[maemo-community] Getting the ball rolling for council elections, and proposal to lengthen terms

[From: dneary at free.fr]

Hi,

Simon Pickering said:
> > On Jul 31, 2009, at 4:47 PM, Andrea Grandi wrote:
> > > p.s: (just a "crazy" idea) what would you think about reserving a spot 
> > > in Maemo Council for women? Yes, I know that womens in this kind of 
> > > stuff are rare just like non-corrupted politicians (well... at least 
> > > here in Italy, don't want to offend any other nation :) ) but the ones 
> > > who work in IT are very valid and skilled, so why don't we try to 
> > > promote them and involve more in the Maemo community?
> > 
> > I love this idea - though I am skeptical that reserving a 
> > position on the council for a woman is the right way to go 
> > about getting more wome to participate.
> 
> Hmm, I don't think we should enforce positive discrimination. I think we
> should certainly promote and encourage women to stand for the council, no
> argument there, but reserving a place is not right IMO. As ever, the place
> should be given to the best candidates, no matter who they are.

I recommend everyone to go look at Kirilly (sp?) Robert's OSCON keynote on blip.tv. What I took away from her talk was not that women want special treatment, they simply don't want *special* treatment. Lower the tone of discussion, take some of that aggression you typically find in online interactions out of play, make your project a nicer place, and more women (and, in general, other people who are intimidated by passive aggressiveness) will come to your project.

Cheers,
Dave.