[IndiChix] [IndiChiz] Notes from LCIN talk at FOSSkriti

[Ankita Garg]

Hello All,

Apologize for the delay in sending this report on LCIN talk at IIT, Kanpur.
But better late than never ;-) This report covers only the parts relevant to
LCIN.

The talk was scheduled for 3 PM on the 16th. The organizers had popularized
the event by pasting the LCIN poster in and around the girls hostel.
Besides, there were a number of women participants expected from other
colleges. There was also a stall dedicated to LCIN. So considering this, we
were expecting a significant women participation for the talk. I would be
wrong if I say we were not disappointed. But at the same time, I am happy to
say that the talk was well attended and the discussion that got kicked-off
post talk, was very nice and useful. There were about 15 women and 20-25 men
participants.

Here are some of the suggestions and issues that were raised by the
attendees.


   - Some folks raised a concern that women are more skeptical to play
   with or experiment with something new like Linux. Unlike guys, they would
   not want to go through the ordeal of installing linux and using that as
   their primary desktop. A guy said that he had told his friend (a girl) to
   try out linux. But she refused saying that she didnt want to waste her time
   in doing that and it was no use to her. She had a notion of it being a tough
   thing to achieve. Also, even if some of his friends did get started with
   Linux, they did not stay there for too long and quickly switched back. So
   can't we do anything that would encourage them to use Linux?

*Solution: *A suggestion was to have *install fests* and more *intro to* *linux
sessions*. When we go out to colleges to talk about LCIN, we could have a
10-15 minutes section devoted to how one could _actually_ get started. We
could just demo the installation process in brief or show them a video on
the same (sure we can search on YouTube for such videos). Also, these videos
could be linked from the wiki for future ref. Every LCIN talk should have
tips to get started.


   - There were a number of people interested to find out about the
   number of women members in LCIN (no. of women members on the mailing list,
   no. of active women members on the mailing list) as against the men. Am not
   too keen on the comparison aspect, but it would be nice if the list admins
   could from time  to time keep the group updated on the membership count, the
   milestones reached in terms of numbers, etc. This is just for the feel good
   factor and morale boosting.


   - Next is the issue that has been in our radar for quite sometime but
   has not received much attention, that of the 'Chix' terminology. There were
   folks who were not too happy about this name being used, as in India
   atleast, it is not always used in a positive connotation and is frowned
   upon. I agree with Runa here, that though we want to leverage and build upon
   the brand image of LinxChix.org, it would be great to have an Indian
   touch/flavor to it. Will greatly help in improving the perception of the
   group in general janta's minds. Many folks, including, Gayathri, Priti and
   others have brought it up from time to time. Guess we take this up a little
   more seriously :-)


   - There was a question on how do we plan to encourage women to
   participate in various FOSS projects? If we agree with the fact that some
   mailing lists are not sensitive towards women, do we have a plan in place to
   help women manage this? Have we gathered the do's and dont's of
   participation ? Do we have the support infrastructure in place?


   - One person from a college near Kanpur wanted us to conduct more
   sessions and workshops in different colleges (which we have started already
   though).


   - There was some confusion regarding male participation in the group.
   If we say that men are welcome, what is expected of them? What would be
   their role on the mailing list or the group in general? Behavior wise as
   well.


   - Some felt the need to not restrict the group activities to only big
   cities and not ignore the small ones. They suggested on establishing
   networks in small cities, having a contact point for it and closely
   co-ordinating the activities.


   - Then there was a suggestion that we have had before, that is to have
   LCIN community/group on sites lies sunsilk gang of girls, orkut, facebook
   and other social networking sites where a large number of women hang out.
   This will enable us in reaching far greater number of women.


   - Another important and valuable suggestion was to host tutorials on
   various topics on the wiki. If not composing them from scratch, it would be
   nice to put up a collated list of existing tutorial links on different
   topics. A consolidated list of projects that one could contribute towards
   would also help. This would help in a new comer to quickly get going.

So that is it. I hope not missed anything :-) Looking at the above, we do
have quite a bit of action items that we need to address. Would love to have
a discussion on the above items with folks and chalk out exact work items.

Thoughts?

Thanks for reading this far.

Regards,
Ankita


p.s: The link to pics has already been posted by Runa.
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