FSF mini-summit: were you invited?
Just how “mini” is this FSF mini-summit on women in Free Software anyway? We know that Deb Nicholson, Hillary Rettig, and Stormy Peters will be there, but who else will be?
I wasn’t invited. I haven’t heard of anyone else who was invited. Have you?
If you have any information, post it in comments and I’ll update this post with a running list.
Update: Christine Spang was also invited.
I just emailed campaigns@fsf.org, which is the listed contact on the original post, to ask them to reply here. It would be great if others could as well.
-Leigh
Hi all!
This first summit is going to be very small. It’s the beginning of
what we hope will become a much larger discussion and (of course!) does not preclude
anyone else from hosting their own conversation, in fact, we hope that you’ll share your insights if you do.
If you want to receive email updates post-summit, send a note to membership@fsf.org with “Women in Free Software” in the title. We’ll also be posting the agenda and minutes here, http://groups.fsf.org/wiki/Womenscaucus
Cheers,
Deb
So, to clarify — does that mean that nobody else was invited except you, Stormy, and Hillary?
http://identi.ca/notice/8751860
so add at least one more to that list.
Thanks,
James
James: thanks!
My reaction to seeing that announcement, which basically everyone I know sent to me, was to write to Deb and ask about it and express interest and curiosity. My internal reaction has been a bit complex. Why the slightly odd mixture of press release and yet secrecy? Why not include more women? Why position yourselves as being the Beginning of a conversation, that tons of women have been having for quite some time now? Also, you can’t like, make it sound like you’re having the Seneca Falls Convention of women in free software, and not invite us all.
I am inclined to think that the announcement is sort of a coded signal of something that I have no idea how to decode. So I have a cautious reaction of “Well, good… let’s see what comes of it.” It sounds like some of the women involved with FSF want to connect up with broader communities and become sort of a nucleus or core. That’s cool. I support that and want to hear what they come up with and I’m not actually a member of FSF. My criticism, or worry, here is not just that there seem to be like 4 people doing this but speaking as if they’re The Women in free software, but that they seemed a bit to be speaking to the men, not to women like me… That will, I figure, change over time. And I understand why it would be the case because of the landscape they’re in and whatever battles they’re fighting, likely just the plain old right to have a women only or women-centric conversation.
ITYM “Free Software” not “Open Source” ;)
Corrected… how embarrassing, I tend to just say “FLOSS” because I think of it all as one big philosophy that goes together.
Is someone going to come hit me with a stuffed gnu if I say “Linux” now?!
I certainly hope no one thinks that I can speak for women in free software better than anyone else. My opinion is that I was invited and it sounds like there will be some interesting people there and there’s no reason not to go since I don’t need to travel, so I’ll go and find out what it’s about.
Perhaps I was invited in particular because I’m local?
I suspect being local was definitely part of it :)
As for “speaking for women in free software” — whoever is part of the FSF summit is going to end up doing that, to some extent. That seems kind of daunting. If there’s anything we can do wrt background information, resources, opinions, etc, please let us know.
Christine, localness was definitely our second criteria! Also, there will be an agenda and fully confirmed participation list out very soon.
Agenda and participants list are both up, http://groups.fsf.org/wiki/Womenscaucus — feel free to post any links or suggestions that are constructive to goal of improving women’s participation in free software.
A quick scan of the published attendee list reveals a preponderance of folks local to the Boston area.