Category Archives: community

I am a feminist hacker: Reflections on the first AdaCamp

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I had a wonderful time at the first AdaCamp, held in Melbourne, Australia on January 14, 2012.

I didn’t take notes during most of the sessions, and spent a lot of time listening and thinking.

The two important things I took away from the first AdaCamp were about context – my context, and the camp itself.

My context

I’ve been part of free and open source community since 1994, when I started reading the linux kernel mailing list and compiling my own kernels to support experimental features and drivers. I was welcomed into my mostly male offline community of developers, sysadmins and hackers. I had a male psuedonym when I was online in technical forums. I used a female psuedonym on mailing lists and collaborative writing projects I was invited to back in the early days of alt.* threads that spilled over into specialty LISTSERV mailing lists.

I’d grown up in a very small town, where your reputation is everything. It was incredible, strange and liberating to be able to represent all the parts of me, separately and freely, online.

So, when I got to AdaCamp I felt apprehensive. I’ve had the option of separating out the parts of me online and in free and open source community for so long, and I was struggling with what part of me exactly should be at the forefront here. Being a woman is a pretty important aspect of myself. Addressing it in parts felt wrong, but integrating it all seemed like an oversimplification.

So, I tried to make myself useful by making coffee and sorting out our wireless situation. Then we all got together in a room. I made a few jokes with the people at my table and then fell silent.

Mary and Val opened the day with a short introduction and an explanation of why they thought it was important to have conversations about open tech and culture in a feminist context. And then we started going through the introductions.

I was so terrified to introduce myself that I ran out to work on the wireless network and missed out on most of the introductions. At least we had wireless working after that. :)

It seems so silly to me now that I chose to walk out of the intros. Val didn’t let me off the hook when I got back, and I had to briefly introduce myself to everyone. And the reason why I’m spilling so many words on this point is that I want to let you all know how difficult it is to change your context.

I have identified as a feminist for as long as I can remember. But I’ve nearly always been a feminist in the company of men. If I were to introduce myself again, I would say:

I am a feminist hacker. Right now, my hacking is mostly on people and systems. I believe women and men should be treated equally, but I know they are not. And I want to help solve problems of inequality faced by women, primarily through my work in free and open source software, but also in the workplaces where many of our fellow hackers end up.

Context of the camp

There were too many fantastic conversations to count. I met so many new friends, and came away with new respect for the work Mary and Val are tackling.

Two big sessions for me were a frank conversation about hiring, and an expansive brainstorm about the things women have in common between free and open source, open culture, open hardware, creative commons, remix culture and other “open stuff”. I’m looking forward to future conversations about both things!

During the closing session, many thoughts were shared about what made a day spent talking about so many difficult problems still feel inspiring.

One comment stuck with me – we all shared a context of feminism. With that point settled, it made getting into the depths of many other conversations much easier and interesting. We got to skip over many feminism 101 topics, and have spirited debates and exchanges of ideas in a feminist context.

I hope I can attend the next event!

And you can support the Ada Initiative by donating here.

Podcasts recommended to me in January 2012

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Wow. I asked on twitter about podcasts people were listening to these days, and got a TON of responses.

Here’s the list (with the ones I subscribed to have ✓′s):

Thanks to @gnat, @thesethings, @sogrady, @leinweber, @cwebber, @dbrewerpdx, @frobisher, @myfreeweb, @funkatron and @tmarble for the suggestions!

Support the Ada Initiative

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I support the Ada Initiative because biology doesn’t explain: why there aren’t more women in computer science, why I don’t have more women colleagues who hack on databases, or why we don’t have more women contributing to open source projects.

You can support the Ada Initiative, too.

I wrote a few years ago about how I thought we might best get more women involved. Four years later, my tl;dr version is: make friends with women. Imagine if every male developer could name 10 women that they considered friends among their colleagues. People they trusted, hacked with and built new companies with.

But grassroots efforts alone can’t solve the lack of women’s involvement.

My story of involvement with open source and computing starts with friends who shared the fun with me in college. They invited me to Marathon parties, late night hacking sessions with new processors, pranking coworkers whose system images weren’t quite as secure as they’d advertised…

I love free and open source culture, IT security culture and all the people that I’ve met over the past 13 years. My life is so incredibly enriched and joyful as a result of the people who share what they learn with me.

Despite my love, there’s trouble in paradise. We could be better. And one thing I wish for is more women in my open source communities.

Over the years, I’ve been part of efforts to increase the number of women involved in the projects I’ve founded – Open Source Bridge (more than 50% managed by women, >30% speakers women), Legion of Tech (1/3 of the original board members were women), and Code-N-Splode (all women’s programming and speaker development group).

Now, I’m an advisor to the Ada Initiative. I’ve watched over the last year as Mary and Val have worked to focus their mission and identify exactly what they think will encourage women. They have to balance their experiences and the resistance to cultural change endemic to businesses, organizations and the loose organizations around open source.

It’s fucking hard work. And they’re doing a great job.

Ada Initiative is the organization I wish would have existed 13 years ago. It’s the voice of experience and a catalyst for change that we need inside our communities. It’s a place for women to go for advice and help when things go right — or when things go wrong.

So, what can you do?

The Ada Initiative needs money. They need corporate support. They need individual contributions.

If you, or your company, can contribute and keep the Ada Initiative going for another year, contribute today. Mary and Val have done the hard work of getting started. Now they need your help to keep going.

Postgres Open: next year (!), resources, video

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Postgres Open is over!

I wanted to share a few resources, and remind attendees to fill out our survey. I really appreciate the detailed comments I’ve been getting! Keep them coming.

I wanted to specially thank our program committee:

Robert Haas
Josh Berkus
Gavin Roy
Greg Smith

They were the people who put together and edited the website, found sponsors, recruited speakers, voted on talks, gave talks and tutorials and executed the many tasks needed to make the conference a success. We plan to make key members of the Postgres community part of the operation of the conference going forward. We’re really just emulating the way that PgCon is run.

I have some more thoughts about what makes a conference “community-operated”, and once my budget numbers are settled, I’m going to share with you what running the conference costs in terms of my time, and in terms of dollars to operate. It’s important to both understand the costs involved, how much of my time is required and what that means for you as either a sponsor, speaker, attendee or volunteer supporting what we are doing.

NEXT YEAR: September 17-19, 2012

I’m pleased to announce that next year’s conference for September 17-19, 2012 at the Westin-Michigan Ave. So mark your calendars now!

The conference will continue to be operated as a non-profit, with proceeds going toward operation of the following year’s event, and a very small percentage going to Technocation, Inc – our fiscal sponsor and a 501(c)3 organization dedicated to developing educational opportunities and resources for software professionals.

We had fantastic support from our sponsors this year, and hope to expand that next year.

In particular: 2ndQuadrant, EnterpriseDB, Heroku and VMWare’s support were instrumental in pulling this event together. We really only started planning in May. It feels good to now have a whole year ahead of us!

With greater sponsor support, we can help fund some of the things that attendees asked for like: soda (which costs $8/soda – I feel as though we should get some kind of gold plating for this), conference tshirts, and a closing party.

Please get in touch if you or a company you know is interested in sponsorship for 2012!

Slides:

Speakers are uploading or linking their slides to the PostgreSQL wiki. If the slides you’re looking for aren’t there, please ping the speaker or me.

Streaming Video:

Streaming content will be available for about 30 days.

I will be getting all the video on flash drives this week. My plan is to upload it to either vimeo or youtube. I don’t really have the resources to provide individual copies of the videos, but if we find a location for raw data upload, I’ll pass that along to you all.

OSCON: We’re at the end…

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I’m finally getting to blog, and here are a few highlights:

* “Mistakes were made” was a great time. Thank you everyone who shared stories. And those of you who attended, please connect with me – email or whatever, and let’s continue our discussions about failure.
* I have a little bit of editing to do left on the harder, better, faster, stronger slides. Talk ratings have been very high (thank you audience! :) Should have that up tomorrow!
* Not having a booth at OSCON was a real bummer for Postgres. We need to figure out a way to make this happen for us every year.
* Great having the time to connect with old friends in the hallways this week.
* Thanks O’Reilly for supporting our open source community.
* Thanks Google Open Source Programs office for bringing together open source leaders yet again this year for some important conversations.

Thank you everyone from the Postgres community who contributed to the Postgres day just before OSCON. All the speakers and their talks are listed here.

We need to keep having adjunct events like this! I think LCA has it right scheduling Mini-BoFs to provide networking opportunities for the distinct groups. I think OSCON should formalize this next year, and figure out a way of facilitating those groups in a more structured way.

I have another blog post brewing about difficult conversations.. but that’s going to have to wait until after I enjoy the brewers fest!

Getting ready for OSCON, code of conduct and cultural change

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UPDATE: See bottom of post.

I totally should be working on my talks right now, but instead I’ve been talking with people about the lack of a code of conduct for OSCON.

I’ve written before about cultural resistance, and how I think it fits in with changes that must happen in technical communities when we invite more women in.

One of those changes is making it clear that women (and other minorities) are not just tolerated in public spaces, but that they are explicitly wanted there.

I think OSCON has made great strides in that direction by changing their marketing materials to include the faces of women. Sarah Novotny, co-chair of OSCON, travelled extensively to invite women face-to-face to submit talks. There are many women speaking at OSCON this year.

OSCON put the time and energy into creating a sense that women were already attending (which they are), and that they wanted more.

So, why all the fuss about having a code of conduct? Well, this community is changing.

What people think of as “summer camp for geeks” is this year a gathering that by definition includes people who haven’t previously been part of the OSCON community. When a community (which OSCON definitely is) sets out to change the gender percentages, it needs to be clear that the women are being invited to join and shape the culture, not just show up to be tourists of the existing culture.

The leadership of the conference needs to establish with existing attendees that the cultural change is wanted. The fact is, OSCON is a for-profit enterprise, with a business driving the event. Grassroots activism is helpful in encouraging change, but ultimately, the owners of the brand need to make a statement in addition to the marketing.

I applaud Jono Bacon for his creation of an anti-harassment policy for the Community Leadership Summit. I also am heartened at O’Reilly’s recent tweet that they are following this conversation.

I don’t think that codes of conduct are the perfect solution. But how else do we communicate to everyone participating that the change is happening, and that they need to accommodate new members *who are very different from them* during a period of cultural adjustment? That’s not a rhetorical question — I am genuinely interested in answers to this question.

I’ve updated my profile to state that I am pro-code-of-conduct, and included a link to anti-harassment resources, which I think should be part of an overall code of conduct. Donna put up a wikipage with easy to cut-n-paste additions for OSCON speaker profiles. If you agree that a code of conduct is a positive direction, please join us!

UPDATE: Tim O’Reilly has blogged about his expectations in a post titled “Sexual Harassment at Technical Conferences: A Big No-No” regarding a code of conduct for conferences under the O’Reilly umbrella going forward.

This year is so nuts for having conferences in Portland, OR

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UPDATED! Just added Open Gov West! Rearranged, and just listing these all in order now. And added #140Conf in Vancouver, WA. It’s close enough. :) And just added Digital Journalism Portland.

For real.

This summer belongs to the nerds, geeks and hackers. I can’t believe that Portland’s tech scene got no love from Portlandia this year. Thank heavens they got a second season!

I did some research, and found TWENTY distinct conferences happening from now through November in the Portland area.

Anyway, there’s a sweet new service that you might not have heard of called Lanyrd, and a quick search over there revealed 20 conferences.

And over the next few days, several people suggested a few more:

  1. Agile Open Northwest 2011, 8-9 February 2011
  2. SearchFest 2011, 23rd February 2011
  3. Python Software Foundation Sprint, Feb 26th
  4. PDX11 Civic Hacking Unconference, April 1-2, 2011 (Plans are coming together now.. so pencil it in!)
  5. Innotech, April 21, 2011
  6. TEDxPortland, April 30, 2011
  7. JSConf US 2011, 2nd–3rd May 2011 (Rumors of crazy fun abound for this, also a party open to the public. Epic!)
  8. NodeConf 2011, 5th May 2011
  9. Open Gov West, 13-14 May 2011
  10. Digital Journalism Portland, 14th May 2011
  11. #140Conf Northwest, 19th May 2011
  12. WebVisions 2011, 25th–27th May 2011
  13. World Domination Summit, 4th–5th June 2011
  14. HotStorage ’11, 14th June 2011 (Third workshop on hot topics in storage!)
  15. USENIX ATC ’11, 15th–17th June 2011 (USENIX’s annual technical conference)
  16. WebApps ’11, 15th–16th June 2011 (Second annual conference from USENIX on webapps!)
  17. Open Source Bridge 2011, 21st–24th June 2011 (Third year! CFP still open!)
  18. IndieWebCamp, 25th–26th June 2011
  19. OSCON 2011, 25th–29th July 2011 (Back in Portland, Again! And @gorthx is on the committee!)
  20. Community Leadership Summit 2011, 23rd–24th July 2011
  21. Vida Vegan Blog Conference, 26th–28th August 2011 (Blogger conference for vegans! Crazy!)
  22. DjangoCon US 2011, 6th–8th September 2011 (Organizer recently relocated to Portland!)
  23. Pacific NW Drupal Summit, October 14-16, 2011
  24. SPLASH 2011, 22nd–27th October 2011
  25. Onward! 2011, 22nd–27th October 2011 (@al3x is on the committee for this!)
  26. Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing 2011, 9th–12th November 2011

Sources: Lanyrd, Plancast, Calagator and the comments.

What other geekery did I miss? Let me know in the comments.

UPDATE:

Here are the conferences without dates:

Event organizers: spaces to have tech events or conferences in Portland

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I’ve been asked more than a couple times about places to have events in Portland.

When you google for ‘event spaces portland, or’ you don’t get anything that I’d call useful.

So here’s the list that I’ve compiled:

East Side:

West Side:

Checklist for new event organizers: how to schedule and get people there

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I was talking with @schmichael today and he brought up that it was insane how many different organizing tools are out there, and there’s no handy list of tools for new event organizers to use!

So, here’s my list of helpful tools if you’re trying to run an ongoing tech event:

  • Put your event on a calendar like Calagator.org: This may be pretty Portland specific, but if there’s an event calendar in your area, be sure to put your event on it! Calagator is great also because it shows you a list of venues – possible places for you to hold events. When you need space, its likely best to ask other event organizers. In Portland, we have a special list for event organizers. Get in touch if you are an event organizer, and not already on it!
  • Create a meeting event on something like Meetup.org: So many groups still use this. Several PostgreSQL groups do, and PDX Lean Startup Circle swears by it. There’s also Upcoming.org, but we don’t seem to use that as much
  • Create a google group! Mailing lists are still the best way to keep in touch with people. All the research on electronic communication says this. Tweeting is not enough!
  • Don’t put tons of interested people on CC or personally-managed Outlook lists. This is spam, and the people on the CC list can never unsubscribe! It’s not just annoying, it is rude.
  • Make a twitter account for your group! Twitter is a great way for the always-connected crowd to stay on top of what you’re up to. Easy to search, and quick to post. Try out Cotweet if you have more than one organizer!
  • Tell other event organizers about your event. They likely know other individuals and groups that would be interested and can use their best judgement in passing an email or tweet along. Don’t spam a bunch of unrelated groups!
  • Make an event announcement 2 weeks, 1 week the day-before and day-of your event.
  • Include the following in your announcement: event name, date, time, speaker name(s), talk title and location including zip code of your event (so people can use maps to find you easily!)

What else do you think an event organizer should have in their checklist?

#PDX11: Turning things up a notch for Portland’s “software cluster”

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So, last night a few Portland tech community folks got together at a bar and talked about the upcoming software industry summit on November 18th. You haven’t heard about it? Well, here’s the lowdown:

Mayor Adams, the Software Association of Oregon and the Portland Development Commission cordially invites you to participate in the development of a key software cluster strategy for the Oregon/SW Washington region. By attending this informative meeting you will play an instrumental part in the process with other top business community leaders.

The deal is: you show up, you get to help direct the resources dedicated to software industry development from the Portland Development Commission, the Mayor’s office and the Software Association of Oregon. That’s pretty much it. The people who go to this meeting are the folks who will be directing the future of the PDC’s “Portland Software Mandate”, which is part of that whole industry “cluster” initiative that targets active outware, advanced manufacturing, clean tech and software. More broadly, this is part of the 5-year plan to guide Portland’s economic growth.

Anyway, you really should attend this meeting next Thursday. If you can’t attend, see if you can get someone you know or a friend to attend on your behalf. We want to pack city hall.

That’s right — we’re meeting in the City Council Chambers. It’ll be great. Please attend! It starts at 4:30pm and goes to 6:30pm. And, if you show up we can lead you over to a sweet afterparty. Seriously. It’s gonna be awesome.

But — back to the PDX11 thing. One thing we talked about during the meeting was that we’re having problems communicating to everyone what it is that we’re doing with this whole “portland/pdx software cluster strategy”. It’s a mouthful to say that, and once you take another step and try to describe who is involved and why, things get muddy.

What if we just made a hashtag for it? What if we created a community site to start hacking on our city’s approach to software industry? To have public conversations about what’s next, and to bring to the table all aspects of development: education, small businesses, big businesses, hobbyists, investors and an epic number of volunteers.

Our first stab at this is to create pdx11.org. There’s nothing there yet (sorry, just bought the domain name), so this is your opportunity to help create this thing.

Last night, as we tried to come up with a concise name for what we were talking about, people started to giggle, and laugh at “turn it up to 11″ jokes. Next year is 2011, so this thing has an expiration date (deadlines – my favorite procrastination ending technique). Because really, we’re kicking off this thing and wanting to deliver in 2011 on some initiatives. Which if you’re not aware are:

  • Creating a Knowledge Network to support local user groups – group convened by Warren Harrison of PSU
  • Developing a business mentorship network – group convened by SAO’s Matt Nees
  • Enhancing a financing network – group convened by Gerald Baugh of the PDC

These conveners are here to be project managers in the best sense — to find out what it is that *you* want to have happen, and then to communicate, document and follow up with public and private partners who are *making* these initiatives happen.

But back to PDX11. We wanted a name, a brand, something that made it easier for us to talk about with and recruit people inside the community, a connection point for locals, and a launchpad for outsiders to check us out.

If you’re up for helping to build the site, contact me directly (selenamarie -at- gmail -dot- com) and we’ll get going.

Otherwise, we’ll see you next thursday!

UPDATE:

For those not familiar with the PDC surveys, here are links to the results in SlideRocket format (meh):

Survey 1 Results
Survey 2 Results