Gnome 3.10 is released and it has some cool features. It feels good that Geolocation and Maps application are part of it.
I wrote the client and server for GeoIP based GeoLocation when I was doing my OPW internship with Gnome Foundation. Initially the libraries were part of geocode-glib, but the code for GeoIP has been moved to GeoClue.
And that reminds me (quite shamefully) I have been sitting on the Wi-Fi code for a long time. It’s time to get that code out.
A couple of firsts! My first time at GUADEC and my first trip abroad as well. And guess what! It was also a first time for GUADEC where it saw 18% women participants! All thanks to wonderful programs like Outreach Program for Women and GSoC internship.
Overall, it’s been a nice experience at the conference. For people like me who are new contributors to Free and Open Source Projects, the talks opened up new avenues. Anish Patils’ talk on Predictive Input Methods, Jeff Fortin’s talk on PiTiVi, Srinivasa Raghavan’s talk on Evolution, Juan Pablo Ugarte’s talk on Glade were some of the many that I enjoyed.
The lightning talks were wonderful too. Imagine within a span of an hour and a half you get to hear about a lot of interesting stuffs. The interns talked about their projects (where I too presented about my internship project). In another session there were presentations on topics like typeface designs, Terms of Conditions Didn’t Read project among others. I almost felt like standing at an icecream parlour and having difficulty in choosing what to eat since there are so many lovely flavours! You can check out the videos from here if you are interested.
And not only the talks, the conference gives one a chance to meet people whom one has never met before. And even though internet has helped us bridge the physical distances, face-to-face interactions do help to build up rapport with the person with whom you are collaborating or about to collaborate.
Photo courtesy: Ana Rey
Reached late on 1st August. Brno came out to be hotter than expected. (Why did I even think of bringing a pullover!)
Liked yesterday’s session on sandboxing application for Gnome by Lenhart Poettering.
Now ebassi’s talk on GTK scene graph is going on .
Oh Uh! Started volunteering for the GUADEC from today. And Aruna brought good news that we will get a few minutes at the AGM of Gnome Foundation today to speak about WFS!
Life is good except for one thing. D.C – are you listening?
WFS India in collaboration with Glug-Cal, Fedora and Mozilla announces a poster competition on women’s, LGBT and gender-related issues in India using free software tools as part of the extended Cultural Freedom Day celebrations. You stand to win exciting prizes by your participation.
India is a multi-ethnic, multi-racial country one billion strong and growing. India’s most pressing problems include official corruption and the suppression of women and the LGBT community.
A substantial section of India’s well-to-do people have embraced modern technology, from cell-phone toting farmers to tweeting teenagers, technophile home-makers to artistic designers, and more who are coming online, communicating, coding and interacting in real time.
And yet, these people are still struggling to find their voices while retaining basic human values within our society. Your challenge is to bring out your virtual brushes and pictorially depict this struggle while celebrating their diversity.
Exercise your creative freedom with Free/Libre open source software and other technologies. Your poster may be the inspiration that gives people a voice to fight for their rights, a vision of a better tomorrow, a tomorrow that gives them the freedom and space to dream while allowing them to explore the problems of their culture and livelihood.
Anybody can participate*.
Those with no previous experience with poster-making/digital art can start with Tux-Paint.
* We will not be able to send prizes to regions falling outside the country, but anyway do participate.
We expect great posters that has one or more of the following attributes:
Click Here for Submitting Your Entry
Submission Begins: 1st June’2013
Last Date of Submission: 14th June’2013
Announcement of Results: 15th June’2013
Gallery Update: By 24th June’2013
In case of any difficulty, please contact A. Mani or post your query in our mailing list or google group or talk to us on IRC #wfs-india at freenode.
WFS-india, a voluntary organization has been created a month back by some enthusiastic people wanting to see some gender parity in FOSS world. The group decided to organize a Localization Hackathon event on the eve of Cultural Freedom Day on 20th may, 2013 from 08:00pm to 09:30pm at the above mentioned channel.
The event aimed to get participants localize a few strings from ayny of Mozilla, Fedora or VLC Media Player. It was attended by seven participants from across the globe . More details about the participants are given below in the chat log. The session was coordinated by Chandan Kumar with the assistance of Biraj karmakar and Runa Bhattacharjee. Amani_glugcal, kaustavdm, Priyankanag also helped in the event.
People learnt what is localization and how to get started in any language by using transifex and pootle server. They were asked to contact the language co-rodinators via mailing lists if they face any issue. Due to lack of time the participants could not start translating any string.
It was realized that it is not possible to hold a full localization workshop within a short span of 1 hour. Participants faced various problem with one not being able to log in to one not finding her language in the list of languages.
But overall it was a nice event where people took out time from their schedule and tried to contribute to FLOSS.
* The chat log of the event can be found at – http://fpaste.org/13234/
* This report has been prepared from the original report written by Chandan Kumar.
* The next meeting of the group is at #wfs-india on freenode on 27 May, from 9:30pm IST.
Women in Free Software India is organizing an online Localization Hackathon for women on Monday 20 May 2013 that is Cultural Freedom Day. Our goal is to include more women in Free and Open Source Software.This event will be good for anyone new or not yet aware of FOSS and it doesn’t require any programming experience. Please join us from 8pm to 9pm tomorrow at #wfs-india channel on http://webchat.freenode.net/ to participate.
Here’s a cool introduction page for the event which you may share along with the poster – http://wfs-india.github.io/
Finally, things are taking shape. We got a very few but dedicated people interested to promote FOSS among women in India. After the first two meetings we decided to have this online event where
Everything is in planning stage right now. But we want to make FOSS attractive for girls/women in India to first use it and then contribute to it. When they hear about this event or attend it, they should feel – yeah, it’s cool – I want to do this.
Have to plan some cool promotional materials for it.
There’s one big obstacle though. People, especially women in India think of FOSS as something “geeky” – not to be touched by everyone. That it is not easy to use.
If we do not address these myths, they will continue using third grade proprietary software without even trying any other alternative!
Please share your ideas/suggestions on how to make this event interesting and appealing to women in India.
In case you want to help, please join http://wfs-india.dreamwidth.org/ an participate in the irc meetings.
We will be having our second meeting on Tuesday 7 May at 9pm IST at #wfs-india channel on irc.freenode.net.
The agenda includes –
Please join us if you are interested.
The minutes of the first meeting is at – http://wfs-india.dreamwidth.org/832.html
The minutes of the first meeting to promote FOSS among women in India held on Monday 29 April 2013 at channel #wfs-india at irc.freenode.net is as follows –
We created a community at http://wfs-india.dreamwidth.org/. Please join if you are interested.
Regarding creating a new group for the cause, we noted that although there exist quite a few eg linuxchix, ubuntu women etc, some of the participants pointed out that – “one single non domain specific group sounds a better idea”, “would it not benefit if there is a group which is not confined to any specific agenda, such as linux or ubuntu”
We decided to hold promotional events in schools/colleges and for working women. We need to collaborate with other groups to organize such events.
We can have install fests, show videos, interview clips, share information about the culture in FOSS, the philosophy behind it and of course how it can help someone if she contributes to it.
A lot of interesting ideas came up –
– hosting hacker schools, organize hackathons, conferences
– having weekly gatherings and hacker spaces
– creating e-books, articles, art-works, graphic novels to attract more people and especially women into FOSS.
Such online efforts would help those women who can not come to events.
– creating a magazine covering successful women contributors in India – since there’s lack of role models in India.
The next agenda may include –
– how to organise events?
– how to get money?
– how to get volunteers?
– content of the event
We will be having our next meeting pretty soon. Please keep an eye on the link shared above.
Who should join?
If you are enthusiastic about FOSS and sometimes/always wondering why there are so few women in India contributing/working in FOSS, please do join. People in the meeting would love to hear your ideas and suggestions to include more women in FOSS
If you are a woman and think that women in software should come together to address the common issues faced by them, please do join.
What is the agenda?
None decided. This is our first meeting and we will share our views and see what can be done. Roughly the discussion might be around –
When and where is the meeting taking place?
When – Monday 29 April 2013 at 9pm IST (UTC+05:30)
Where – #wfs-india at irc.freenode.net
A list of similar groups/events happening worldwide
The Ada Initiative
GRACE HOPPER
Girls in Tech London
and many more …