Drupalchix

Where in the World are the DrupalChix?

KarenS@drupal.org — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:21:08 +0000

There have been a number of comments about how to find other women in Drupal. We're scattered around, but maybe not as much as we think. And it would be nice to know if there are other DrupalChix nearby. Maybe it could even lead to some regional DrupalChix get-togethers :-)

Anyway, a fancy Google Map with everyone's location would be cool, but I know many of us are not sure we want everyone in the world to know exactly where we are (sadly, that can be dangerous) but it would still be fun to have a general idea who is nearby. So I've started a very low-tech list on a wiki page that anyone can add their names to, and added a few locations to get it started.

Africa

South Africa

Johannesburg

Diricia | on d.o
Smath | on d.o

Asia

Israel

Tel Aviv

Lishevita | on d.o

Australia

Europe

Finland

Wenya | on d.o

France

Prunelle | on d.o

Germany

j4h8 | on d.o
aschiwi | on d.o

Ireland

stella | on d.o
heather | on d.o

The Netherlands

Bergco | on d.o

Norway

zirvap | on d.o

North America

Canada

British Columbia

Ontario

jsfwd | on d.o

Québec

webchick | on d.o

USA

California

Massachusetts

Lee
Tracy Boston, North Shore

Michigan

audre

Minnesota

mndonx - Amanda Luker | on d.o

New Hampshire

nikkiana | on d.o

New York

Jacine | on d.o
grammarian (Jean Gazis) | on d.o

North Carolina

Nancy Dru | on d.o
Ruby Sinreich (rubyji) | on d.o

Oregon

sarah_p | on d.o

Oceania

New Zealand

Brenda Wallace | on d.o

South America

Drupalchix

Learning challenges / philosophy

mroswell — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 03:33:31 +0000

I think (I philosophize) that an awesome woman coder is easy to spot, and no one doubts her skills. As a mediocre (currently) middle-aged female new Drupal coder I think it's harder to gain respect, to be included in the conversation, and generally to be seen as having the potential to gain the skillset. Sometimes, I wish I were male and 25. The assumptions are different.

(Recently told on a job interview that they were looking for someone fresh out of school... both in initial phone call, and at the interview... so, in that case, she didn't mean male, she just meant half my age...)

Anyhow, enough philosophizing about barriers: They're real, they're annoying... Now I've got to overcome them.

How to get good? I think one helpful thing would be to be able to print the handbooks. This link is several years out of date: http://drupal.org/node/20874
This one just has the getting started PDF.
http://drupal.org/handbooks

I've got the Pro Drupal book (and the new Packt module book), but I think I basically need a book of hints, or something like that. Or, something like this, for which I'd love a recipe just for printing the thing!
http://drupal.org/handbook/customization/tutorials/beginners-cookbook

Any good ideas for how to print handbooks without having click on each page?

A second thing that might help is promoting a meetup culture of "basic is cool." So many meetups feature shining stars, and then people with more basic problems may be too afraid to ask their questions. (Last night I asked a basic question and then I felt stupid when I saw how easy the answer us... I sincerely wished I hadn't asked! So lots of self-censoring going on.) Asking leaders to promote questions at all levels maybe a helpful idea.

Third thing would be publication of a Drupal workbook. I find slide presentations don't really get me where I need to go. I would probably find a good Drupal coding workbook to be a great thing. I look forward to the Lullabot book, which will strengthen skills on the admin side. I think the market-still-to-be-filled will be a workbook style, book, with work-aday, routine examples. Heck, maybe even old-fashioned multiple choice...

Fourth: I need to spend time LOOKING at code.

Fifth: need to get in there and try stuff.

These are my thoughts for the evening, on how to get good, and eventually get to the point where the skill is so obvious that gender and age don't exclude me from the conversation.

Here's hoping... and striving...

Drupalchix

Anyone Else Routinely Get their Name Masculinized?

codeknitter — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:53:04 +0000

My name is Erin, and I really can't count the number of times I'll get a reply to an email from a technical contact where THEY CHANGE MY NAME -- usually to Eric.

It seems odd -- like some sort of masculine equivalence thing of Erin. The other thing that happens a lot, are replies that imply that somehow I am misspelling my own name and it 'should' be Aaron. (this usually makes me laugh).

I've tried a lot of strategies like -- repeating the correct spelling of my name multiple times in the same email, and signature etc. -- to no avail.

does anyone else run into this? It drives me crazy!

Oh -- the drupal related thing -- I asked a drupal "pro" for his book errata -- the reply email started "Hi Eric." (begin rant)

Drupalchix

BlogHer Conference + Getting involved in Drupal

webchick — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 01:16:39 +0000

So...

a) This group is way too quiet. :)

b) I'm going to be speaking at the BlogHer '08 Conference in San Francisco on Saturday, July 19. Any fellow chix going to be there, too?

c) The topic I'm speaking about is how to get involved in the Drupal community (as part of a larger "how to participate in open source" topic). Now, I give this talk all the time (usually loudly, excitedly, and with many flailing hand gestures), but I was curious to hear from you folks, since you're basically the target audience for this talk, if there's anything that you would particularly like to know about getting started in contributing to open source, if you're not already a contributor, or anything specific you've always wondered about the Drupal community participation in general that you'd like to know more about?

I look forward to reading/answering any questions you might have!

Drupalchix

Women In Open Source

tourguide@drupal.org — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 16:34:40 +0000

CDMUG was at Flourish 2008 and they organized a presentation about Women in Open Source by Dru Lavigne.

-
tourguide

Drupalchix

speak.net.nz getting ready for launch

Shiny — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 03:25:58 +0000

Hey New Zealand Drupal Chix.

Many organisers of technical conferences, meetups, and dinners want to have more gender-balance in their lineups, but they don't know where to find technical women speakers.

Enter http://speak.net.nz, a simple directory and connections system to help technical women speakers and event organisers to find each other.

It needs a few more women to sign up for launch. The site will launch early April.

If you're a woman working with technology, even if you've never spoken infront of a group before, please register and list your expertise.

There's New Zealanders and Australians listed already, but woman from anywhere are welcome.

New Zealand

Getting started

Allie Micka — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 01:31:04 +0000

I would love to share a "getting started" tip, and this seems like as good a place as any:

Over the years, I've written a handful of modules. Sometimes, I get spread a little thin, and the issue queues get longer than I'd like them to be. This can be incredibly stressful! If I can carve out a few hours to work on my modules, I often spend hours just wading through the issue queues, attempting to figure out what's a bug, what's a support question, which are dupe's - and which of the dupe's have the most meaningful background information. When my time is up, I'm lucky if I've tested and committed 2 patches - not to mention new features. It's kind of a drag :(

So, when a friend of mine asked how he can get into Drupal, I asked him to start helping me clean up some of the issue queues on some of my modules. We started by identifying dupes and closing them, an activity which requires almost no knowledge at all. With this newfound familiarity, the support questions ended up being a pretty easy task. Pretty soon, my friend was testing patches, and the next thing I knew, he was writing bug fixes! It helped him get up to speed in a welcoming environment, and seeing a way to forward inertia was practically life-changing for me.

Perhaps this is nothing more than an example of exploiting my friends to do my dirty work. But the takeaway I hope you'll take away is that tiny contributions are significant and a great first step. There are off-putting attitudes in any community and sometimes it's scary to jump in. However, no developer in her right mind would complain if you started to work through a beleaguered issue queue.

Drupalchix

How to improve

merlinofchaos — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 16:12:31 +0000

My opinion is that the best way to improve this ratio is with consistent, visible demonstrations of success by women who are not unique, too remarkable, or otherwise easily fall into the category of "I can't be like that". In other words, we need high profile women who are "just one of the gals" in the same way that we have lots of high profile male contributors who are "just one of the guys". It's important that these women are a variety; not just 'geek women' but including women who, from the outside, appear as though they could also be or do any of the things that are stereotypically acceptable for women.

In order to encourage women to enter the system, the first thing they need to overcome is the culturally embedded notion of "I can't do that". The second thing they need to overcome is the culturally embedded notion of "I shouldn't do that, it's not right". And the third thing they need to overcome is possibly the hardest, of, "I don't want to do that." And finally, women need to be taught that succeeding in this arena won't cost them their identity.

What does this mean? It is important that the high profile female contributors do exactly what Angie is doing, and demonstrate her success. Look into history, and at the success of the "Rosie the Riveter" campaign. While it was predicated on an extreme imbalance in the workforce and a burning need, the basic messages within the campaign can still apply. "We can do it" is a powerful message, and it's important that truth is demonstrated visibly.

I suggest posting regular profiles of successful women in the community, and include Q&A to describe who they are and how they got involved and why they think they are successful, and angle these Q&As toward demonstrating why this success isn't (or doesn't have to be) unique.

Drupalchix

Introductions

webchick — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 07:07:16 +0000

I figured we could start this group with a "virtual" edition of the Drupalchix BoF at Drupalcon Boston. Go around the "circle," as it were, and introduce ourselves, both to get to know each other a bit, but also so that we're aware that there /are/ other women out there in the Drupal community. ;)

So let's do some introductions... who are you, where are you from, what do you do for a living, what's your background, how'd you get into this crazy Drupal stuff, what do you do with Drupal, and whatever other random facts you'd like to share?

I'll kick it off, I guess...

My name's Angie Byron. I'm originally from Rochester, Minnesota, United States but I now live in Montréal, Québec, Canada with my wife Marci (at least when I'm not trapped in Boston for 3 days due to stupid snow ;)). I work for Lullabot, where I help train new Drupal developers and also do consulting with big companies to help them get up to speed on Drupal quickly, and help them work /with/ the community, rather than alongside it.

I've been a "geek" for pretty much all my life, starting with a huge video game obsession when I was a kid, and blossoming into a fascination as a teenager with computers, technology, and the impact they can have on society as a whole. I have some background in a few different computing areas, including web development, databases, design, security, and hardware, but most of it I forget now because I've been involved with Drupal for so long. ;)

I got my start in Drupal as a Google Summer of Code student in 2005, and since then have sought out to help out in as many ways as possible. I do core development and patch reviews, I (badly) maintain a few modules and themes, I help out with documentation, I manage Drupal's involvement in programs like Google Summer of Code, and I'm a member of the Drupal Association. Basically, I'm completely, utterly obsessed with Drupal and it's my life mission to help get others as crazy about it as I am, because it's so much fun. :D

So how about the rest of you folks?

Drupalchix

Drupalchix

Where in the World are the DrupalChix?

Africa

South Africa

Johannesburg

Asia

Israel

Tel Aviv

Australia

Europe

Finland

France

Germany

Ireland

The Netherlands

Norway

North America

Canada

British Columbia

Ontario

Québec

USA

California

Illinois

Indiana

Maryland

Massachusetts

Michigan

Minnesota

New Hampshire

New York

North Carolina

Oregon

Oceania

New Zealand

South America

Learning challenges / philosophy

Anyone Else Routinely Get their Name Masculinized?

BlogHer Conference + Getting involved in Drupal

Women In Open Source

speak.net.nz getting ready for launch

Getting started

How to improve

Introductions