Thursday 24 November 2016

Pyladies November Meetup

After a long festive season(Diwali) we had our Pyladies Meetup on 13th Nov at RedHat office and it was so good to see new faces as the number of Pyladies were increasing with each meetup. As always I was excited about the meetup and to learn about Creating our own Map using GeoJSON and more about Git as these were the Topics for this meetup which Nisha have mailed us. So the meetup started with a session on Git by Sayan Chowdhaury. Starting with the basic introduction to Git like what it is, why we need it, whats are benefits, he started the session. It is very important if we want to contribute to upstream or any projects. Here are fews benefits of using it :
  • Easy collaboration
  • Work Offline
  • Contribute to any open source project
So we started with initiating our own project named “Pyladies” and then moving it to github. Also he told us how we can send PR(Pull Request), so we forked his Pyladies project and send a PR to it. We all learned the basics commands of git like:
  • git init
  • git config --global user.name “username”
  • git config --global user.email “userEmail”
  • git add <filename>
  • git commit -m "Commit message"
  • git push origin master
  • git status
  • git remote add origin <server>
  • git checkout -b <branchname>
  • git fetch origin
Sayan also told a site which we can refer for learning more about git through git tower.

After this we had a break as it was lunch time and our hungry tummy needs something to continue with learning new stuffs . After the break Nisha came up, as I told there were lots of new faces it was their first meetup, so there was a introduction session where she brief about how we started and what we do in the meetups. Then we all introduced ourself to each other. After this she started with her talk talking about spatial data and how we can map anything related to our own life to many others crucial information like she have mapped the number of accidents in different cities. Also she gave an excellent example that how we can use map in our CV too, she showed us a CV in which the person has marked his educational institutes and places of work where she had worked till now geographically, and it really sounds interesting. She told us about how we can start with it and explained about  GIS, mapbox, leaflet etc. To make us started she explained how we can start mapping using github as all of us have learned git in the previous session so it was a good idea. All we had to do was:
  1. Convert the CSV format file to geoJSON(for this we can either write a script in python or use any other method)
  2. Then we have to upload that geoJSON file to github.
  3. Then view map on github
  4. Map renders magically.

So to practice she mailed us an CSV file which we can use to create  our own map as an assignment. The meetup ended with a discussion on the next meetup, I was not able to be a part of that discussion because I have to go with Praveen, he was having his Football match as Redhat Annual Sports were going on. So we left saying bye to all Pyladies, and looking forward to meet them all in sixth Pyladies meetup.
How can we forget Pycon Pune which is in February(16th -19th), excited to meet all the Pyladies and many more people from various communities. So hurry up just grab your ticket as time is running out so as tickets.

Monday 14 November 2016

Pyladies- October Meetup

Like every month we meet up for this month also, this time it was for half day only but it was very special as we were having Hong Phuc Dang  founder FOSSASIA with us.


 It was a great experience to meet her, as she shared a lot of things with us and also tell us about FOSSASIA, what it is and how we can contribute to it. She encouraged the pyladies to be a part of open source and start contributing to it. Also She invited us to FOSSASIA which is in Singapore from 17th to 19th March. After her talks there were lightening talks from Pyladies which was decided by Anwesha in our last meeting that we will have lightening talks in every meetups as most of us are afraid of speaking in Public so to overcome that fear this session was started from this meetup and will be continued... So our first speaker was Samriddhi who is a student, she shared her experience and about Pyladies. Next was my turn I was ready with my Presentation, so quickly after setting up, I started with a brief introduction of mine and then continued with the topic which was "Difference between Python2 and Python-3.


After talks, now it was Kushal who was going to take a workshop on building shell with cmd2 module, so we all were set with our laptops in which we have installed cmd module. Then we learnt how to build our own shell and it was interesting to build a shell and play with it. All of us practiced that and solved the problem given by Kushal. Upto that time Kushal has ordered Pizza for us. Then it was the time for Pizza Party and as always we had a very good discussion during that time. Hong Phuc Dang gave us more ideas on how we can lift our self up in the open source community and many other information.And this is how the meetup ended with a plan to meet in November :)

Wednesday 26 October 2016

Science Hack Day, Belgaum

Science Hack Day, was one of the great event attended by me. I feel lucky to be there as everything was so perfect from venue to the arrangements made by Praveen Patil, Sankalp Bhumi is a very beautiful and peaceful place with all the natural beauty. After reaching there it was a beautiful evening and then we had dinner which was so good. After having dinner we went to sleep as we all were tired after a long journey. 
Day-1
In morning I got up by a natural alarm which was not set by me, it was the voice was cock, who were there at Sankalp Bhumi. After getting up I just opened the door and a cool breeze blew on my face making me more refreshing, it was such a beautiful morning. Then I stepped out of my room, and sat on the chair outside my room watching the lake and small fishes in the lake in front of my room, by that time Hong was also up from her sleep and joined me outside. It was such a pleasure to see Ducks swimming in the water. After spending some time there, I went to take shower as breakfast was to be served at 9am, and after that the event was going to start. So after the breakfast, the event started with the introduction, Praveen Patil and Hitesh started the event with the introduction, " What the event was and what we are going to do in these two days". Then mentors shared their ideas that what they are going to do, so that people who were their without any ideas can join them according to their interest. It was so interesting that school student were also going to join us, even student from 5th standard came there for the event, it was so good to see them. After the lightening talks from mentors, hacking began at the place which was decided for hackers and it was also so beautiful. We all were set to start with our ideas, I was just planning to join Nisha in making the "Cookie Smarter", then I came to know that the School student are making a Solar Latern and they might need help in Soldering and I was perfect in this as I have two years experience so I made up my mind to help them to convert the solar energy to electrical energy. And I was surprised to see a huge number of students were interested in it. Then we just distributed the components to the student, and told them about the precautions to be taken while soldering and we started to make solar latern which was a workshop organised by Jithin who came from Delhi , thanks to him for all his time and the components. Also some students were making Science Toys at another place. 
Then the day ended with hacking and ligtening talks by hackers and mentors. Also there was a demo by Prabhu Sir on Fuel conservation by burning bio-organic mass. Then we all had dinner and discussion with people, I was able to meet a lot of new people . In the end we had a laser show by Praveen Patil and it was awesome, enjoyed by everyone there. After seeing the show everyone was wishing to have a Physics teacher like him.

Day-2
Again the day started with a alarm by the cock, and I went for a walk with Praveen around Salkalp Bhumi to explore it more. Then we all had breakfast and set for hacking again. Again there was a Science workshop for kids. I was again with the students for helping them in soldering, after the workshop I went to hacking place where everyone was ready to present their project, as after lunch they have to show demo of their project. So after lunch demos begin each team was given time to represent their project. There were 11 teams in total, they all described about their projects. Projects are listed below:
1. Sun Tracking
2. Making Cookie smart 
3. Nodemcu and MicroPython
4. Web VR
5. Alarm System using NodeMCU
6. Chrome Extension to convert Text to Speech 
7. Symposium 
8. Organic Map
9. Beautiful Belgaum Map
10. Moodlight and IoT switch
11. Motion Detector

There were four categories on the basis of which the award was given:
1. The Most Socially Useful Hack- Sun Tracking
2. The Best Education Hack-  Chrome Extension to convert Text to Speech
3. The Best Science Hack- Organic Map
4. The Audience Favorite Hack-  Motion Detector
Then the medals were given to the winning teams which were bought by Hong. Then we all had discussions over tea. Everyone was exchanging their ideas and were making new friends. The time was moving so fast and the night came. Before dinner we have Rahul Prabhukhanolkar with us who was describing us about Bat Conservation on which he was working,as Siddhesh want to know more about it as he also want to contribute. It was so interesting how he was using the ultrasonic frequencies to detect a Bat movement, and  he also told us about different Bat species which were unknown to us. Also he showed us the device used by him to detect Bat, then we had  a practical with it. We went out to detect the motion of Bat and we were able to detect the Bat movement. I, Nisha and Siddhesh tried listening the noise and we were able to detect it.  Then we had a get together where we discussed about our experiences, event and many more things. After that we went for the dinner, there also we had  a long discussion, it was like no one wants to sleep as next morning we were going to leave, so we want to utilize each and every momemt of that day. But as some people were leaving in night only, so we ended up with the discussion and were in our room. Hong and I planned to see a movie or series with others but it was too late and we had to leave early also, so we both slept. 

On 24th, we woke up at early and left at 5.30 am, as all of us had office, so we said bye to Hong, looking forward to meet her at FOSSASIA, Singapore next year.

For Belgaum:
It was a great event with a lot of energy, you all were awesome. Students were so interested and keen to learn new technology. Best of luck to the students for future. We all got lot of positive energy from this event, I personally got motivated by seeing the environment at Belgaum. I want to come to Belgaium for the next event. Thanks to all the organizers ( Hong Phuc Dang, Praveen Patil, Rahul, Shrikrishna Prabhu, Bandu Majukar, Sanjay Kulkarni, Suyash, Hitesh, Jithin, Minal, Nitesh, Akshai, Abdul and many more.....) for such a great event and hope you will continue it, so that we can visit Belgaum again and get a chance to meet you all : ) .

For more photos visit: https://www.flickr.com/groups/3087939@N23/pool

Friday 21 October 2016

Belgaum-Swimming class, Kayaking and Hack Day

Belgaum, unplanned journey and event, as I was not having any plan to attend it before I attended yesterday Pyladies Meetup, where Kushal and few other people told us to join them for the Hackers Day which was in Belgaum on 22nd and 23rd. So we planned to attend that as it sounds interesting, so quickly I mailed my manager(Swati) for that to take her permission and she replied yes for that, so sweet of her : ). So we planned to leave with Nisha as she was having space in her car, but then we came to know that Kushal is leaving early morning and we can reach there by 2, then we decided to leave with him so that after reaching there I can do my office work. Today we started 6.30 in morning from Pune and it was not that much traffic so we crossed Pune without any stucking in traffic and we were on the Highway. We were five people in the car I, Dang Hong Phuc(whom I meet in Pyladies meetup), Praveen, Sayan and Kushal So Kushal drive the whole way to  Belgaum, it was the longest distance covered by him till now( I guess around 350 km), in the way we enjoyed the mountains, greenery and too many tolls :P. After paying so much of toll I noticed one thing we paid least amount for the road which was best throughout our journey, I must say Karnataka highway is way too good, we all enjoyed the journey. Then we reached the venue where we were going to hack, Praveen Patil leaded us there. After that we went for lunch as all of us were very hungry.

After lunch we were back to the resort and then I just rushed to my room to connect the wi-fi and my laptop, then I started with my work. After completing the work for today, I went with Hong as we have seen the swimming pool in the resort and she told she will train me how to swim, then we went to the pool. After going there we realised the water was very cool, so I was afraid to go in and I was worried we will get cold, also I didn’t know the abc of swimming :P and we have to be there for next two days for Hack Day. But Hong was so excited that she entered the water and then I also followed her. As I didn’t know how to swim, it took a lot of her effort to make me float in water. She told me how I can balance my body, how to move my hands and legs. A great thanks to her as it was her effort and confidence that atleast I was able to float and balance my body in water without any support. For swimming she is my first Trainer, when I will swim the first person who will come to my mind is Hong. As it was evening already so we then came back to resort and changed. Upto that time Saptak and Praveen were there outside, so we joined them for Kayaking.

Then we went for Kayaking , and I was so confident after Hong swimming class that I can save myself if I will fall down :P. It was a great fun and we were missing Nisha who has not reached yet and Anwesha also who was not able to come due to some reason. The resort is very good, everywhere greenery is there, we were able to see rabbit, peacock and ducks here. They offered cocoa welcome drink, and cocoa was from their farm only, everything is so natural here. Also I got a chance to swim and do Kayaking without any guide, which was the best part of today. We just unwind the rope and started Kayaking. Now we all are excited for the Science Hack Day.

Eagerly waiting for the Hackers day and the workshop which is tomorrow, excited to meet new people and school children as they will also be joining us.

Thursday 20 October 2016

Python2 and Python3

Some of us still uses the final version 2.7 of Python 2 which was released in 2010, as Python2 will not be maintained after 2020, so it is a great time to switch to Python3 and accept it with the new changes.

Here I have listed the few changes which I came to know when I started using Python3.
1. Print Function
It was the first change which I came to know, that now the use of parenthesis is must for print as its now treated as function than a statement.

Python2 >>> print “hello world”
Python3 >>>print (“hello world”)

2. Raw_input deprecated
Python2 have two methods to read input from keyboard input and raw_input
In Python3 we only have input( ) and everything is treated as string.

Python2 >>> x = raw_input “hello”
Python3 >>> x = input(“hello”)

3. Integer Division
In Python2 result was rounded to nearest integer for 5/2 and getting a floating result have to give float type integer as 5.0/2.0
In Python3 5/2 result by default it result in float type if result is of float type.

Python2 >>> 5/2 = 2
             >>>5.0/2.0 = 2.5
Python3 >>> 5/2 = 2.5

4. Unicode String
In Python2 we need to type u if we want to store a string as Unicode.
print type(unicode("this is a unicode type")
<type "unicode">
print type(b"this is sting")
<type "str">
In Python3 it is stored as Unicode by default.
All the strings are now Unicode by default and you have to mark byte sequence with b. 


5. range( ) and xrange( )
In Python2 there were two functions range( ) and xrange( ).
Range retuen a list of integers and xrange return xrange object.
In Python3 only range( ) is there.
xrange( ) replaced with range( ).


6. Handling exceptions
In Python2 argument to exception can be declared without using keyword “as”.
In Python2 argument to exception declaration needs “as” keyword.

Python2 >>> except TypeError, err
Python3 >>> except TypeError as err

and there are more changes, but these were the major one I think which I have noticed till now while coding, so will go through the rest also, once I will use them in my code.

Friday 30 September 2016

Pyladies in pycon-india



umbrella1.jpg
Pyladies, a chapter lost in the darkness got a spark in Pune(India) when Anwesha, Nisha, Rupali decided to open that closed chapter and lighten the Pyladies community with its light. Hats off to their courage as Anwesha and Nisha have small daughter, and it’s really difficult to manage anything with kids but still they are giving their time to Pyladies, I have to learn a lot from them as in this busy world why would anyone care of about anything so much, especially when it has lost its existence. But these ladies reopen the Pyladies-Pune Chapter and made it a success. A community which was unknown in India a few days back, is now known and people are talking about. They want to know more about it, want to be a part of it and contribute in one way or other. All this happen after our efforts in Pycon. Pycon was a great success for  Pyladies, also Pyladies was one of the reason for which I went to Pycon India.

Pyladies, I came know about it when the Pune-chapter was restarted and I attended its first meetup in July. As I was also new to Python and programming, so I became a part of it and started waiting for the date of next meetup announced on the mailing list. Till now we are meeting once in month but can also think of twice in a month if possible. After we had started meeting regularly, we wanted Pyladies in Pycon India so that the people come to know about it, so we planned to set up a booth in Pycon India, but plans doesn’t go smoothly every time, and same was a case with us when Anwesha told us that she had applied for a booth in Pycon India in August and they have  refused us to give space as there is no space available for the Pyladies booth as we were not the sponsors  and here comes the sorrow :-( . Then comes Rupali like a life saver to Pyladies, offering us a space, as Red Hat was ready to give us space in its booth, then we were like no one can stop us from being a part of Pycon India, and there our faces were like :-).

So here come the day, we were waiting for 24th September 2015, and we were at JNU convention centre venue for Pycon. After registration I directly went to Red Hat booth where we were going to set up our Pyladies table. After inspecting the space I had a cup of coffee and then went for the Keynote by Baishampayan Ghose, by that time Anwesha and Nisha were also there, it was great keynote, learnt a lot from it. After attending the talk, we all pyladies rushed to the booth to set up our table. So first thing was that how to show our presence there, as we were not having pyladies t-shirt to promote it, but that problem was solved by Trishna, as she has brought pyladies print out. So we planned to put them on our t-shirts, and then we either pinned it up or paste it so that people came to know about it. We all quickly cut those logos and put them on our T-shirts.  These logos grabbed the attention of people present there. Then comes the Pyladies Umbrella which was a point of attraction for the public, thanks to Nisha for that, as she carried it along the way from Pune to Delhi. The leds present were not glowing when we switched it on, that was a little disappointment for us. Then Praveen came to help us, and he was successful in it, leds were lightening so were our faces. It was very beautiful, and that can be seen in the pictures as how everyone is posing with it, I liked it so much that I was the first to click a pic with it :P.
pooja.jpg

Then we started telling people what actually Pyladies is and how we are organizing meetups. Anwesha was going to people to tell them about Pyladies, I and Nisha were at booth for the people who were coming there, and answering their questions as we were new, and it was just a beginning, so many question were there for us like:
  • What is Pyladies?
  • Is it only for ladies?
  • How we can join or contribute to it?
  • Is it for Pune only?
  • Can we have Pyladies in our own city?
And many more………
Every question was answered and it was good to see that people are showing their interest in Pyladies. In between I attended few talks also and keynote by Van. So the first day ended explaining what we are and what we do at Pyladies.

Then comes the second day of Pycon, attended the keynote by Andreas Mueller in morning. After seeing such a great response for Pyladies, we decided for a talk in Open Space so that we can address everyone interested and can get some ideas and insights for our group for its further growth as we all were new. Janki helped us to get a space for us in open space. Kushal and Praveen helped to setup for the discussion. Paul Everitt, Jeff Rush, Van Lindberg and Dmitry Filippov were approached for it, and they were ready to give their time to our group, that was so sweet of them.
dis.jpg

The talk was started with a brief introduction of Pyladies and its current state by Rupali. Then the discussion started which was really the best part of Pyladies in Pycon as we got a lot new ideas for our community and we were able to communicate our thoughts to the people present there about Pyladies. Paul, Jeff, Dmitry and Van shared their personal experience  and gave us the useful tips to make Pyladies a Success, they were also impressed by seeing us doing such a great job for our group. Then we distributed the slips where we have written the email-ids for joining Pyladies and the mailing list. So it was good session and thanks all for joining it and providing their insights.

pyladies.jpg


In the end there was a feedback session, where Anwesha asked for a space for Pyladies in next Pycon, hope we will get our space the next year for Pyladies. Thanks to all the Pyladies for making the event a success, and we all will take Pyladies to a great height. It was a great experience attending Pycon, looking forward for next year…...

Friday 16 September 2016

PyLadies Meetup Event Report


We had our pyladies meetup this Saturday, last week we were not able to do as in Maharashtra, there is a festival Ganesh Chaturthi, honouring the birth of Lord Ganesha it is celebrated for ten days so we planned to do meet this week instead of last week. Again it was great meetup, started with Nisha Menon’s talk “The practical usage of Python", but unfortunately I missed it this time : ( , when I reached she was about to finish. I was late as that morning I decided to try something new in breakfast ie radish parathas that took a lot of time to prepare, but that was a good experiment as they were mouth-watering. So after having a delicious parathas with curd and pickle I reached there, and took my seat, everyone was already ready with their laptop, this time there were lot of new faces, many new student had come to attend the meetup, without delaying anymore I also get started as by that time Nisha talk was ended and she invited Trishna for her session. 


She was going to take a session on “Using WEB API in Python3 “. So before starting she just confirmed how many of us were familiar with Python basics, as it was discussed in previous meetup. But still for the new members and to brush up our knowledge she revised all the basics to keep us all on a same platform. Although it was a revision session but she explained each and everything and gave time to all of us to try the different commands on our terminal and solved everyone queries. Thanks to her for that, then she discussed about the things which we were going to do in our workshop that day. She has chosen a great topic and problem for the workshop. We were going to use the API of Zomato website. It seems very interesting as it was about food, and everyone love that. So we generated an API_KEY for that, by that time it was the time for lunch, so we all went for lunch. 


Kushal and Praveen ordered lunch for us, thanks to them to fill our hungry tummy. During lunch we all had discussion on different topics related to python and other stuffs.  Also Kushal took the students for a small walk in redhat. After lunch we all gathered in the same room named Harishchandgarh which reminds me of King HARISHCHANDRA who never lied and always kept his promise. We all were set, one of us was facing problem with her laptop, as she was having a window laptop, so it was suggested by Kushal to switch to linux as it is far easy to handle problems on it and its best if we want to contribute to development side or  to any project. So for that time a laptop was arranged for her with linux. Then we all were set to start. 

Trishna made us familiar with “requests” module in python3 which is the only Non-GMO HTTP library for Python. We all installed the requests module as it was required for the session from the below commands.
  • dnf install python3-requests
So the task was we have to list out the nearby restaurants to our current location, for that we used the longitude and latitude to provide our current location. We wrote a python3  program for searching the restaurants, added to it also the url for menu and we were able to list the nearby restaurants with menu url near Magarpatta, the list was as below for restaurants names if someone want to visit any:
  • Deccan Harvest
  • Cuba Libre
  • Wah Marathi Dine N Wine
  • TGI Fridays
  • Rajdhani Thali Restaurant
  • Eagle Boys Pizza
  • Charcoal Grill
  • The Waffles Hut
  • Barbeque Nation

Then we played with the code , Trishna assigned us to find the restaurants which have chinese cuisine and we all tried that ourself and found out one restaurants from above restaurants which have chinese cuisine => Deccan Harvest
After completing it we started playing with the code to find out the various other things like finding User rating, currency accepted, photo url for different restaurants. With this the event ended, with a discussion to meet next month.

Monday 15 August 2016

Pyladies 2nd Meetup(Pune)

After a long one month, it was the day (7 Aug) for Pyladies meetup and again we were going to meet at Redhat Pune office. As it was the day I was waiting for after the first meetup, though it was sunday when we usually plan to relax or hang out but I was excited for the meetup. So in morning I went for running in Magarpatta city(Aditi Garden) as it has a nice track for running. Then after having South-Indian breakfast at UpSouth, I came back to my home as it was time to get ready for the meetup as I was running out of time but still I managed to reach on time. When I entered the room there were many people already sat, some familiar to me as have met them in first meetup, few were new to the meetup. After saying hello to the people I also took my seat, then we shifted to the cafeteria due to some maintenance work in that room.



After we all were set, Nisha started with her talk on " Basic Communication skill", as communication is very necessary in open source world or in any community. So it was a great topic chosen by her, as it was a help to all of us in knowing the better way to communicate with the people in various communities so that we are listened and answered by others. As the way in which you communicate is very much important, she discussed about various things, as how to ask questions in a smart way. Do and don't while communicating and many more things.



After this there was a video of Keynote( Talk to talk' session) by Jacob Kaplan-Moss from Pycon 2015. Jacob Kaplan-Moss known for his work on Django and the director of security at Heroku. He begin with this intro, talked about his background and what people think about him.He  stated that "People believe that I am successful because of my programming skill. But that simply isn't true: "I am, at best, an average programmer", he said (with a slide that read "Hi, I'm Jacob, and I'm a mediocre programmer."). Then he introduced ultra-marathon runner Ann Trason, who is the most accomplished competitor in the history of that sport. He talked about Trason runs and records, he included that in his talk because he also recently finished his first 50km race, so we can say he was a runner too and I too am a runner who have just started running a month back : ). So I liked this part . Then he talked about programming abilities and how people measure that. He talked about a U shaped curve on which people distribute the programming skill and most of them are on one end or the other but  for going from absolutely terrible to wonderful we have to traverse the middle ground. After this he talked about myth about the U curve that sets up a world where you can only program if you are a rock star or a ninja. This myth is preventing "most of the growth and the improvement we'd like to see". And this motivated all of us sitting there and then he said" The truth is that programming isn't a passion or a talent, it is just a bunch of skills that can be learned". Also he added 10x programmers to his talks adding the famous picture of Linus Torvalds flipping off NVIDIA under the "brilliant asshole" label in his slide. He then asked what a 10x programmer look like and put up a series of pictures of "Mark Zuckerberg". When we see someone who does not look like one of those three men, we assume they are not a real programmer, he said. Almost all of the women he knows in the industry have a story about someone assuming they aren't a programmer. He talked to multiple women attending PyCon 2015 who were asked which guy they are there with—the only reason they would come is because their partner, the man, is the programmer. "If you're a dude, has anyone ever asked you that?" And this was a great motivation for the ladies present in pyladies meetup. He also talked about Lynn Root a founder of the San Francisco chapter of PyLadies, a Python Software Foundation board member. In the of the keynode he took several questions. It was great keynode selected for this meetup. 



After this it was the time for lunch, and during lunch time we had quite interesting conversation with each other, we all  talked about Pycon 2016( Delhi) which I am also attending and Pyladies and many more things. 

After lunch it was the time to learn some python skills. So there was a session  'Hands on Python' by Chandan Kumar. He started from where we left in the last meetup. He covered several topics like functions, different python module and file handling. So we practiced all these , ending up with an assignment given by Chandan. There was a one more session on Object Oriented Programming but as it was already 5 in evening, that why we decided to have that session in the next meetup.So we end up with a short conversation that in future what else we can do for pyladies meetup so that we have more pyladies member and we all left with a plan to meet next month again : ).

Saturday 16 July 2016

Fedora Women's Day



Gone are those days, when women have only some selected fields to work on or they restrict themselves to some fields. In this new era our boundaries are widening, we are extending our thoughts and are coming out in the world of technology.  None of the field I guess is untouched by women, it’s difficult to name a field where we can’t see a woman. So no one is unaware about women’s caliber and so are some communities which are helping women to grow in the field of technology and computing  like Fedora women, Grace Hopper etc.

Yesterday I attended the Fedora Women’s day Celebration which I came to know was there in our office and a large number of women joined that, and that shows how we all are interested in something like this. Fedora is an open source project where anyone can contribute, it has open community. We can join Fedora and start contributing it, it’s nothing like that anyone have to be a hard core programmer with all the IT skills, anyone can contribute to it whoever have interest. Amita was the organizer of the event, the event started at 3PM, we all were there for it. The started with the talk of MarĂ­a “tatica” Leandro, who mainly take care of develop art, translations, marketing stuff, promoting the use of Fedora and recruit new talent to the community. And it was 5.30 in morning for her due to different timezone, still was there for us to help us and answer our question. This shows her dedication and how active she is towards the community . She shared his experience how she started her journey as a translator and talked about diversity as she is the Diversity adviser for Fedora. Being a woman she wanted a large number of women contributor for Fedora, so she was there so early and was ready to available even more early like 1 or 2 am for us for another meetups. She gave a lot of information how women can contribute to Fedora as being a women she knows we have so much other responsibilities other than our own interest and growth, and we have to balance everything in our life. She shared a lot of information about Fedora and Women in Fedora, although we have a less percentage of Women contributor in Fedora but that’s increasing and the community itself is helping women to come out with their interest and contribute in that field. Fedora has also a project named Fedora Women designed to connect and assist women who are interested in using and contributing to Fedora.  After talk with Tatica, there was a session from Pravin Satpute, he too is an active contributor to Fedora. He gave an introduction to Fedora and how anyone can start contributing Fedora. He shares the slides for different fields in which anyone can contribute depending on their interest like:
  • Content Writer
  • Designer
  • People Person
  • OS Developer
  • Translator
  • Web Developer or Administrator
  • QA

He gave lot of information on how we can start contributing to Fedora and also can learn from them as there are meetups and other session from which we can learn things of our own interest. He answered the questions which were raised to him and it was interesting as the whole event was motivating us to do something which will be beneficial for our growth and for the community also. After this there was a talk from Anisha Narang about Fedora, women contribution and we can be active in these types of events. She shared her experience which was a help for women present there. There was another guy who had wake up early in the morning just to address us and help us with our queries Matthew Miller, he was also surprised to see a large audience. He started with his  introduction  and shared  information about Fedora.  And also we came to know he has two cute and loving daughters also whom he take care so it was a inspirations for mothers present there who want to contribute to Fedora, he also answered the questions from audience. After he ended its was 5.30 pm I guess, and we planned to end for today with a discussion for next meetups. We also had a big cake which was looking very tasty as it was Fedora Women’s Day Celebration which would be incomplete without this. So without wasting  time we cut the cake and had it. There were few other people who helped this event to be a success. First is Satya who clicked pictures for us and our cake and another Huzaifa who answered a lot of questions and shared a lot of information. So we ended this with a plan to meet every Friday so that we can be active in this and meetups every two months or every month.