Re: [gnome-women] The Gnome Foundation: representative?

[Clytie Siddall <clytie riverland net au>]

On 08/09/2005, at 3:06 PM, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay wrote:

> > I wonder if, firstly, we can get some stats on how many women  
> > there  are
> > in the Gnome Foundation to start with, and secondly, if we can  start
> > encouraging more women to join, and thus build up some   
> > probability that
> > we might get a woman on the board.
>
> It would be nice to see GNOME Women taking the lead in getting the
> developers to apply for membership to the GNOME Foundation. Getting a
> woman on board is not directly related to having women as members,  
> but I
> would sure love to see that happen this time around.

It would be great, wouldn't it, Sankarshan? I wonder how we can help  
make this happen ... I know the constraint is always available time,  
but maybe we can get together some names of Gnome Women, and each  
approach a few and encourage them, firstly to apply for membership of  
the foundation, and secondly, ask if they'd be interested in running  
for a place on the board, or know of anyone who would be interested.

The difficult thing about a large online community like this, with  
everyone working hard at their own aspects of it, is that we don't  
really have a whole-community view of who's involved. I have some  
picture of the translation area, where I spend most of my time in  
Gnome, but I don't really know anyone outside that, apart from  
here :), and people who appear briefly on the translation list for  
individual purposes.

I don't know how we create a central identity in the first place, let  
alone get a view of it for all of us which shows us what we, women,  
are doing in Gnome, who we all are and what we want to do. Although  
we talk of being a community, we're really an assembly of lots of  
smaller communities, so it's hard to gain interest in any issue which  
concerns the umbrella structure. How would we encourage people to  
vote for a specific candidate, in this case, a Gnome-Woman?

We need a way to reach women in Gnome, get this Gnome-Women network  
working for us. It's a terrific idea, and we're creating some  
excellent resources. (I don't mean, get it working only for this  
issue, but in general, make it not only a part of life for women in  
Gnome, but an identity, a central strength that is all of us working  
together.)

How, is another matter. :S

This is just a general ramble, not a policy of any kind. ;)  I'm  
trying to get my head around the situation. Anyone who finds pieces  
of my head, please superglue them on the appropriate mount point. ;)  
Thankyou.

from Clytie (vi-VN, Vietnamese free-software translation team / nhóm  
Việt hóa phần mềm tự do)
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/vi-VN