[05:36] <amoma> gnome terminal wants to install a font. How disable it?
[06:22] <coolbhavi> amoma, !ubuntu
[06:22] <coolbhavi> oops wrong factoid I guess
[06:23] <coolbhavi> amoma, please ask in #ubuntu for general ubuntu related questions
[06:26] <JoseeAntonioR> !ubuntu | amoma
[06:26] <ubot2> amoma: Ubuntu is a complete Linux-based operating system, freely available with both community and professional support. It is developed by a large community and we invite you to participate too! - Also see http://www.ubuntu.com
[06:26] <JoseeAntonioR> !support
[06:26] <ubot2> For general questions or support, please use our support channel, #ubuntu
[20:00] <ClassBot> Logs for this session will be available at http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2013/01/24/%23ubuntu-classroom.html following the conclusion of the session.
[20:01] <pleia2> hi everyone :) if you have a question during the session, please ask in #ubuntu-classroom-chat and prefix it with QUESTION: so ClassBot picks it up
[20:02] <Dolasilla> Hello everyone!
[20:03] <Dolasilla> Deindre and me are here today to tell you something about our experience in bringing UbuntuWomen locally
[20:03] <Deindre> Hi everyone!
[20:03] <Dolasilla> with the hope that this can be of some inspiration for other loco teams
[20:03] <Dolasilla> both me and Deindre belong to the Italian loco team
[20:04] <Dolasilla>  Flavia and I met through the mailing list of UbuntuWomen. We both are confident enough in our English skills as we practice it on a more or less daily basis.
[20:04] <Dolasilla> Flavia <-> Deindre ;)
[20:04] <Deindre> Dolasilla <--> Silvia :)
[20:05] <Deindre> My  experience showed me that generally women are shyer around than men,  and this behaviour becomes more evident in case women newcomers should  rely with people talking a different language.
[20:06] <Deindre> This  is the main reason that pushed me and Silvia to open a localised branch  of UW, and now we have about 40 subscribers on italian mailing list
[20:06] <Dolasilla> Secondly there comes a geographic barrier: one of the great strength point of loco teams is the proximity to people, also physically speaking: the italian loco team, for instance, organizes once or twice per year meetings in a location in Italy, to allow its members as well as its supporters to meet up.
[20:07] <Dolasilla> Moreover, there is a practical limitation in any worldwide mailing list: time zones. Belonging to different timezones can be make communication more complicated.
[20:09] <Deindre> But there are some cultural issues too
[20:09] <Deindre> For  instance a big number of the people active in UbuntuWomen is based in  the US. This means that they share, to some extent, a given cultural  background that may not be completely known from whom has always been  living in other countries.
[20:10] <Deindre> If  we consider that very often who writes to a mailing list is asking for  some help, and sometimes she/he's not able to explain her/his problem in  her/his mother-tongue, it's easy to plenty understand the sense of  completely strangeness than a newcomer women could feel.
[20:10] <Deindre> But,  nevertheless, it seems to me that generally women prefer talk with  other women because that makes themselves feel more comfortable in  sharing their doubt, avoiding the risk, very often more dreaded than  real, of be kidded from a part of community.
[20:11] <Dolasilla> so, what do we do, in practice? Actually our first goal is to provide a nice and welcoming place for Italian women who want to approach Ubuntu Community. A place where they can meet other women sharing the same passion, and that may help them and guide them in moving the first steps inside the loco team and the community.
[20:12] <Dolasilla> So the first point is providing a network of "friends"
[20:12] <Dolasilla> of other women sharing the same passions and the same free time activities
[20:13] <Dolasilla> with whom you can have some exchange on more or less technical topics concerning ubuntu, open source, and the experiences as women in these environments
[20:15] <Deindre> So, what could be a starting point?
[20:15] <Deindre> menthorship :)
[20:15] <Deindre> one  of the goal is indeed to provide mentorship to help people choosing an  activity inside the community and learning how to carry it ahead.
[20:17] <Deindre> For  instance, we had a couple of sessions on IRC lately with members from  different teams (translations and development  ).
[20:17] <Deindre> They  were explaining which are the activities of this team, which knowledges  are required. For example on the translation meeting we actually went  through how to work on the translation of the software, which are the  tools to use and so on.
[20:18] <Deindre> We definitley consider a good menthorship the key for a succesful outreach
[20:18] <Deindre> you need an Human touch :) menthorship is often that human touch you need to be involved
[20:20] <Dolasilla> Anyways, as this project was born inside a loco team, it share some of the loco team goals, expecially the one of not only involving more people in the community but also making more people know and choose Ubuntu
[20:20] <Dolasilla> of course, with a focus on women
[20:21] <Deindre> a strong focus on women :)
[20:21] <Dolasilla> For this reason, among the activity me, Flavia and the other women in the groop do is having talks at Ubuntu and open source events around Italy
[20:22] <Dolasilla> and we also write from time to time posts on an italian blog, GirlGeekLife.com, targetting women with a passion for technology.
[20:22] <Dolasilla> The posts are written by different women in our group and they cover different aspects of Ubuntu
[20:23] <Dolasilla> starting from an hig level introduction and then going through the presentation of some open source tools
[20:25] <Deindre> But it's really undubitable that there is another question on the table: the gender gap
[20:25] <Deindre> Gender gap is probably "the" matter of fact, in a world that consider woman as a minority
[20:26] <Deindre> So far the  fact that technology is a male dominated environment is really  indubitable. If we consider the FOSS ecosystem, the situation is even  worse.
[20:26] <Deindre> Unfortunately  is not easy to break the vicious cycle that see women avoiding FOSS  because there aren't many women to relate with, and, from the other  side, building the correct relation between women and men in a  community, holding off the so-called white knight syndrome and the sense  of deep fellowship that very often men demonstrate against women.
[20:27] <Deindre> This has a greater value in Countries, like Italy, and generally Latin Countries,  in which machismo writes behavioural rules between the two sexes.
[20:28] <Deindre> The  fact that men, especially younger men, show to considerate women a not  very remarkable minority, is really an obstacle _de facto_ to outreach of  new women, and a certain loss for communities.
[20:28] <Deindre> and Ubuntu community/communities
[20:29] <Deindre> This is true even if, really, Italian community is really welcoming toward women
[20:30] <Deindre> leaders of our community have always spent their effort to help women to feel a comfortable place to stay
[20:32] <Dolasilla> Let's move a step behind to the beginning, to explain the steps we did to create the group
[20:32] <Dolasilla> When Flavia wrote me proposing me to create a local edition of UbuntuWomen in order to overcome the language/cultural barrier I immediately said yes.
[20:33] <Dolasilla> At the time I was not yet part of the Italian loco team (I barely knew it existed). So first, I got engaged in it, and being involved in a loco team is a great experience.
[20:33] <Dolasilla> Then, with the help and support of members of the loco team, we set up the group, starting with a wiki page and a mailing list
[20:35] <Deindre> When I met Silvia instead, I was already Ubuntu-it member
[20:36] <Deindre> I saw in her the possibility to make true my old dream to have an Italian Women team.
[20:36] <Deindre> When  I joined Ubuntu community in 2007, I have heard about a women forum,  and my disappointment when I have discovered is only english-speaking  was really huge.
[20:38] <Deindre> Of course I’m really grateful to Ubuntu Women project, this project has been for me of great inspiration, but I felt something was missing.  
[20:38] <Deindre> In  Silvia I’ve found the right person to rely with, passionate, with the  same view of the problem and the technical skills I lacked.
[20:39] <Dolasilla> Once the wiki and the mailing list were set, we started making some “advertisement” about it on the different channel of the community, including planet, forum and IRC chat. It worked pretty well
[20:40] <Dolasilla> We gathered something like a 15 people in the first month
[20:40] <Dolasilla> We use the mailing list as main channel to coordinate project, discuss topics and bring the main news coming from the international mailing lis
[20:40] <Dolasilla> And the wiki as an introduction page and to keep trace of the ongoing projects and related materials
[20:41] <Dolasilla> this is the wiki page we use http://wiki.ubuntu-it.org/GruppoPromozione/UbuntuWomen
[20:41] <Dolasilla> (of course in Italian)
[20:42] <Deindre> We  tried to make links to other women involved in FOSS, setting  mailing  list in which we talk and share projects regarding female universe
[20:44] <Deindre> Finally, we  never meant to found a different “group” from UW, but build a bridge  between international environment and Italian feminine IT related  underlayer.
[20:44] <Deindre> I don’t know if our could be considered a successful pattern,
[20:44] <Deindre> I hope, we hope, of course :)
[20:45] <Deindre> but  what I really believe is that difficulties women meet in different part  of the world depends from cultural, language and social factors that  very often is not possible to compare with luckier anglo-american  experience.
[20:45] <Deindre> During last UDS in Copenhagen I met many European women coming from mediterranean area
[20:46] <Deindre> nd  they told me that they felt their experience close to mine, so I really  hope that our work and our effort could be sharable and helpful for  many other women communities.
[20:46] <Deindre> *and
[20:47] <Deindre> Silvia and me' d be very proud of this outcome :)
[20:48] <ClassBot> Cheri703 asked: What do you feel was the biggest obstacle to getting started?
[20:48] <Dolasilla> So basically what we tried to tell you here this evening is a bit of our experience in bring UbuntuWomen project loco
[20:49] <Dolasilla> Cheri703, to me it was to fight against shyness ;)
[20:49] <Dolasilla> to take initiative, discuss with the members of the loco team and explain why we felt this need
[20:50] <Dolasilla> but it was easy in the end, thanks to the great people in our loco team
[20:50] <ClassBot> There are 10 minutes remaining in the current session.
[20:52] <Deindre> Cheri703: the obstacles I met has been technical: I don't have any idea about how to open and manage a mailing list, for instance. Silvia has been super :)
[20:53] <Dolasilla> so this is more or less what we wanted to share, if you have any question in these last 10 minutes we will be happy to answer!
[20:54] <ClassBot> Cheri703 asked: Have you gotten much opposition from a "you are being sexist by having a separate group!" standpoint? Like we get with general U-W? I don't know if that's a primarily american thing.
[20:55] <Deindre> Cheri703: a very important question
[20:55] <ClassBot> There are 5 minutes remaining in the current session.
[20:57] <Deindre> Cheri703: there is been some feeling "like UW-it is a crochet club", but generally it has changed very fast
[20:58] <Deindre> we open our mailing list to interested men
[20:58] <Deindre> one of our admin was a men
[20:58] <Deindre> very respectful of our initiative
[20:59] <Deindre> ok, we were not able to erase every bad thought about this project
[21:00] <ClassBot> Logs for this session will be available at http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2013/01/24/%23ubuntu-classroom.html
[21:00] <pleia2> looks like we're about out of time, thanks Deindre and Dolasilla!
[23:27] <cambrianExplosio> Hi everyone, I am having a bit of difficulty with ubuntu on a macbook, and wondered if anyone could help out?
[23:28] <pleia2> cambrianExplosio: you want #ubuntu for support
[23:28] <pleia2> (this channel is for scheduled classes :))
[23:28] <cambrianExplosio> thanks :)
[23:28] <cambrianExplosio> sorry :(
[23:28] <pleia2> no worries, good luck!
[23:28] <cambrianExplosio> thanks :)