[OSGeo-Discuss] FOSS4G North America Announcements

[Margherita Di Leo]

Hi,

On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 5:58 PM, David William Bitner
<bitner at dbspatial.com>wrote:

> Dave,
>
> As indicated by Jeff and Doug, this has not been an issue at any previous
> FOSS4G event. What has been an issue has been the diversity that we have
> been able to bring into both our community and our events. We are still a
> predominantly White European/US/Canadian male community. There has been a
> lot of work done by many tech conferences to try to make sure that
> conferences are more welcoming to a more broad array of folks (the rotation
> of NA/Europe/Elsewhere is one thing FOSS4G has done). The
> anti-harassment policy follows the lead of others and pulls from the
> template provided by Geek Feminism
> http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/index.php?title=Conference_anti-harassment_policy.
> Additionally following advice from other events as well as many members of
> our community, we are making the community review process for presentation
> submission author anonymous as a concern with how we have done this in the
> past has been the fear that many folks have of feeling publicly shamed with
> critique and voting of their proposals. These are only two small steps that
> we are taking to addressing an environment in the overall open source world
> that by the numbers is very unwelcome to women and other groups (while
> there have not been any overt issues that I know of as part of any FOSS4G,
> if you look at the percentage of female conference goers or developers in
> our community, we do have a long ways to go).
>

Thank you for rising this interesting topic. I don't exactly know why women
(according to the numbers) prefer other fields instead of open source
software (as I am a woman and I feel comfortable in this community maybe
I'm not the right person to ask why other people don't). But I can
certainly say why many people don't (can't) join the events.. as I wasn't
able to do so as well.. Please don't take it bad, but the FOSS4G event is
bloody *expensive* to afford! I am not surprised not to see at such events
many people from developing countries, while in Europe and especially in
US, research institutions allocate more funds for missions etc.

my 2 cents

madi

>
> Hope this helps understand the rationale,
>
> David
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 7:51 AM, Jeff McKenna <
> jmckenna at gatewaygeomatics.com> wrote:
>
>> DaveP,
>>
>> There have been no specific problems at FOSS4G events but I support the
>> FOSS4G-NA's initiative for diversity and harassment-free policies.
>>
>> -jeff
>>
>>
>>
>> On 13-01-16 12:56 AM, Dave Patton wrote:
>> >
>> > David et al:
>> >
>> > I have no issue with the Harassment Policy, but I am curious
>> > as to it's origin. Is it a result of specific problems at
>> > other FOSS4G-related events?
>> >
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Discuss mailing list
>> Discuss at lists.osgeo.org
>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>>
>
>
>
> --
> ************************************
> David William Bitner
> dbSpatial LLC
> 612-424-9932
>
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>
>


-- 
Margherita DI LEO
Postdoctoral Researcher

European Commission - DG JRC
Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES). Unit H03 – FRC
Via Fermi, 2749
I-21027 Ispra (VA) - Italy - TP 261

Tel. +39 0332 78 3600
margherita.di-leo at jrc.ec.europa.eu

Disclaimer: The views expressed are purely those of the writer and may not
in any circumstance be regarded as stating an official position of the
European Commission.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/attachments/20130116/712564f9/attachment-0002.html>