Women @ ApacheCon Europe 2005

After London I flew down to Stuttgart for ApacheCon Europe 2005 where I was the second keynote speaker. I gave a talk called "Strategic Commons: Open Source in the Developing World". The slides should be up on the ApacheCon website real soon now.

This is getting to be a very popular topic (which is gratifying after spending years feeling like the only one who was doing talks about anything outside of Europe or North America). My fellow OSI Board member, Sanjiva Weerawarana is giving a similar talk at OSCON next week, and then I'll be doing my version of the talk again at EuroOSCON .

Anyway, while at ApacheConEU I was asked to give a lightning talk on "Women in Open Source" and many, many conference attendees wanted to talk with me afterwards about it. Interesting to have such a short talk garner so many comments. I guess I should be used to it by now. Its evidently a controversial topic. I'd moderated a panel at Grace Hopper last year on the subject (see notes here by an attendee at that panel, Sarah Allen), and I'm moderating one at OSCON by the same name.

When working on pulling together the OSCON panel, I spoke with many of the women I know about their experience. That meant contemplation about whether there is a "female experience" of open source and whether the question is one we need to ask. My former OpenSolaris boss, Claire Giordano, wrote some yesterday about what one of those conversations brought up for her and it really maps to my own journey in thinking about the topic. I hate it that I have to identify myself as a woman in a field where gender bias should not exist...but it does.

As a result of the response I got from the lightning talk at ApacheCon EU, I got to meet Jean T. Anderson, a woman committer on the Apache Derby project. Jean and I formally suggested creation of an Apache-Women mail list to improve on the number of women who try to join and actually end up sticking around Apache.

Whether the mail list is approved by Apache board is still in debate, but I'm encouraged by the results the Debian-Women list seems to be having. I'll keep you all posted.

Comments

[Yoav Shapira]

I don't see why the ASF Board would reject such a mailing list. It's a good idea... (Spoken by a non-woman ;))

[james governor]

hey come on diva give us some full text. i need more than a headline... even though you do write them with admirable clarity

[Danilo D'Antonio]

Kind Danese Cooper,

I send you my best regards.

Please, could you grant me a minute in order to present you an idea for a new tool to be proposed to the open source community?

Please, imagine a special software that let the single members of a mailing list, or of an association, of a social group, to take position respect to a motion, a petition, or any other proposal of social order.

Imagine a special web page containing a table: on a side there is the list of the proposals, of the decisions to be taken, of the calls, perorations, etc. but also special sections containing generic themes to be enlightened. On the perpendicular side there are the members of the mailing list who are available to publicly express their preferences, by voting the arguments in discussion.

Therefore, something like this:

| Vincent | Anna | Sandra | Dan | etc. etc. etc.

fuels
rationing | no | yes | yes | yes |

public
employment
rotation | yes | no | yes | yes |

optimal
demographic
density | yes | no | yes | yes |

------------- ---------- ----------- -------- --------

responsible
turism | ? | ok | ok | ko |

Naturally for every issue, call, theme, etc. there is a link that sends back to the document produced by the person or the group (but also by a delegated commission) in order to expose the matter. And also every member has a link to a document that let us know who is the person that has expressed that preference, and the same for every single decision or opinion, in a way that we can know the reasons, the objections, the doubts or points remained unresolved.

Through a page of this kind we obtain a general view immediately visible with only one simple glance. The decisional geography of a group appears immediately in all its extension. And we find a richness of shadings that only the contribution of every single person, of every individual sensibility and knowledge, can add to the proposed issue.

The very important thing, however, is the fact that this table must not be conceived like something inanimated, static, dead. On the contrary: we must see it like something dynamic, in continuous evolution, well alive, quite a pleasant meeting place to be attended even daily, like a club, but also and mainly a kind of desktop, of table for common work, a situation for confrontation in which, in basis to the decisions and contributions of everyone, everyone could also change his/her own decisions.

Periodically those conclusions that would reach the general agreement would be published with prominence informing other groups, the media, etc. Those issues that would meet yet disagreement should instead wait that further reflections and contributions lead to the result of a commonly felt thought.

Really, to a tool like this is easy add (at least through the imagination :) a long serie of complements. For example the possibility to order in different ways the whole table (to be realized probably with the technique of the database shared on line), and naturally various statistics.

Imagination however leads us to think that, in the case this dynamic and permanent desktop for confrontation and deliberation would effectively result useful and it's use would spread around, we could progressively conceive analogous cybernetic meeting places where collect at an higher level total data of several groups. In this hypothesis some form of standardization would be very useful, in a way to permit in short time, through appropriate digital spiders, the extrapolation of a complete national feeling in relation to any issue.

The final result of all these possibilities could be a real tool of evolute democracy, participated electronically. Something well far from what is waiting for us next (to affix an "x" on an electoral card).

And in effect this network of confrontation and deliberation desktops, of these "look and decide yourself!" pages could become another important channel, a people's decisional and operative channel, a fondamental tool that we all need still today after the email, web, ftp, newsgroups and mailing lists.

Well: could you be, or do you know someone that could be, interested to carry out this crumb of future? I remain at your complete disposal.

Many thanks for your attention,

Danilo D'Antonio

HyperLinker.com
Via Fonte Regina, 23
64100 Teramo - Italy

For a confrontation and deliberation desktop
http://confrontation-deliberation-desktop.hyperlinker.org

DCD V1.1 - 06/03/36