see GNOME Women be an action-oriented group. Primarily
support-based groups do (of course) serve a purpose, but I'm not
convinced that this isthe best way to actually increase women's
involvement in free software projects.

I think it's worth considering some of the things that the Debian
Women project has found to be successful, and adopting a similar
strategy. Some possible things to aim for would be:

* Role models. Greater visibility of active women.
* Mentoring.
* Tutorials held on IRC.
* Bug-squashing parties.
* Creating opportunities for collaborating with existing GNOME
  developers.
* Organising BOFs and giving talks at Linux conferences.
* Actively encouraging and educating the GNOME community to increase
  understanding of the issues facing women who wish to get more
  involved in GNOME development.

Obviously, this list of activities is likely to evolve (and hopefully
grow!) as GNOME Women becomes larger, but I think these things are a
good starting point for discussion, planning and action. 

> My thoughts were that the website, at the least, should serve as sort
> of a professional-looking "business card" that we could advertise to
> say university comp sci depts to try to recruit more women.

That sounds like a decent idea. I think the website should also serve
as a starting point for women interested in getting more involved with
GNOME. In other words, I think that tutorials, FAQs, ways people can
get involved etc. are all good things to have on the site.

> Bios I agree are also important; we should make it really easy for
> people to contact us, making our irc names and email addys visible, as
> well as our time zones and areas of specialty. :).

Absolutely!

> I think in the meantime though, while we are sorting out and
> defining our goals, we could work on a logo. I think the most
> popular idea is to emulate the debian-women venus logo,
> incorporating the gnome "G" foot rather than the debian swirl.

I think that's a good starting point. Do we have any graphic designers
on the list? If so, this'd be a great time to step forwards. :-)

> There have been ideas involving "making up" the foot, e.g. nail
> polish, toe rings, lipstick, etc., and I think a lot of them could
> be cute, but I'm worried about such logos conveying the wrong idea
> about the project. We want to be taken seriously, bottom-line.

I very much agree with this. Projects aimed at getting more women
involved in technology development are rarely taken seriously by the
existing development community, whatever it may be, if there is too
much emphasis on "cutesy" and stereotypically feminine logos etc. I'd
like to think we're about breaking stereotypes, not reinforcing them!

Regards,

-- 
hanna m. wallach
blog: http://join-the-dots.org/
work: http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/hmw26/