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 María “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.

My First Pyladies Meetup

This Sunday, I attended the Pune chapter of Pyladies, About them in their own words “Pune chapter of PyLadies, an international mentorship group focussed on helping more women become active participants and leaders in the Python open-source community.  We aim to provide a friendly support network for women and a bridge to the larger Python world. Anyone with an interest in Python is encouraged to participate!”   

This was my first Pyladies meetup so I was exicited about it. Though it was raining still I managed to reach on time. This time it was in RedHat, after reaching there Kushal told me we are starting a little late due to the weather outside, then soon we get started. All of us were gathered in a room and we all were very curious about that, as most of us were there for that meetup the first time.  Meetup started with the intoduction to Pyladies by Anwesha, organiser of Pyladies Meetup, followed by Kushal talk on Python Community. He talked about many people showing their pictures who are contributing to python community and pyladies. He shared the pictures of Pycon-2015 introducing people from different companies and supporting several communities like Pyladies, Django etc. This continued for an hour, after that there was a keynode from  previous Pycon Meetup to be played “Two beards”. That was one was the most interesting part of the Meetup liked by everyone. In that keynode the man shared his experience like a story with the music, he himself played the music which was simply whaaaoooo. He shared his first bike experience and the different turns. He related it with dimensions and much more things, which was amazing. After this it was the time for lunch which Kushal had already arranged for all of us, then we enjoyed with pizzas. After an hour we started again with Python as we all were there to learn or discuss about the aspects of Python. Then Kushal started with Python, after a brief introduction on features of Python, he make us get started with the basics concept of Python. He started with the very basic so that it would be easy for newbees to Python. For me it was a revision as I have the basic knowledge of Python and can write programmes in Python. But to bring us all on a same level it was the need to start from the basics. He was giving time in between to us to try the same thing which he was teaching us, so that we are comfortable with that and if have any doubt can clear at that time only. After the basics were covered, he gave a programme to write a function to all so that we can implement what we have learned in that meetup. And the meetup ended with the problem solved by everyone. Then in the end it was a feedback session in which we discussed several things like how was the today’s meetup, what can be done to improve it , plans for the next meetup and many more things.

In the end, all of us left with something new in our mind and with more enthusiasm for the next meetup.