haeksen miniconf @ linuxconf au part 2

after lunch, the audience has shrunk by almost half, & it seems to be mostly men who have left. so we now have something like 90% female audience, & the talks are also becoming more overtly feminist.

first up after lunch was lana brindley, who gave an entertaining talk about the importance of good technical documentation. she was followed by angie byron, who works with drupal & spoke about getting involved as an open source contributor. (i had been feeling slightly conspicuous having a mac at a linux conference, so i was a bit relieved to see angie also has a mac - & she doesn't even cover her apple sign ... !!!)

then liz henry gave a talk "Code Of Our Own" - with the more illuminating subtitle "supporting women developers in open source - & that means us"; she outlined her advanced feminist solidarity theory and action plan. with the assumptions that diversity is good, open source is good, & universal design requires diverse input, then we need to ensure that women are represented in open source development - so we've got past the "why" and can just focus on the how. liz talked about blogher, a community of mainly women bloggers that she works with, & the strategies she employs including informal gatherings like install parties and peer mentoring, to empower women to get involved. some of the things she said made me feel slightly depressed - that women still get flamed & patronised in IRC - but on the other hand, most of what she was talking about was turning around the negavity to take positive action.

now it's afternoon tea, & yay! nancy has arrived! : )