Something that I wanted to bring up at Drupalcon but didn't really get the chance to because of the 14,000 other things going on at Drupalcon ;) was a bit of discussion on what (if anything) we ultimately want this group to be.
Some boring back-story:
At the very first Drupalchix meetup in Barcelona in 2007, someone (Laura?) initially suggested creating this group. At the time, I was dead-set against it. I didn't want women in Drupal to be closed into a "sub" community within the larger Drupal community; I wanted us to be "out and proud" doing awesome things within the larger Drupal community, of which we are an important part. I still very strongly feel that way.
At Drupalcon Boston 2008 when this idea came up a second time, I finally caved and started this group. The idea was that women might find it easier to get involved in Drupal if they have an initial "jump-off" point where they can find other women like them, and also for us to have a "safe space" for discussing sensitive issues such as sexism or homophobia.
It's been interesting to watch how things have evolved over the past year.
Currently, this group seems to be a mix of the following things:
a) Us just finding out more about who the other women in the Drupal community are and what they're doing. We also have done this at all of our "in-person" Drupalchix meetups, and I always find it really fascinating.
b) Some "deeper" discussions about how to get more women involved in open source generally, and Drupal specifically. Talking about specific challenges women face, and about strategies for overcoming them.
c) Mentoring, either on specific support questions or in general "how to get started" kind of information. Also shedding some insight into community dynamics (the utility of IRC, why module developers might come off as cranky, etc.)
d) Announcements about job postings, interesting/relevant conferences or other websites, etc.
e) Socializing or "lighter" things. Coming up with a group logo, amassing a collection of Twitter accounts, etc. These tend to get the most responses, and pull people out of lurk mode, which is interesting to see.
Are you happy with the group's content? Would you rather see more posts in a specific area or less? Is there something else entirely you wish this group was about? How can we help shape it into Drupalchix 2.0?
Comments
I'm the opposite.
I'm the opposite. Originally I thought this group was a great idea and I really enjoyed meeting everyone in Szeged. However, now after DC I'm beginning to feel slightly wary that we're separating ourselves from the wider Drupal community. I just felt a bit weird when we all walked into the lunch area and seated ourselves away from the others. To me it felt like we were creating an unnecessary division.
Maybe it only worked well when we were a smaller group - anyone know what the percentage was in DC? It seemed like it was a lot higher than the 10% in Szeged. Or maybe it was the fact that we did it at lunch time rather than keeping it as a BOF session.
However I do like this group for all the things webchick pointed out above. I especially like finding out about what others are doing and the discussions about women in open source. So I guess I'm a bit between two minds now.
I think it's awesome that we
I think it's awesome that we have a Drupalchix group, and I wish I had discovered you ladies earlier in my Drupal days. :)
I can identify with webchick's and stella's previous points regarding mixed feelings about having a formal group of women within the Drupal community. From my perspective, I can't see how it hurts anything. In many ways it's like having a DC-area group, or a group of people using Drupal to help nonprofits. At the root of it, it's just a point of commonality. I think the more important factor is what we choose to do with it, and/or how we present it to the Drupal community at large. As long as we don't act cliquey or exclusive, I think it's all good.
So to get back to webchick's question... I am happy with what the group seems to be at this point. I very much enjoyed our lunch conversation on Wednesday, and was sorry to miss it on subsequent days when I went to other BOF lunches. I appreciated the chance to get to know some of you as human beings, fellow women / mothers / wives / partners. That keeps it real for me.
I also really appreciate webchick's work on amassing our Twitter info (thank you Angie!!). Especially now that we have more faces to go with names, it's really fun to see your news pop up in the corner of my screen from time to time.
I think mentoring and job posting are good too, but I find that I'm just as well able to get that kind of things from a group that includes men. If we're trying to streamline the Drupalchix's purpose, that would be lower on my own personal list.
Looking forward to seeing what others think!
Grand Junction Design, LLC
www.grandjunctiondesign.com
Group Purpose
I agree with Stella. It seemed a bit odd to have a separate group in the lunch room. However, it would be awesome to use the Drupal group to think about how to get women more involved in open source. It would be great if the focus of Drupalchix could be to help introduce women to Drupal (and open-source in general) and support their involvement.
One cool project for the Drupalchix would be to try and get young women involved in Drupal. I noticed a lot of teenagers at the Drupal conference but I don't think that any of them were young women. Drupal seems to have comparatively low barriers to entry and it would be awesome to use it to help get women interested in programming.
In North Carolina, I've been involved with a group that helps get women into running for the first time. We have a 12-week program where women go from walking to running a 5K. The group is open to men as well but we tend to get far fewer guys.
There's a similar group for preteen girls called Girls on the Run. (Side note: the Triangle Girls on the Run site is powered by Drupal ;) One great purpose of the Drupalchix could be to create some sort of short class that could serve as a intro to programming and Drupal for women and anyone else who doesn't eat code for breakfast. Does something like this already exist?
Hey hey - Lovely seeing you
Hey hey -
Lovely seeing you all again, though of course, time ran out too soon before I really got a chance to reconnect with some of you... next time! Thinking about it more since chatting at the end of the sprint day, I think the three roles that the group has filled the most (and are the most valuable) for me are:
The third, I think is one of the biggest (untapped?) opportunities, as especially with the responsibilities both you (Angie) and Addi have taken on, the positivity and support for the other women in the community from you both has allowed me a higher level of comfort with getting involved beyond doing event organization (which I was more focused on last year). And I think that this group also provides a lot of opportunity that has not really been tapped into as far as mentorship as well, like Julia mentioned - if someone wanted to take the initiative to set up more formal mentoring program for new or younger people interested in Drupal, or even use the group to leverage some kind of funding (a DrupalChix scholarship?) it could be really valuable that way.
As for the lunch BOF, it was fine, but I have to agree it felt a little segregating doing that in such a public space, which also didn't allow for much in depth discussion... I really enjoyed the BOF in Boston though, where we had a more private space for the session, which really allowed us to have a group discussion about a lot of the issues that come up being women web developers, and talk about our careers and get advice - though I didn't really get to give the group an update, the advice I got last made a huge impact in my career path over the past year and was really integral to me taking a big leap of faith that has brought me to a much more fulfilling job/career path (so thanks!).
Obviously, it's a case of "it is what you make it" and particularly with Angie's broader responsibilities in the community, it's really up to everyone to keep leading the way and make the group what we want it to be.
I don't think the group
I don't think the group really needs to be more than it is now. Like ANY "sub-group" within the larger "group" that is the Drupal community, I feel it simply gives new people, who yes, happen to be female, feel they can join without having any previous experience or feel they aren't good enough to do so. Getting involved in the community can be a very daunting task at first look, and here we have a place that women can feel more at ease in their first steps in doing so. It also gives people some initial contacts within the community.
Whether it be targeted at women or those interested in some specific subject, I don't know that it really matters. I understand the concerns above and I get that we don't want to simply define ourselves as nothing but "chix", but at the same time, we should also be proud that Drupal is girl friendly. Not many open source projects can say they have 10% (or MORE!) women involved, and why not be proud of that? I don't see it as really segregating ourselves, because just look at the awesome people we have involved that are also thoroughly involved in the community as a whole. It's simply a "safe haven" so to speak where we can, as women (or even men), come here and talk as needed on subjects relating to being women or.. not. :)
Sanctuary
Although i've been {{sometimes indirectly}} involved in the drupal community for some time now, since 4.something, i am still very new at most aspects of it, and i'm also quite young. Thus, i often find it difficult to ask questions, when i don't understand something, or i don't know what to do next. Having a community like this makes me feel a bit safer in asking those questions. Especially the non-technical ones that everybody else seems to already know.
example: i still don't know what IRC is {{aside from the relatively obvious}} or where to find it, or how to use it, or anything. Embarrassing, and not something i feel comfortable asking just anybody.
Incidentally, if anybody has the time to answer that question, i'd be a very happy bunny.
That's my $0.02 on what i want or get from this group, and why i want to be a part of it. :)
--<3charlotte--
--<3charlotte--
Gender Neutral Issue
Even though I know what IRC is (chat room application basically), and I've seen a great page about some of the Drupal IRC channels in the Drupal Contributors Guide ( http://drupal.org/contributors-guide ), I can't find it for the life of me and until I stumbled upon it I had no idea it even existed. Before starting up on Drupal development I hadn't used IRC in many years, so really it didn't even occur to me to look.
There's a steep learning curve for getting into web development to start with, and that's really not a gender-specific issue. http://drupal.org/getting-started could really use a non-technical viewpoint for people who haven't been programming or even using computers in general for 15 years. Right now it seems like that domain belongs heavily to Joomla and Wordpress.
Ken Winters
www.coalmarch.com
Ken Winters
IRC
Heya Charlotte,
Yeah IRC was a weird thing for me too when I started, not being from a techy/online background at all. We have a handbook page on Drupal's IRC channels and some of the culture info (http://drupal.org/irc). I also have a short video about getting on IRC at http://www.lullabot.com/videocast/using-irc-your-browser. I keep meaning to put up two more vids on IRC, but time is against me these days. :-) If you do play around and get on IRC, feel free to "ping"* me and I can show you some of the ropes.
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When I first heard of
When I first heard of Drupalchix, I made an immediate association with Linuxchix, mostly because of the 'chix' part ;P
The aim of Linuxchix is to provide a community for women who like Linux and to encourage women in computing and they operate on two rules: "be polite" and "be helpful". While the community is called Linuxchix, membership is open to anyone. Fundamentally, Linuxchix provides a forum that invites people, anyone, to explore Linux in an environment that caters to learning and acceptance. No questions are stupid, and RTFM is not the default response. Among the several mailing lists that Linuxchix offers, only one is strictly women-only, which may sound exclusive to some but is really great and safe space to ask and discuss a number of questions, from the technical to gender-equality in the workspace to how to ask for a raise. Linuxchix was instrumental in my growing love and use of Linux. While I don't have a problem with the default configuration of general Linux mailing lists and chat rooms, per se, I'm not as likely to ask questions or speak up. Linuxchix offered a more encouraging, educational, helpful, and awesome experience with Linux.
And that's what I see Drupalchix as, a community that first and foremost supports women in Drupal with open membership for anyone who wants a space where "be polite" and "be helpful" guide our interactions, while also offering a channel or space for women-only discussions. The next Drupalcon will have a lunch table filled with Drupalchix who are men, women, and transgender. Hooray for Drupalchix!
It is content, or rather the consciousness of content, that fills the void, but the mere presence of content is not enough. It is style that makes us care.
Well - I've gotten a LOT out of this group, so thanks!
I've gotten some great technical advice from this group -- right when I needed it, and without having to figure out which other group I probably should have asked.
I have also gotten a lot of encouragement to join in and help out, and that changed my whole relationship with the Drupal project. I went from someone who worked a lot with drupal but didn't know anything about the community - to someone who knows more, but is so busy wound up in raising my daughters i don't "do" much just yet. But -- you know, it IS really different. :-)
So thanks all for the support and encouragement, which I has happened in both the lighter topic discussions, and the more serious ones. And as someone who simply can't afford the time and money to physically travel to Drupalcon -- it's nice to have an online community space. (It's even more important to me because I don't have time to visit it very often because I'm too busy working on Drupal projects and being "Mom").
Thanks a lot!! :-) You gals are great!