linuxchix.org.nz

Linux.com has a wonderful article about our very own Michelle Murrain:

http://www.linux.com/feature/143264
"Michelle Murrain is a great example of what the FOSS community is all about. She's complicated: she calls herself a "scientist turned technologist turned theologian turned writer," all blended into one person. She's also an active supporter of and contributor to open source software projects. She's not a developer, however, and Murrain would really like to see more space for people like her, with different gifts to share, in the open source community."

BANGALORE: With a name like LinuxChix-India, you might think its mission is trivial, but their goal is serious: creating equal access for women to enter the world of technology.

Archana Raghupathy of Chennai started LinuxChix-India in 2005. It is the Indian chapter of the global women techies' network Linuxchix.org, and "tries to empower Indian women to use, develop and contribute to the world of free and open source software (FOSS)."

Globally, LinuxChix is a community for women who "like Linux and Free Software" and for women and men who want to support women in computing. Its members range from novices to experienced users and include professional and amateur programmers, system administrators and technical writers.

It also works to bring together women around India involved in various FOSS projects, foster participation and share knowledge in a geeky world where males usually dominate...
read the rest of the article

Our own Tina Gasperson has been recognized for her jewelry-making:

"Did you go to school for this trade or was it something self-taught?"

"I taught myself the actual craft of putting the jewelry together, mostly from reading books, online articles, and watching cool YouTube videos; then trying the basic functions myself, practicing over and over again to learn the right touch with the wire, to learn how to wrap a loop just so without nicking it all up, to figure out the right amount of pressure to put on the wire to make it bend smoothly without angles. The whole thing started when I decided it would be a great idea to hand make 50 tiaras for a women’s conference - and I had never worked with wire before and had no clue what I was going to do."
http://www.theexpressionist.com/2008/08/04/tina-gasperson-jewelry-artist...

Aussie(Linux)Chix and AussieDevChix will have their regular joint
meeting in Sydney before the Sydney Linux User Group meeting this month.
Feel free to forward this message to any women you think might be
interested in coming.

  Date: Friday 25th July 2008

  Time: 5:30-6:15pm

  Location: Lindt Chocolat Cafe, Shop 104–105, Cockle Bay Wharf, Darling
            Harbour

  Directions: The Lindt Cafe is on the ground floor of the Cockle Bay
              Wharf building, between the two halves. Look for the
              fountain, or alternatively look right under the Blackbird
              Cafe.

              Map: http://tinyurl.com/2vdgch

  RSVP: rsvp.sydney@au.linuxchix.org

  Can men come? Men may come as the guest of a woman attendee. Note that
                this is not a LinuxChix-wide policy, it is specific to
                these pre-SLUG meetups.

If you RSVP, we can send you a mobile number to call if you can't find
us.

Afterwards we will go to the SLUG meeting together. See
< http://www.slug.org.au/node/103 > for more details about the SLUG
meeting.

The Chix meetings in Sydney are organised by Sydney members of
AussieChix, the Australian LinuxChix chapter. See
for more about AussieChix.

Your faithful one-third of the TresChix, Carla Schroder (that's me!) just got a very cool, fairly high-profile job as the managing editor of Linux Today and LinuxPlanet. w00t! For those interested in the details, with only a tiny bit of dramatic exaggeration, visit A Roaring Start for the New Kid and Editor's Note: Farewell, Hello, the Journey Continues. My first week on the job was, er, interesting, as the local telco decided to improve my service. Unfortunately they confused "improve" with "no service at all." Never a dull moment!

Got any old O'Reilly shirts at home? If so, bring them to OSCON! Be one
of the first 50 people to come by the O'Reilly booth (#313) wearing one of
our t-shirts to win cool prizes and be included in our t-shirt photo
collage. The grand prize goes to the person who has more O'Reilly shirts
than everyone else, so bring 'em all!

Follow the O'Reilly booth on Twitter during the conference:
http://twitter.com/oreillyatoscon for your chance to win prizes during
the show.

You can also follow http://twitter.com/oscon for ongoing conference
updates throughout the show.

Linux.conf.au has announced the opening of the call for papers on
Friday 4th July 2008, giving the open source software community the
chance to present at one of the world's premier technical conferences.

Hobart TAS, Australia-- (4th July 2008) ---- The call for papers will
remain open for a month, after which the best papers will be selected
by an expert panel.

Ben Powell, President of the Tasmanian Linux Users Group, says the
10th annual Linux.conf.au is expected to attract influential speakers
from the international and local technical Linux and Open Source
communities.

"This is the first time that the conference has been held in Hobart
and given the unique location, and that it is celebrating its 10th
anniversary this year, we expect to see significant interest from
local and international speakers and delegates," said Mr Powell.

It is expected that over 100 speakers will be chosen to present at the
Hobart conference from a large pool of international and local
submissions.

"The conference provides a unique opportunity for Tasmanians to
discuss their ideas on an international stage, and for business to
support IT innovation," said Mr Powell.

“This year's Linux conference is expected to bring 700 delegates to
the Tasmania to enjoy one of Australia's premiere technical
conferences, with presentations by many of the leading experts in free
and open source software.

"The conference also provides an opportunity to showcase Tasmania to
the world's technical community, with many delegates keen to take in
Tasmania's famous food, wine and beautiful scenery during their stay.

"Previous years' conferences have seen up to 100 influential
international and national speakers from major IT companies and
projects, with submissions for the opportunity to speak at Australia's
internationally renowned event growing every year," said Mr Powell.

The conference will also present the best of open source software with
presentations, displays and hands-on demonstrations at the conference
free public Open Day for the Tasmanian technical industry and general
community.

"We expect to see a number of our own local speakers feature in the
lineup, so this will be a great opportunity for our own IT community
to really shine on the international stage," said Mr Powell.

Linux.conf.au, the National Linux Conference, will be held January
19-24 in Hobart at the University of Tasmania. More information about
the paper submission process can be found at http://www.linux.conf.au.

Businesses can support Linux.conf.au by visiting the website
http://linux.conf.au/become_a_sponsor

Media enquiries: Linux.conf.au on +61 432 996 932 or
media@marchsouth.org

This is an interesting and useful list for anyone researching Linux-based VoIP:
http://www.voipnow.org/2008/06/the-definitive-guide-to-voip-for-linux-us...

"We here at Pingdom have been talking about why we don’t see that many women in Open Source, and were actually about to investigate it further and possibly write a blog post about it. However, when we started to actually look around we were happily surprised. There are lots of women involved in Open Source! For some reason men just seem to stick their nose out more and put themselves in positions where they are seen (and of course there are more of them)."
http://royal.pingdom.com/?p=308

Carla is an experienced System Administrator and a good technical writer. She was one of the early Linuxchix, and has spent years mentoring and otherwise helping new and experienced Linux folk through their assorted dilemmas. The result is a friendly and direct, information-packed and ego-free writing style. Unlike the typical how-to that provides a list of steps that have worked for the author, Carla's discussions fill in the blanks and tell you why she takes the steps that she does.
http://books.slashdot.org/books/08/05/19/1323216.shtml

AussieChix and NZChix are teaming up to take CeBIT (May 20-22, 2008) by storm. We will be running a stall in the Open Source section of the expo, and the kind people who run the show have even given us a terrific deal: free expo admittance for anyone who reads this!
http://au.linuxchix.org/node/139

At the end of 2007, we established the Indonesian Linux Women Group which is called KLUWEK. It is stand for Kelompok LinUx CeWEK Indonesia. Here is our site (http://kluwek.linux.or.id). Starting with 3 young women, we have 80 members now that are spread out across all Indonesian locations.

Last month (April), we organized our first seminar which joined with President University. It was a really great seminar, there were 740 participants. We introduced basic Linux and performed our Indonesia distro (BlangKon). Following this seminar, we will also conduct a HRP Ubuntu 8.04 party in Jogjakarta city on May 17th. The Minister of Research and Technology Indonesia gave a great warm welcome to Kluwek. They also invited us to participate in IGOS Summit 2 as participanta and an organizer committee.

Meanwhile, Kluwek also got involved in several Linux Roadshow events which are held by OSS organizations, namely YPLI, Id-Ubuntu and YAP. Those events emphasize Linux for Education. We spread out Linux in School since that's the best and earliest time that somebody gets to know computers, especially operating systems.

Although it is a new organization, we have several wish lists to encourage Indonesia women in OSS. It has made a great impression and it will be a phenomenal organzation in the IT Indonesian community, especially the OSS community. Hopefully it will be the best place for Indonesian Women to express their OSS ideas.