Re: Questions and comments regarding Debian Women

[Margarita Manterola <margamanterola@gmail.com>]

Hi Monica,

2011/4/25 Mònica Ramírez <monica@probeta.net>:

> About becoming a DD, I'm not trying to be a DD for two reasons: the
> first one is that I don't feel sure enough with the required skills,

I think this is a common issue for us women. The geek feminism wiki
names this the "Impostor Syndrome" [1].  I guess most of us have felt
it at some point.  And it's important to fight it when you realize you
are suffering from it.

[1]:  http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Impostor_syndrome

> the second reason is that I'm only maintaining a few packages.

I checked your qa page [2], and it says that you currently maintain 4
packages.  Even though this is fairly recent, you might consider
applying to be a Debian Maintainer [3] soon.

[2]: http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=monica@probeta.net
[3]: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMaintainer

> Although it
> would be a honor for me to achieve a DD status, it's not my main
> ambition. My main ambition is just collaborating in the project, being a
> DD or not. Maybe other women feel the same.

Becoming a DD means being able to take part on the course of the
project, and comes as a natural thing to do once you get involved
enough in the project.  It's not at all a problem if you don't feel
interested now (or ever), there's many people that don't really want
or need that level of commitment.  But at least from my side, I don't
want anybody to refrain from applying due to being "not good enough".

> However, I think it's not clear when a person is ready to start this
> process. If we think women are a little bit shier and unsure in
> technical issues, it's more difficult that a woman decides to start this
> process without a bit of encouragement from the community.

Indeed, as Mackenzie says, this usually becomes a task for the
sponsor, and it might vary widly depending on what the sponsor thinks.
 As a rule of thumb, if your sponsor is uploading your packages
without making any changes to them, you are ready to apply as a DM.
And after a few months of that, if you feel that you've become deeply
involved in the development of Debian and want to participate in
decisions, want to be able to upload NMUs or upload your own new
packages without going through a sponsor, then it's time to apply as a
DD.

> To finalize, one idea: has DW some kind of slides showing the Debian
> project oriented to encourage women to collaborate? If they exist, it
> would be nice translating them to different languages. So, all of us
> could spread them. Maybe some women need a first non-virtual contact to
> encourage themselves.
>
> If these slides don't exist we could mix parts of the presentation made
> by Miriam Ruiz [0] with DW specific information. What do you think about
> it?

I've given the "How to contribute to Debian" [*] talks many times, on
different contexts.  It's not something specially women oriented, but
I think it summarizes most of the needed info.  It could be maybe
merged with Miriam's, to create a DW version of it, *BUT* I'd prefer
for it to be a wiki or something like that, instead of slides.

[*] Sometimes also "and Ubuntu" when there are no Ubuntu people in the conf.

-- 
Besos,
Marga