Should women stay on the technical track?

September 1st, 2010 in PlanetGNOME, women

When my friends and I started in our careers as software programmers, we noticed a trend. All the women who were good in their programming jobs got promoted to management, either project management or program management. We wondered why women never seemed to become architects and CTOs or even stay programmers for very long.

When I was offered a promotion into management, I took it. However, one of my friends did not. She said their were no women role models on the technical track. If we all got promoted out, then how were young women supposed to know that women could succeed as programmers and architects? She stayed a programmer.

So I’ve been really excited this year to see several women I know personally, prominent women in the free and open source software world, get high level, very technical jobs.

Congratulations to Danese Cooper who is now CTO of the Wikimedia Foundation and Allison Randal who is now the Technical Architect of Ubuntu.

I’m sure they will be great role models and mentors for both genders, but I hope young girls in particular will be influenced by seeing women in successful technical leadership roles.

(And I do see my role as technical. I don’t think someone without a programming or technical background would do as well. But I haven’t written any code or made any technical decisions other than for my own home network in a very long time, so I don’t feel like I’m showing young women that women can succeed in technical jobs, rather that they can succeed in leadership roles in technology related organizations.)

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Stormy’s Update: August 30, 2010

August 30th, 2010 in GNOME work updates, PlanetGNOME, gnome, update

This is my update for work done for the GNOME Foundation. For a higher level overview for what I do as the Executive Director, see What do I do as Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation?

During the week of July, I was at GUADEC 2010! There I attended the GNOME Board of Directors annual meeting, ran the GNOME Board of Advisors annual meeting, put together the Getting Things Done lightening talks and met with lots of people. It was a great GUADEC in a great venue with lots of good talks and conversations – we’ve been getting lots of good feedback. Kudos to the local organizing team! You can see all the videos of the talks at Flumotion’s website as it was streamed live and recorded! The videos are licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0 so please use and share them. (Flumotion was nominated for a Reader’s Choice Award for them. You can vote for them here.)

During the first week of August, I went on vacation.

Since then I’ve been trying to catch up on my Inbox, follow up on conversations, and generally make sure that I’m helping make great things happen in GNOME.

Attended LinuxCon in Boston and made a call for free (as in free software) web services. Pointed out several of the ones GNOME is working on. Ran into lots of interesting people but not enough time to talk to them all as much I’d have liked.

I met one on one with Rosanna. And Brian.

I attended board meetings. I think the new board is still figuring out who’s doing what and who’s good at what but they are coming together and their talents balance nicely.

Met with Nokia about the money they are providing to GNOME Mobile.

Tried to attend a webinar about Finances and nonprofits put on by our insurance company but had some technical difficulties. Will try again next time.

Had several interviews for magazines and blogs. Trying to push them towards other interesting GNOME people! (I do the same with speaking invitations, by the way. Which is why I’m really looking forward to the GNOME Ambassadors program.)

Had brief meetings with our attorneys and our accountant to get some clarifying information.

Attended the FSF’s women’s group meeting. (I don’t think it’s called that – that’s how I think of it. It’s a group of women in free software that are trying to make sure women know about opportunities in free software and to get more girls involved.)

Worked on the Free Software booth for Grace Hopper. Booked hotel for that.

Booked travel for Ohio LinuxFest.

Worked on getting GNOME representation at board and community level for the Desktop Summit 2011.

Finished the Q2 quarterly report with help from all the teams, Vinicius Depizzol and Vincent Untz!

Worked with LGM to help them get their reimbursements in order for LGM 2008, 2009 and 2010. (Rosanna is double checking them and processing them.)

Debating future travel. Latinoware, GNOME Forum Brazil, Desktop Summit 2011 planning meeting (how much of a role should I play in GUADEC – is it changing?), Boston Summit, … already going to Ohio LinuxFest and Grace Hopper and I’m enjoying being home for a while.

Had a meeting with LiMo, Samsung, Ryan Lortie, Alberto Ruiz and Vincent Untz at GUADEC.  To talk about GTK+ and upcoming related events.

Reviewed actual budget numbers for the year in preparation for helping with our 2011 budget. The year starts in October so now is the time to get in your requests for community events or other things you think GNOME should do in the next year.

Connected several people with great ideas with people I thought could help move them forward.

Pinged the MIT folks a few times, as did J5, and we now have rooms for the Boston Summit!

Following up with marketing team and others on numerous offers to give us pro-bono ads in magazines.

Met with a couple of advisory board members. Hoping to meet up with those I missed via phone soon.

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Putting all the Hackfest pieces together

August 26th, 2010 in PlanetGNOME, gnome, open source

Planning a hackfest is not an easy process. You need an:

  • organizer – someone willing to put some time into making the whole thing happen
  • topic – what are you going to be hacking on, what do you hope to accomplish
  • attendees – this is usually a particular group of people that work on a specific project or team
  • date – have you ever tried to schedule a multi-day meeting with multiple people? Agreeing on a week can be really hard.
  • place – a place with affordable lodging and food with a comfortable place to hack with great internet. Preferably some place easy and cheap to travel to.
  • sponsors – flying a group of people to the same place often costs quite a bit of money

Luckily we’ve had people and companies willing to invest the time and resources to make this happen. During the past year we’ve had a record number of very productive hackfests and we have even more coming up!

And we have more opportunities! Not only are a lot of teams looking to have hackfests in the near future but we have people offering up venues!

  • Dave Richards from the City of Largo is interested in hosting a hackfest. Many of you know Dave from his participation in the Boston Summit. The City of Largo is a big GNOME fan – they use a lot of thin client solutions.
  • Daniel Siegel has once again offered up Bolzano and the Free Software Center of South Tyrol as a GNOME hackfest location in conjunction with their annual event in November. It’s a beautiful location and we’ve had several successful GNOME hackfests there over the years like the Zeitgeist one. This year all of the groups that I’ve contacted can’t make the dates work, so if you know of a team looking for a venue, this might be right for you!

So if you are interested in organizing a hackfest, please let us know. The GNOME Foundation is here to help – we can help find sponsors, venues, mentors, checklists, etc. The Board of Directors have even offered to act as mentors for any one planning a hackfest!

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GNOME Foundation hosting free web services

August 23rd, 2010 in PlanetGNOME, gnome, webapps

The GNOME Foundation is hosting free web services.

As you probably already know, the GNOME Foundation is hosting Tomboy Online which is in an invite only alpha right now.

We also have a public instance of a Gobby server running, so you can edit documents real time with others by pointing Gobby at gobby.gnome.org! When we update to the new protocol, you will also be able to collaboratively edit in gedit. Gobby runs on Windows, Mac, Linux and other Unix like operating systems.

For those of you that easily host your own Gobby servers, this may not seem like a big deal. But for those of us that groan at the thought of figuring out how to host a server of any kind, keep it running and answer questions from others, well, this makes it a lot easier for us to use the free software services that are out there!

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Kids on Computers is officially a 501(c)(3)!

August 18th, 2010 in kidsoncomputers

I got back from GUADEC and was ecstatic to find a letter from the IRS saying that Kids on Computers is officially a US federal 501(c)(3) organization!!!

It’s retroactive to February 25, 2009. (We have been a Colorado nonprofit since our start but this gives us federal status.)

Having 501(c)(3) status will enable us to qualify for more grants and programs targeted at nonprofit organizations. It also helps establish people’s trust (they know you are doing a public good) and enables some people to deduct their donation from the money they pay taxes on.

Many thanks to Serena Robb who filled out all the paperwork for us! It was her first time filling out a 501(c)(3) federal application and she did a lot of research to make sure she got it right.

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Lake Powell

August 16th, 2010 in Personal, Travel

In case you were wondering where I was the week of August 2nd, here are some pictures. 14 of us spent the week on this boat. (The one in the background!) 6 adults, 4 teenagers, 3 ten year olds and 1 three year old. We had what we’d brought along and the lake and the surrounding country side for entertainment and subsistence. I was really excited to be going as it’s something I’ve wanted to do since I moved to Colorado 15 years ago.

We had an absolute blast. The scenery is beautiful. All desert colors. Lots of cliffs and canyons. Even some Indian ruins – which after our hazardous climb up we wondered how in the world they got food and water to their cliff dwellings.

The favorite activities of the week were fishing and combat tubing. (And just hanging out talking and taking in the scenery.)

If you haven’t seen Lake Powell, I highly recommend it. If you aren’t into boats, there are parts you can drive to. It was absolutely beautiful.

In an ironic twist of fate, my cell phone was the only one that didn’t work on the lake, so I really was on vacation!

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How are you helping GNOME to be web aware?

August 9th, 2010 in PlanetGNOME, gnome

Thursday I’ll be giving a keynote at LinuxCon. I’m talking about your desktop, the web and your data. If you are working on a GNOME project that integrates the web with the desktop (or plans to), and would like to spread the word about it, please let me know!

Ideally you’d send me:

  • a brief description of your project and how it interacts with the web or web apps
  • a screen shot
  • issues or concerns that you’ve had either about how the desktop, the web and data integrate or about how user freedom is preserved

I can’t promise to include them all but I’d love to highlight what GNOME people are thinking about and working on.

Thanks!

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Why I wear suits

July 27th, 2010 in Business, Career, PlanetGNOME

Photo by thinkpanama http://www.flickr.com/photos/23065375@N05/2247354856/

I’ve struggled with business dress for a long time. It’s inconvenient (requires ironing), complicated (business casual dinner for a woman?) and it’s often uncomfortable (why don’t women’s suits have pockets??)  It’s even harder now that I work with people that are more likely to show up naked than show up in a suit.

I don’t care what people wear, and I’d much rather be wearing sweat pants, so why do I ever wear a suit?

I finally figured it out.

I do not want my clothes to make an impression for me.

I dress to not stand out. (At least when doing business.)

If someone at a business meeting is going to remember something about me, I don’t want it to be my clothes. I want it to be the idea I was talking to them about. So if they expect me to be wearing a suit, I want to show up in one, so they don’t even notice it. If they are expecting me to wear khaki’s, then that’s what I want to be wearing. So that my ideas get 100% of their attention.

And I’ll wearing my sweats as soon as I get home …

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Stormy’s Update: Week of July 19, 2010

July 26th, 2010 in GNOME work updates, PlanetGNOME, update

Tomboy Online on the big screen at OSCON. Photo by PaulScott56 http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulscott56/4815513721/

OSCON! Gave “Pick up the Poop” keynote that was a call to all those who care about free software to start thinking about our freedoms when it comes to web services.

At OSCON I was on a panel about financial incentives in open source.  I met a couple of people from Malaysia involved in promoting free software there. After mentioning them in many talks, it was great to actually meet them!

Also at OSCON, organized web services and free software lightning talks and met with many people including Jennifer Minor from Venier – they use GNOME in educational scientific devices. Went out with GNOME folks organized by Sri Ramkrishna!

Traveled to the Hague to attend GUADEC next week. (As well as to OSCON and back. Quite a bit of travel for one week!)

Attended GNOME Board Meeting in the Hague on Sunday. It was a very productive day. We got through a very impressive agenda discussing many issues from bank accounts to hackfests to annual goals. Look for the minutes after GUADEC for more details.

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Stormy’s Update: Week of July 12, 2010

July 19th, 2010 in GNOME work updates, PlanetGNOME, update

This is my update for work done for the GNOME Foundation. For a higher level overview for what I do as the Executive Director, see What do I do as Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation?

Organized GNOME Advisory Board meeting to discuss topics and plan for our in person meeting at GUADEC. We meet all day on Tuesday. We’ll have some updates and we’ll give each of the advisory board members a chance to present ideas on where we can all collaborate. Set up and sent out agenda for the GUADEC meeting.

Attended GNOME Asia meeting.

Briefly met Amanda from Project Harmony. Will catch up with her at LinuxCon.

Arranged travel for LinuxCon. Reserved hotel for Grace Hopper.

Submitted some expense reports.

Attended GNOME Board of Directors meeting.

Had 1:1 with Rosanna.

Met with a few advisory board members 1:1.

Followed up with some sponsor work for GUADEC. Had a bunch of brief discussions about various issues. Had a meeting to discuss the format of the Open Desktop Day at GUADEC. (Open as in not closed, as opposed to open software instead of free software.)

Prepared for OSCON. (Keynote, panel, organizing lightning talks, arranged meetings, etc.)

Set up interviews with the KDE and GNOME boards for the people that submitted bids to host the Desktop Summit 2011.

Had some good quality family time.

This week:

  • Attending OSCON: Keynote, panel and organizing lightning talks plus several get togethers and meetings.
  • Traveling to The Hague.
  • Working on LinuxCon keynote.
  • Last minute GUADEC preparations.
  • Missing my family.

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