Tea and Cake

The Ada Initiative are running a census at the moment to gauge general feelings about women in FOSS and Open Communities, this is a fantastic opportunity to share your thoughts so let them know what you think. Here is an excerpt taken from their site:

Click on the logo above to take the census ^_^

Best Wishes,

Pomke

I would like an employer who:

• Respects Diversity, who does not make me feel inferior for being who I am.
• Respects Creativity, who understands innovation and encourages good choices at every turn, rather than the cheapest most expedient solution and deferring debt.
• Gives back as well as takes from the FOSS Community, who will let me contribute back to projects we extend and contribute non-core-IP software we develop (tools etc) under fair terms (MIT/BSD).
• Lets me express myself with the clothes I wear and the colour of my hair.
• Understands the needs of a parent, who sometimes needs the flexibility to pick up kids after school.
• Respects their technical staff and their ability to accomplish the tasks they were hired as experts to achieve. Who doesn’t question every choice simply because it does not fit with their previous ‘corporate’ experiences.
• Would consider donating for the charity-ware they benefit from.
• Has a cause, or at least a conscience.

For such an employer I would:

• Bring my experience, over a decade of large scale web application design and development in many industries using FOSS (with a focus on python).
• Bring my perspective, a strong focus on scalability, ease of development through good programming practices and a great user experience, for -every- type of user.
• Bring my commitment, to doing the best by my employer, to the best of my ability.
• Bring cookies, because it’s hard to turn down good baking ^_^

Best Wishes, - Pomke

From Hanna Rosin’s new data on the rise of women

Without going into my opinions on the video, I found this comment about half way down the page to be by far the most poignant part of the entire discussion;

Femininity and masculinity are attributes inclusive to both men and women. What should be equal is the opportunity and encouragement for men and women to be as masculine or feminine as they want to be in our society without fear or discrimination along with new measures and meanings of success.

- Pomke