Open Stack

I don't think the intend was to say that the SW developers are the only
real contributors (besides I personally don't think that SW developer is
the only technical role in the OpenStack community).

If I understand correctly the various reactions, it is a matter of
rephrasing the question to something like  "how many SW developers are
female developers?".  That is a valid question to me, and more generally
having statistics about the various roles that the women of OpenStack have
in the community is interesting.

Claire



On Tue, Nov 3, 2015 at 3:07 PM, Anne Gentle <annegentle at justwriteclick.com>
wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, Nov 3, 2015 at 10:23 AM, Foley, Emma L <emma.l.foley at intel.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I have nothing against non-technical people, and I meant no offence, but
>> I'm looking at it from a different point-of-view than you are. Maybe my
>> view is skewed, as the majority of the men I met were technical, and it
>> seemed that the majority of the women I met were not technical. I got the
>> feeling that technical women were highly underrepresented at the summit. I
>> don't know what the over-all statistics were for technical/non-technical
>> male/female overall, but I just saw the women as a majority non-technical
>> group, and while there's nothing wrong with that, it would leave me feeling
>> that being a technical women puts me in much more of a minority than I
>> thought. i.e. I was expecting to find women in a similar role to myself.
>>
>> It might also be to do with the fact that I expected a lot more technical
>> people overall, as that is where I'm coming from, working in a technical
>> team in a large company, where marketing and other non-technical people are
>> kept separate to a great extent.
>>
>> TLDR; My previous experience does not include a huge amount of
>> collaboration with non-tech people, which skewed my expectations.
>>
>
>
> Glad you expanded upon your experiences. Let me give you some more
> perspective if I may.
>
> There's good reason to be concerned about some sort of call-out in amount
> of technical-ness of any individual contributor. We're unfortunately in an
> industry where this practice continues to shove women in to a category
> that's considered "lesser." I'd recommend this article:
>
> https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/c-is-manly-python-is-for-n00bs-how-false-stereotypes-turn-into-technical-truths
>
>
> Pull quotes that really spoke to me:
>   * "A major reason to eradicate these false stereotypes is that they
> perpetuate biases against women."
>   * "While those on the outside are still struggling to prove themselves,
> the technically privileged have gone ahead to determine what the software
> that runs our lives should look like."
>   * "Judgments about language use, despite being far from “objective” or
> “technical,” set up a hierarchy among programmers that systematically
> privileges certain groups."
>
> I've been more aware of the loss of power or privilege by choosing to be
> in an "other" category since my focus is documentation. It happens to be
> highly technical, but people often overlook or even look down upon it as a
> contribution. Same for "oh you're a database administrator" or "oh, you are
> a web developer." Be very careful if you notice you take on those biases
> because of the industry we work in. Our industry is terrible at this
> categorization and stereotype creation, and it shows. We're working on
> making it better and this conversation is a good starting point.
>
> Anne
>
>
>>
>> In general:
>> Tech people engage with tech people as they know the product on a
>> different level to non-technical people. Same goes for non-tech, the
>> marketing guy is not going to want to talk to the kernel engineer when
>> talking about (e.g.) the newest distro, they'll just want to know about a
>> feature at a high level, and not how many lines of code and what algorithms
>> were used to implement the feature.
>>
>> To address the problem of people being disappointed at meeting a
>> marketing person at a booth:
>>     A technical person is going to want to talk tech, and will be
>> expecting technical person (as well as marketing) to be available to answer
>> their technical questions. I'm not saying a marketing person wouldn't be
>> able to answer these, but the tech person would be better qualified to
>> discuss the highly technical stuff, as it would be their area of expertise.
>>
>> So don't be offended if I want to talk tech with other technical people,
>> and was disappointed that I didn't find as many as I was expecting in the
>> group. Any non-technical person would feel lost in a room of engineers.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Emma
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------------------
>> Intel Shannon Limited
>> Registered in Ireland
>> Registered Office: Collinstown Industrial Park, Leixlip, County Kildare
>> Registered Number: 308263
>> Business address: Dromore House, East Park, Shannon, Co. Clare
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Niki Acosta (nikacost) [mailto:nikacost at cisco.com]
>> Sent: Tuesday, November 3, 2015 3:54 PM
>> To: Foley, Emma L; women-of-openstack at lists.openstack.org
>> Subject: Re: [Women-of-openstack] Meeting today
>>
>> 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
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Women-of-openstack mailing list
>> Women-of-openstack at lists.openstack.org
>> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/women-of-openstack
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Anne Gentle
> Rackspace
> Principal Engineer
> www.justwriteclick.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> Women-of-openstack mailing list
> Women-of-openstack at lists.openstack.org
> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/women-of-openstack
>
>
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