{"id":210,"date":"2008-02-01T17:54:21","date_gmt":"2008-02-02T01:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/2008\/02\/01\/focus-group\/"},"modified":"2012-03-26T02:57:10","modified_gmt":"2012-03-26T10:57:10","slug":"focus-group","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/2008\/02\/01\/focus-group\/","title":{"rendered":"Women in Open Source: a focus group in March"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thanks to one of <a href=\"http:\/\/lifeofaudrey.com\">Audrey&#8217;s<\/a> RSS feeds, I read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.devchix.com\/2008\/01\/31\/women-in-computer-science-an-endangered-species-of-a-new-kind\/\">Women in Computer Science &#8211; An Endangered Species of a New Kind?<\/a> this afternoon. About the same time, I received email from a professor at UMD who is helping organize PostgreSQL Conference East. She would like to hold a Women in Open Source Focus Group session during the conference, and we&#8217;re looking for participants.  <\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Over the last year, I&#8217;ve read many times that computer science enrollment for women is down, and more generally, for the sciences. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.devchix.com\/author\/gennipherm\/\">author of the endanger species<\/a> post says that she&#8217;s going to do some more research to confirm or deny that trend. <\/p>\n<p>I just picked up a book <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Why-Arent-More-Women-Science\/dp\/159147485X\">Why Aren&#8217;t More Women in Science<\/a>, with eds. Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams.  I&#8217;ll be writing more about the individual articles over the next couple weeks. I found it referenced among some blog entries about the lack of diversity at technology-related conferences.<\/p>\n<p>On the &#8220;things might get better&#8221; front: I think that we&#8217;re starting to achieve a critical mass of women who code and also have free time to devote to trying to solve these problems. Of course men can work on it too, but there&#8217;s unquestionable value in having a group of women leading efforts. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.devchix.com\">DevChix<\/a> is certainly one of those groups. Those of us in <a href=\"http:\/\/pdx.codensplode.org\">Code &#8216;N&#8217; Splode<\/a> are trying to get off the ground and eventually provide leadership as well. <\/p>\n<p>The Women in Open Source track at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.socallinuxexpo.org\">SCALE<\/a> is coming up next Friday.  I know a few of the people presenting, and I&#8217;m hoping to make some more connections on behalf of PostgreSQL. <\/p>\n<p>Lack of diversity in conferences &#8211; economic, ethnic and gender; presenters and attendees &#8211; is something I&#8217;d like to change. My shot over the bow is this focus group for women in open source during the PostgreSQL conference in College Park, MD, March 29-30. There are some PhD candidates and professors doing research on this topic there!  Anyone interested in joining us, please contact me.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thanks to one of Audrey&#8217;s RSS feeds, I read Women in Computer Science &#8211; An Endangered Species of a New Kind? this afternoon. About the same time, I received email from a professor at UMD who is helping organize PostgreSQL &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/2008\/02\/01\/focus-group\/\">Continue reading &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,4,23,97,9,36,13],"tags":[647],"class_list":["post-210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conference","category-gender","category-open-source","category-postgres","category-postgresql","category-women","category-womenintech","tag-postgres"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4050,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210\/revisions\/4050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}