ROSE Blog: Rikki's Open Source Exchange

I'm excited to say that I'll be speaking at the SCALE 7x Women in Open Source track next month.

January 23rd marks the one-year anniversary of this ROSE Blog. Shortly after I started my blog, I attended SCALE 6x and the WIOS track. At last year's event, I talked with several of the speakers, including Stormy Peters, Cat Allman, and Danese Cooper, and they all encouraged me to consider public speaking. Meanwhile, I finished my thesis on women in open source and attended quite a few more industry events in 2008, which allowed me to meet other women I'd read about while doing my research, including Dru Lavigne.

Over the course of the past year, my blog motivated me to stay current on topics related to women in open source – the events, people, career changes, media coverage, and challenges we face. Often I felt personally connected to stories or people I read about online, and occasionally my blog posts led to personal relationships. For example, after writing about Maria Webster's .51 blog and Emma Hogbin and Drupal, I exchanged email with the women and later met them face-to-face at conferences.

My observations over this past year of writing about women in open source helped shape the talk I plan to give at SCALE next month. I will draw on my personal experiences as well as on those of some of my fellow women in open source. My hope is that attendees will leave with a better appreciation for the importance of self-promotion – a traditionally weak area for women – and I also want both male and female attendees to be inspired to increase the visibility of their female colleagues, too.

Hopefully I'll see you next month at SCALE!