Open Stack

This bums me out. Maybe I¹m taking this personally, but being
³disappointed" and following that with ³at least 50% of the women I met
were in non-technical roles² makes it seem like women (like myself) are
somehow less valuable or important because we¹re not technical
contributors. Perhaps that is not your intent. Nevertheless, I wanted to
share some thoughts on this subject, as it¹s come up quite a bit.

During a past summit, someone made a comment in a panel that they were
³offended² that someone came to the booth and thought they were ³in
marketing.² A few women in the room took offense to that statement, and I
understood why. It was as though marketers were somehow less important and
less valuable than contributors and developers. A woman in the audience
stood up, walked to the mic, and asked folks to stop saying ³they thought
I was in marketing like it¹s a bad thing.² She was right. That exchange
made me realize that subconscious bias exists even amongst women in the
same group.

As women, we should support each other!

If it weren¹t for the brilliant women (and men) of OpenStack who share
their expertise around public relations, social media, marketing, business
development, branding, copywriting, communications, analyst relations,
event planning, presentation authoring/coaching, and probably a whole lot
of other stuff that I¹m probably forgetting, what would OpenStack look
like? There would be no summit. There would be no Women of OpenStack
events. There would be no SuperUser magazine or newsletter.There would be
no ³We Are OpenStack² campaign. OpenStack would NOT EXIST.

At then end of each day, we¹re all human. We all have different skills,
different talents, and different abilities. The cool part is that people
from all around the globe are building something that is fundamentally
changing humanity‹ something bigger than ourselves. And while the code and
docs are created by technical contributors, the other side of OpenStack
keeps that foundation strong and vibrant and growing. And that¹s pretty
cool. 

Apologies if this offended anyone. That definitely was not my intent. My
intent is to help us be more inclusive and embrace diversity‹ no matter
what is printed on your badge.

#WeAreOpenStack

Niki Acosta
Cloud Evangelist
(t) @nikiacosta 






On 11/3/15, 5:51 AM, "Foley, Emma L" <emma.l.foley at intel.com> wrote:

>I agree, while there was a record number of women attendees , I was
>disappointed by the low number of women technical contributors! At least
>50% of the women I met were in non-technical roles.
>
>I did meet some great people there, but I was expecting many more female
>ATCs, when there was a big fuss about the large number of women attending.
>
>Regards,
>Emma
>
>________________________________________
>
>
>Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2015 16:30:08 +0000
>From: Nithya Ruff <Nithya.Ruff at sandisk.com>
>To: "Barrett, Carol L" <carol.l.barrett at intel.com>, Amy Marrich
>        <Amy.Marrich at rackspace.com>,
>"women-of-openstack at lists.openstack.org"
>        <women-of-openstack at lists.openstack.org>
>Subject: Re: [Women-of-openstack] Meeting today
>Message-ID:
>        
><BL2PR02MB4209D531715A9D9FBB94BD6F62C0 at BL2PR02MB420.namprd02.prod.outlook.
>com>
>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
>I would like to suggest an agenda item for next week's meeting .  When I
>retweeted the Women of OpenStack picture, I got a number of questions on
>how many of the women in OpenStack are developers contributing code.
>They want role models in the community.
> Bitergia is a company that OpenStack foundation uses to create the stats
>behind "the state of OpenStack".  Why not work with them on getting more
>information on women contributing patches to the various projects.     I
>would like to suggest we discuss this next time.
>
>Beth, Carol and Jessica - thanks again for your leadership and all the
>work that the foundation does - Claire and others to make this a thriving
>community.
>
>Thank You,
>Nithya A. Ruff,  Director, SanDisk Open Source Strategy Office
>WIN Board Member
>SanDisk Corporation
>951 SanDisk Drive, Milpitas, CA 95035
>T: + (408-801-7068)| M: + (510-378-3159)
>Nithya.Ruff at SanDisk.com<mailto:Nithya.Ruff at SanDisk.com>        Twitter:
>@nithyaruff<https://twitter.com/nithyaruff>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Women-of-openstack mailing list
>Women-of-openstack at lists.openstack.org
>http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/women-of-openstack