[IndiChix] Notes from LCIN talk at FOSSkriti

[Vid Ayer]

On 2/24/08, Gayathri Swaminathan <gayathri.swa at gmail.com> wrote:
> 1. How to encourage new comers to FOSS activities - newbies just entering
> FOSS world. How to step them into it?

Yup, interesting. From what I have seen people pick up tasks they are
interested in ..so maybe we need to ask people :: what is it that you
like? Which area of FLOSS interests you and where would you like to
contribute and/or make a difference?


> 3. Who are the mentors - Should they be identified IndiChix advisors or
> should be based on international active participation per FOSS project?

I am not sure I understand this wholly, but to give an example...
while writing an article or editing stuff for the fridge I would like
help from others sometimes but cannot provide access to non-editors
and most times its  timebound, so endup doing tasks myself (same for
other eds). Ofcourse we would always love to have *more*
submissions/stories from everyone (Ubuntu related articles please) but
usually we endup doing it ourselves.



> We do have this block
> http://linuxchix.org.in/wiki/index.php/Main_Page#Volunteering in our site.
> Think it is time to start identifying point of contacts for each type of
> activity.

If one is working on a specific task
(devel/artwork/documentation/....) and is actively seeking
contributors for it, they can list that on the wiki page.  As far as
collaborating on peer projects goes, it would be better to encourage
women/newbies/anyone to the appropriate list for *-project. Say for
Ubuntu, we have seperate lists, irc channels and forums for  Bug
Squashing and Testing, Education Projects, Art, Mobile, Localisation
and Documentation. This may be the case for many upstream projects so
I am interested in how can we encourage women to go upstream and
contribute there.

Another point I forgot earlier regarding the mailing lists or IRC not
being friendly to women. For a m-list, folks can write a complaint or
forward the private message (if you are being harassed even after
asking the person to stop) to the respective list-owners [eg. here its
... indichix-owner at linuxchix.org] with full headers. On IRC, do
contact the "irc ops" for that specific channel and send them your irc
logs of the conversation and what you find offensive, they will take
appropriate action. On linuxchix IRC servers, the ops are tough about
harassment and in worst cases will ban/kline the offenders.

hth,
Vid
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