[Actionchix] first post... hello everyone!

[Mary Gardiner]

On Wed, Jan 24, 2007, Donna Benjamin wrote:
> One of the things I'd really like to hear is suggestions for strong
> women candidates to deliver keynotes at the conference?

There's a bunch of speakers, including many women, listed at
https://www.socialtext.net/speakers/index.cgi?action=category_display;category=opensource

For people who haven't been to conferences, keynotes are bigger, longer,
invited talks given special slots. They usually should be given by
experts and are often chosen to 'shake things up': that is, given
attendees a little bit of outside or alternative perspective, or even
criticism. The difficult thing about recommending them is that it's
really hard to recommend people you've never seen speak, since keynotes
are meant to be so good. But to find women for technical conferences,
you need to go outside that comfort zone a little: perhaps get videos
and the like.

Angela Beesley from Wikipedia/Wikia might be good. She has a lot of
speaking experience, and off-hand might be interesting on:
 - wiki collaboration and what it has to teach us
 - wiki communities and what they have to teach us
https://www.socialtext.net/speakers/index.cgi?angela_beesley

Danese Cooper is another possibility. She held a senior position in Sun
for quite a while, and now works at Intel. She talks on licencing
issues, and has also held a bunch of OSCON forums on women in open
source.
https://www.socialtext.net/speakers/index.cgi?danese_cooper

-Mary