Cross-posted on Geek Feminism. Co-authored by Moose J. Finklestein, OLF's Content Chair.

Some conference organisers will say "we didn't get any submissions from women" to explain the lack of women on their stages. As of two years ago, the Ohio LinuxFest was in that category. With a little outreach effort, and embracing diversity as a core value, the Ohio LinuxFest has successfully recruited more women to share their experience at OLF.

How'd we do? While last year only five of the speakers at Ohio LinuxFest were women, out of a total of 31, this year 14 of the 38 speakers are women. That's a third of the conference speaking slots! One of the two keynoters is a woman. There were 107 talk proposals for the 27 general speaking slots. Before anyone tries to suggest that we simply took them all, it should be noted that a full 48% of the proposals for talks categorised as not assuming high levels of prior knowledge (making them suitable for the most attendees) were from women.

We believe that much of this success is attributed to community outreach. This year, we contacted Ubuntu Women, Debian Women, LinuxChix, DevChix, and the FSF's Women's Caucus mailing list about the call for presentations, and did it have an effect!

Recognising the various concerns women speakers can face, we tried to specifically address potential issues in the email sent to women-focused mailing lists. Some of these known issues include lack of confidence in new speakers, not being clear what the intended audience is, or the "imposter syndrome," where someone doesn't recognize that they are qualified to speak on a topic. The woman to woman dialog made the difference.

We wanted to make sure people weren't refraining from submitting because they lack confidence in their technical abilities (an excuse we'd heard before), so we explained the attendees' demographics, hoping to get more proposals that would fill the gap we had for user-aimed talks. Ohio LinuxFest has everything from home desktop users who started using Ubuntu a week ago (or even that day!) to seasoned system administrators who love Slackware, Gentoo, or NetBSD. Nevertheless, beginner proposals have tended toward introduction to development topics, not leaving enough for people who want to be users, not developers. We also made sure to mention that it's a great crowd who is very welcoming of first-time speakers.

Women are involved with more than just speaking at the Ohio LinuxFest. Beth Lynn Eicher has been actively involved as a director for 6 years now, and the current staff, all volunteers, is about 35% female.

The Ohio LinuxFest takes pains to create a weekend conference friendly to all people, not just women. The diversity statement includes gender, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, and even operating system -- folks who don't use Linux are just as welcome as those who love it. There are regularly talks about or including BSDs, interoperability in heterogeneous environments, and cross platform free software.

Additionally, all speakers are instructed to keep the content of their presentations clean. The Ohio LinuxFest bills itself as a family friendly conference and aims to keep it that way. As an effort to make a positive effect with the community at large, the Ohio LinuxFest will host the second annual Diveristy in Open Source Workshop on September 12, 2010.

Looking at the growing trend of more female influence on the OhioLinuxFest we'd like to see it be the leader for more women to attend and become more involved with other free software interests.

For those interested in pretty graphs, I've been graphing women speaker proportions at various LinuxFests on the GeekFeminism Wiki.

From http://ubuntulinuxtipstricks.blogspot.com

Blacklisting stuff from being logged, has been a feature in Zeitgeist for a long time now. Yet we never came to develop a UI for it.

So upon popular demand we started to mockup this feature.

The UI is simple and straight forward. (I sketched it using Pencil)

It uses much from what Sezen has to offer, in this case we use the same categories and the searching functionality. So when you search the categories with results get highlighted to allow you to control the logging of the results.

• You can go toggle  Incognito mode by setting Logger Status to inactive. This will block everything from getting logged in Zeitgeist.
• Under General you can choose which Applications you want to log. In this case I am allowing Firefox to be logged but disabling Cheese and Banshee. The application lists will be pulled from the what has been logged by Zeitgeist as well as the applications installed. The option to add new applications to be logged manually is also possible through the add and remove buttons.  Same applies for Directories.

• The Documents/Music/Videos/Websites/People/Notes and Other Categories all use the same widget layout. You can enable and disable logging for all items of types of each category. In this case by toggling the Allow Logging Documents and controlling single items from a list populated by manually adding items using the Add Button. Remove Button on the other hand will ask you to remove all instances for all time. We will think of  a way to delete single instances but for now it can be done over the Activity Journal.

This is just some initial mockups. If you want to join the development please join #zeitgeist on irc.freenode.net and don’t hesitate to  ask  for guidance. If you have a better idea for mockups please don’t hesitate to present it to us.

Feel free to Flattr this post at flattr.com, if you like it.

I blogged a while back about Barry doing his Masters Thesis on The motivational drivers and barriers of volunteers in open source communities which looked at the Ubuntu Community, he handed it in yesterday and I know some folks were curious about results so I asked him to write a small piece for the blog:

Barry Smyth:
In early 2010 I sat in on a seminar on Open Source Software and the  community in Ireland, organised as part of my masters course in DIT  Kevin St. One of the speakers was Laura Czajkowski. It was during her
talk that I saw the commitment she had to the community and it begins  a process of thought about what drives individuals to offer their time  and effort to Open Source Communities.

The course that I was studying was Computing but specialising in  Knowledge Management (KM). Knowledge Management is the realisation  that knowledge is an organisations greatest asset. We constantly hear
the term Knowledge and Smart economy being touted by the Irish  government at the moment. They like so many large organisations  realise that it is what we know and don’t realise we already know can
be our greatest resource.

Within companies it is commonplace for individuals to hoard knowledge,  we do this for various reasons.

• We are not confident about what we know, and are afraid others may  disregard our knowledge.
• We fear giving our knowledge freely, as it may make us redundant.
• We find it difficult to articulate our knowledge.
• We do not have the tools available to record our knowledge.
• We simple do not realise that we possess some knowledge.

KM is about accessing the knowledge within people, teams, departments,  organisations, then storing that knowledge in an understandable or  codified fashion, and finally making that knowledge available and
easily accessible to others.  Some prime examples of where KM can work effectively is in the  Pharmaceutical industry, where the process of getting new drugs to  market can be as long as 12 years. Most of the large pharmaceutical  companies have implemented large KM projects. One in particular cut  the time for filling applications to the European and American drug  boards in half. The KM systems they installed held the knowledge of  previous employees and former workers of the American Federal drug  Administration (FDA). Due to their expertise as to what information  was required in an application, these applications could be filled out  much faster. As you can imagine the saving of several years in getting  a drug to market is worth a considerable amount of money to drug  companies. This is can be the power of KM.

However what many organisations find when they implement KM  initiatives, regardless of the money, time and expertise that they  throw at it, is people seem unwilling to share their Knowledge. There  are drivers that motivate and barriers that prevent people from  sharing their knowledge.

Within Open Source communities, we have a group of people who come  together to freely share knowledge. This makes it an ideal place to  investigate positive motivations. If KM initiatives could replicate
the motivations within Open Source Communities then their initiatives  could prove far more successful.

Back to my story, I began to realise that the Ubuntu community could  offer me a perfect environment to investigate motivations to knowledge  sharing.  In May I contacted Laura and told her about my Idea. Within days we
were sitting down together in a lab in DIT and Laura was showing me  around the Ubuntu community. Over the course of the next 3 months with  Laura and several other members of Ubuntu’s community I had fashioned
a suitable experiment.  The experiment would utilise the existing social networking pages  (Launchpad) within the community and over a period of Two weeks would  email an advertisement of one of those profiles to the mailing list of  the Irish team.  I would then survey the Irish team to ascertain the usefulness of the  experiment.  The idea of the experiment was to measure the levels of trust needed  for knowledge sharing, and whether tools like Launchpad could assist  in people getting curious about others in the community. This is the  starting point of building relationships and trust.  The experiment received great support from the community and I had a  fantastic response to the survey. The experiment idea was even taken  on board as a continuous feature by the UK and North Carolina teams.  The results of the experiment did indeed indicate that, firstly trust
is important to knowledge sharing and secondly tools like launhpad if  used in a proactive manner can initiate contact between members of the  group.

Overall my experience dealing with Laura and the rest of the Ubuntu community was  extremely pleasant. I could not of asked for any more help or enthusiasm. It  was a privilege to get an insight into a remarkable community.

This is an extract of some of the projects findings:

• The project's findings clearly suggested the varying forms of trust.  That initial conversations between members in the Ubuntu community did  lead to greater curiosity of others.
• This can then lead to a process where two individuals will get to  know more about each other and strengthen the bonds of trust between  them.
• The project also identified tools as being very important within  online communities in building familiarity and trust.
• Correspondence and direct communication was identified as being the  most important tool in which people will get to know one another and  build trust.
• The project results suggested that the availability of social  networking tools in this case Launchpad was utilised by members as a  means to gain more knowledge about other users. However it also  suggested that this was after initial correspondence with that  individual. Curiosity of others increased after correspondence with  them. This would suggest that tools are very useful in the process of  building trust and friendships in virtual communities.
• Communities where there is little correspondence however may not  benefit from this trust building processes and utilisation of  community tools. This is where the project findings are so useful.  They clearly suggest that by advertising members profiles can initiate  curiosity in them. Traffic to the profiles and results of the survey  indicate that this is the case. This can be an important initiative in  implementing the trust building processes in communities and  subsequently the sharing of knowledge. It can help drive the initial  stages of a KM system and could become an important part of the  familarisation and trust building process.
• The building of friendships was indicated as being one of the main  motivators of membership in open source communities and thus the free  sharing of knowledge. Trust is a vital element in any friendship and  therefore any tools that can facilitate this are very valuable in  creating a healthy dynamic knowledge-sharing environment.
• The findings imply that a proactive approach is needed within a  community to initiate the trust building process, that although  members desire to build relationships of trust with others they may  need a push to do so.

Thanks to Barry for the update, if anyone wants to drop him a line here is his email address.

Launchpad code hosting will be offline Friday between 8.00 and 9.30 UTC for unexpected hardware maintenance. This means you won't be able to browse, push to, pull from or otherwise access code hosted on Launchpad.

Going offline: 8.00 UTC 3rd September 2010

Expected back: 9.30 UTC 3rd September 2010

[Discuss Code Hosting Maintenance Friday, September 3, 2010 on the Forums]

Originally posted here by Gary Poster on September 2nd, 2010.

After spotting the silly pyromania on planet.fedora earlier today, I thought for a while;  Am I on Team Evil, or am I on Team Stupid.  Then, I decided.

I’m on Team Linux.

You?

Ubuntu App Developer Week (formally Opportunistic Developer Week) was announced on The Fridge earlier this week.

"What is Ubuntu App Developer Week?"

Ubuntu App Developer Week is a week of sessions aimed at enabling and inspiring developers to write applications that scratch their itches. Our goal is to give all attendees a taste of the wide variety of tools on the Ubuntu platform that can be used to create awesome applications, and to showcase some applications that have been created and explain how they were put together.

"When is Ubuntu App Developer Week?"

Ubuntu App Developer Week is scheduled for  Monday, September 27th through Friday, October 1st, 2010.

"Where will Ubuntu App Developer Week take place?"

Ubuntu App Developer Week will take place in  #ubuntu-classroom and  #ubuntu-classroom-chat on  freenode.net.

We are now looking for Sessions and Session Leaders.  Do you have suggestions for a session or would you or someone you know like to lead a session for  Ubuntu App Developer Week?

We’re currently putting together the timetable for Ubuntu App Developer Week at:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuAppDeveloperWeek/Timetable

If you’re interested in helping others write good code, showcase  interesting tools you use, share advice and answer questions, please  don’t hesitate to get in touch with Daniel Holbach (daniel.holbach AT ubuntu DOT com)  or me (akgraner AT Ubuntu DOT com) and  we’ll sort out a slot for you.

More information on Ubuntu App Developer Week Can be found at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuAppDeveloperWeek

Unzip 5.x has an option -O to specific the encoding of file names in an ZIP archive, but when 6.0 is arriving with unicode support, that option disappeared as well. CJK users need special cares on support and conversion of obsolete encoding while they are switching to utf-8.

Here is my workaround about this problem, install p7zip and convmv packages on your system first, then:
$ env LC_ALL=C 7z x file.zip
$ convmv -f gbk -t utf8 --notest *

File names extracted by unzip are not able to be converted to correct one whatever you do with it, but what is done by 7z can be converted by convmv.

Moving more on, we can automate this action to a script:
#! /bin/sh
LANG=C /usr/bin/7z x -y "$1" | sed -n 's/^Extracting //p' | sed '1!G;h;$!d' | xargs convmv -f gbk -t utf8 --notest >/dev/null 2>/dev/null

Save it us unzip.sh, then try:
$ sh unzip.sh file.zip
This will act as what unzip does, but with additional care about converting file name encoding from gbk to utf-8. Moreover, convmv can detect whether your file name is already utf-8 encoded and will skip it.

If your file names are encoded other encoding, please replace “gbk” with the appropriate name.

It has been a while since I have reviewed a manga book. This is one of several atypical educational books that use graphic art to help teach difficult concepts or illustrate the action. This is another wonderful entry in the “Manga Guide to…” series that I have been reviewing.

The Manga Guide to Molecular Biology follows the actions of a two students who failed their molecular biology class and have to take a special summer course. The story line is enjoyable and eases the reader’s entry into the topic rather than being a distraction.

The book covers all the main questions and topics you would expect: what is a cell, what are the common parts of a cell, how do cells combine to make various organisms, what are proteins and how do they function within a cell, what is DNA and what are genes and how do they work to express the information coded in them? My favorite part was chapter 5 which focuses on potential applications for everything discussed earlier and theorizes what the future may hold in the field.

I work in a software project that is helping biologists do research, including helping process the vast amounts of data that comes from genetic sequencing. As a result, I have become familiar with most of the content this book presents. I believe the book is accurate and it is clear. The story created to assist with that presentation is enjoyable as well. I have a seven year old daughter that is reading the book with great interest. Some of the science is above her grade level, but her attention remains fixed on the art and the story and she is absorbing some of it as she reads.

Overall, I would say the book is a success and recommend it without reservation.

Disclosure: I was given my copy of this book by the publisher as a review copy.

Wow – I’ve already been amazed at learning about some of the great things happening with Ubuntu in Education.   At every level, Ubuntu in schools and learning just makes sense.   Yesterday I was pointed to this great map showing school deployments in Finland:   http://bit.ly/amFiOO .   Greece is right behind them and lots of schools in the US are reporting success using Ubuntu as well.   The work is being done by both volunteers and Solution Providers.

The Andalusia deployment of over 200,000 systems is well documented and Amtron deploying 28,000 in Assam in northern India and Oxford Archaeology and Johns Hopikins and Oakland University and the list continues to grow.   Next week I’m visiting a local school in my backyard of Houston, TX that has migrated to Ubuntu using Moodle and other open source SIS (Student Information Systems).   The project lead is also the volunteer coordinator of the Moodle Core Contrib team.   I had to travel out of town to meet him and learn about this great project.   I’m really glad I did!

Next up, the Edubuntu team is still being driven by the unstoppable Jonathan Carter (highvoltage) and everyone is welcome to stop into #edubuntu and join the weekly meetings on Tuesdays to add your voice.

Who am I?   I’m Dinda!     I came into the world of open source and Ubuntu some five years ago b/c of my interests in Education and all things learning.   You might have seen me around various projects but now I’ve taken on the temporary role of looking at everything related to “Ubuntu in Education” and creating some materials to help anyone who wants to use Ubuntu for learning.   Are you a student?   parent?   educator?   Sys Admin or IT staff at a school/University?   Voter?   Decision maker or Service/Solution Provider?   What do you need to make Ubuntu a success in your school?   Email me or add your comments here.

I’m breaking my two week blog holiday early to bring you a super cool genetic wallpaper video:

View Video on Blip

As I show in the video, once you have a nice svg (manually edited of course) you can use the script to nudge elements in it. Comment here if you think this is cool.