Joe Gregorio
We're making good progress - there were a lot of amazing women at OSCON - but there's still a long ways to - I was the only woman at the GNOME mobile meeting.
In every session I sat through I looked around and tried to imagine what the audience would look like if all the white men were asked to leave the room. It was depressing. Nothing against white men, I'm one myself, but all of the best teams I've worked on have been diverse along lots of axes.
I'm particularly sensitive to this as the the father of an asian girl, and while I'm not going to push her into technology, I don't want there to be barriers to whatever career path she chooses, and I would like her to see what a great community there can be in open source.
Maybe we need a 'bring your child to conference year'. Of course, Caden's only five, so it will be a few years before that happens, but I have been thinking about bringing Christopher to OSCON next year, I think he'd really enjoy it.
Was thinking the last couple of days that my kids are old enough to get some value out of BarCamp - but I don't want to drag them along since they aren't signed up, even though I wouldn't feel terribly guilty if I did. Next year, I'll try to get them to sign up themselves. I suspect the older one will go.
On the drive in this morning, I was wondering about a TeenAndPreTeenBarCamp. You know, even if 3/4 of the sessions are on gaming and graphic novels, still might be interesting.
BTW, when I was 13 or so, I went to a 2-day or so small-ish medical conference with my father (a physician). Don't have any distinct memories of the content, other than thinking it was cool. Definitely got me a little more interested in medicine. Lost all interest in high school biology class though; I'm a little weak-kneed when it comes to innards.
Posted by Patrick Mueller on 2008-07-31
Posted by Mike on 2008-07-31
My daughter is 100% Chinese :). You can read about the whole journey here.
Posted by Joe Gregorio on 2008-07-31
Posted by Stormy on 2008-07-31