Fedora Women Day (FWD) is a worldwide series of events initiated by the Fedora Diversity Team. The events are dedicated to female contributors of the Fedora Project. During this day of celebration, local communities gather to present the accomplishments of women in the Fedora Project and thank them. FWD is also a great chance to promote the participation of more women and raise awareness about the gender gap in tech communities. Furthermore, FWD and events like it show the importance of diversity in open source projects such as Fedora.
Event Day…
Even this year we wanted to a host a Fedora Women Day at Open Labs Hackerspace. At our hackerspace more than 70% of the members are women, that’s why we thought organizing this event is a “must” because it’s a nice way to say ‘Thank you’ to all the women at Open Labs (and not only) who contribute to FLOSS.
On 23rd of September, we started the FWD at Open Labs Hackerspace at 4 PM. A lot of girls joined the event, most of them were already contributing to open source but we also had new girls intrigued to know more ways to get engaged with open source communities.
We started the event talking about the Fedora project and ways to join the community. We interacted with the attendees to know what they like to contribute on: for example design, writing, coding etc. Most of them were beginners into coding and they felt more confident to start with promoting Fedora, translating or writing an article. This was helpful even for us to know what activities to organize in the next months. Next talk was related to the importance of diversity and inclusion in open source communities and sharing what Fedora Diversity Teams is doing.
As we wanted to share with the participant’s ways how they can get more engaged with open source communities, especially for those who are on their first steps, we presented Outreachy and Rails Girls Summer of Code. A lot of Open Labs girls are students and most of them were eligible to apply for both internships that’s why these talks were extremely helpful for them. Sharing personal experiences motivated them, even more, to have self-confidence and continue their open source way.
At the end, we did some lightning talks to give the opportunity to all the participants to share a story with us, personal experience etc. The Install Fest couldn’t be missing for all the curious people that wanted to try Fedora. 😉
The end…
Snacks and drinks made the atmosphere even nicer and friendly, as a “good” excuse to interact and talk with each other. We should do more events like this, to appreciate people for their contributions and let them know that their contributions are valuable to the community. Even for the newcomers these events are helpful, because they can understand the community spirit, can be motivated by others stories etc.
Until next time keep contributing to open source! 😉