hypatia dot ca

No-context-needed IRC log time!

-!- zfe [n=Gianluca@88.252.29.47] has joined #ubuntu-women
<zfe> is this the kitchen?
<zfe> who would make me a sammich?
<redacted> zfe: No this is not the kitchen
<zfe> aren’t you women?
<redacted> zfe: you are welcome to go into your own kitchen and make yourself a sandwich.
<redacted> zfe: please read the channel guidelines in the topic
-!- mode/#ubuntu-women [+o hypa7ia] by ChanServ
<zfe> ok i will while you make me a sammich
-!- mode/#ubuntu-women [+b *!*=Gianluca@88.252.29.*] by hypa7ia
-!- zfe was kicked from #ubuntu-women by hypa7ia [http://xkcd.com/322]

Nicknames redacted to protect the innocent.

One of the early results from the dialog the Python community is having about diversity issues is a new blog – Python Open Mike.  The idea is that there are folks out there who have something to say that’s relevant to the Python community, but who don’t necessarily keep a blog themselves.  Open Mike is a venue for their posts.    It’s moderated, but easy to post to via email, and syndicated on Planet Python.  Though it came out of the diversity mailing list, it’s not intended to be restricted to diversity issues.  So if you have something to say about Python and are disinclined for whatever reason to set up your own, feel free to step up to the Mike!

-Leigh

I think that the comments on this post do a good job of answering the question it asks – “where are the women in Python.” Turns out we’re out there, you just need to keep your eyes open and ask in the right places :)

I’m going to buck the trend and not name names on my post for Ada Lovelace Day 2009.  Instead I want to salute the women of the Ubuntu Women project for making participating in Ubuntu and in Open Source software in general just a little more supportive, friendly, and welcoming.  Unless one comes into our spaces to troll or harass, in which case the banhammers are swiftly dealt :)

Over the years (and it’s been years now!) I’ve hung out in #ubuntu-women on freenode, participated in the mailing list, and run into U-W participants at conferences around the world.  Through this, I’ve gained an invaluable support network, a place to vent to my peers, a great group of male allies (by which I mean guys who support the U-W project), and a bunch of fantastic friends.

Ada Lovelace Day is all about role models, and I couldn’t ask for a better bunch of women to look up to than the ones I hang out with every day in #ubuntu-women.  Thanks for all the great conversations, and let’s keep working hard on bug number 1!

I would be remiss to not mention my friend Behdad Esfahbod’s post for ALD, because he picked me to write about.  I’m delighted and honoured that he wrote about me. ETA: looks like Joey DeVilla and Karen Fung did too!

-Leigh

Two of the most important books I’ve read in my entire life are Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever’s “Women Don’t Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation – and Positive Strategies for Change” and the follow-up “Ask For It: How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want“.

They’ve inspired me to make significant changes in my life – negotiating the salary for my first “real job”, challenging contracts and business practices that I didn’t think were fair, and generally making my life way more awesome by asking for – and nearly always getting – what I want.

Yesterday, for example, I sent a note about the MOO cards I ordered to their support desk asking for a replacement set of cards because they had misprinted mine.  It was a small issue, and they offered me a half-off coupon, but I insisted that they send me a whole deck – and guess what, they did.  Kudos to them for solving the issue, and to me for asking, and then asking again.

I’ve created a Twitter account called @askdaily, inspired by these books and this particular incident, to share this kind of “happy negotiation moments” – mine was little, but I’d love to retweet people’s (particularly womens’) successes with job negotiations and promitions, contracts, car repairs, sales negotiations, housework splitting, whatever the happy moments that people get from asking for what they want out of life.

-Leigh