Category: PlanetGNOME

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Should women stay on the technical track?

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

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

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

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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How are you helping GNOME to be web aware?

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

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

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

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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Book Review: Dragon Keepers & Dragon Haven

A couple of weeks ago I asked for recommendations for dragon books. Then I was flipping through my Kindle books (I download a lot of free ones from Amazon) and I saw Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobb. Amazon gave it away for a while and I downloaded it and never read it. I read it and I loved it. So I went to buy the sequel. I was quite willing to pay $9.99 – it’s still in hardback – for it but when I discovered it was $15 for a digital version I decided I wasn’t buying it. I checked all the local libraries and ended up on the waitlist. Last Saturday I was up in Fort Collins to meet friends and I found a copy in the Fort Collins library. I made my 3 year old run upstairs with me to make sure we got to it before any one else snagged it. I have to say I enjoyed Dragon Haven as much as the first book.

I feel like there’s been a lack of really good new science fiction and fantasy books (that aren’t about vampires and werewolves) and Dragon Keeper & Dragon Haven by Robin Hobb was just what I was craving.

Why did I enjoy it?

  • It’s definitely a fantasy book. There are dragons and people genetically change by either the world or the dragons. A what if book.
  • There’s life on the river – and I’m always fascinated by people living on water.
  • It’s got lots of different societies and social classes and I’m fascinated by how classes and societies interact. Robin Hobb also does a good job creating societies affected by having to live in trees and suffering from lots of genetic birth defects.
  • While it’s a fantasy book, things seemed based on science. It seems like it could be life on another planet or genetically altered life.
  • The character development is pretty good. There are lots of interesting characters, some more developed than others. Some a bit more naive (too naive?) than others. But all interesting. And some tension and romance thrown in for good measure.
  • There’s lots of strong female characters. I enjoy reading books about women and science fiction and fantasy books with strong female characters are less common than those with strong male characters. I think it’s one of the reasons that many of my favorite science fiction authors are women. (I also enjoy books with strong male characters. But it reminds me of this post I saw today. 64% of girls and 100% of boys draw scientists as men.)
  • There’s adventure – they are on a quest!
  • There’s intrigue, sabotage and mystery.

So if you like fantasy books and books about dragons, I recommend Dragon Keeper and Dragon Haven.

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Stormy’s Update: June 14th-July 12th

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?

My weekly update routine has been broken. I used to write my update every Monday morning. However, now when I sit down on Monday morning I usually have several hundred unread messages. So I am working on a new routine for writing my updates. (And trying to figure out if I’m getting more email than normal or more email on weekends or what.) In the mean time, here’s what I’ve been up to:

  • Had an interview with James Turner as a prelude to my OSCON keynote.
  • Participated in several GNOME Asia Summit planning meetings. The conference is coming along well!
  • Had regular 1:1’s with Brian Cameron.
  • Had regular 1:1’s with Rosanna Yuen.
  • Attended board meetings. Participated in board discussions.
  • Worked on setting up lightning talks on web services and free software for OSCON.
  • Worked on setting up lightning talks on Getting Things Done in GNOME for GUADEC.
  • Helped with GUADEC planning stuff mostly budget, sponsors and some general planning. We had some last minute staff changes as one staff member got too ill to continue.
  • We did a joint press release with Sugar Labs as the new OLPC will also have GNOME on it. (Sugar also uses GNOME technologies.)
  • Contacted all the groups that submitted bids to host the Desktop Summit 2011, sent them our questions and asked them to update their bids and make them public. Ended up with two bids. The boards (KDE and GNOME) will now interview them.
  • Had a couple of meetings with GNOME advisory board members. I hope to catch them all in person 1:1 during GUADEC.
  • Sent out several emails about the GNOME Training at GUADEC to our advisory board members. Several expressed interest in getting it incorporated in their regular corporate training.
  • Attended the Transfer Summit. Gave a talk on GNOME, attended a Foundations BOF and lots of interesting discussions.
  • Worked on signing up a new GNOME advisory board member. To be announced later. 😉
  • GNOME was accepted into the YouTube nonprofit program. Stay tuned for what we do with that space. Probably starting with GUADEC and taking off with GNOME 3.
  • And answered the kazillion emails, IMs and IRCs. So feel free to ping me if you have questions!