Currently over at SCALE in Los Angeles and the Women In Open Source track has just kicked off today – looks like it is going to be an excellent day, with some facinating tracks. It is being kicked off by my friend Allison Randell, who is also speaking at LugRadio Live USE 2008. Speaking of which, we have worked hard to try and get the demographic of women up at LugRadio Live – although we have a number of women who attend as visitors, the speaking rosta has been somewhat devoid of women, for no other reason than the lack of papers being submitted. This year I am pleased to see that we have a number of women confirmed – Danese Cooper, Val Henson, Allison Randal, Belinda Lopez and Kristen Accardi, and we hope to see more women participating as we finish off confirming speakers.

One person who has been inspiring me in much of this is my good friend, Emma Jane Hogbin, who I think really gets the issues involved, and will hopefully be presenting at LugRadio Live UK 2008. We have talked quite a bit on the phone about how to encourage more women in Open Source, and she is spending some of her efforts with the Ubuntu Women project. She sent her slides over and they look excellent, and particularly amusing too. 🙂