Since the #debian-women-new channel that was opened on the occasion of this year's Software Freedom Day was so well received there will now be a special "Newcomers Welcome" timeslot at #debian-women every Saturday from 14:00 to 16:00 GMT.
While newcomers are of course always welcome to join , this timeslot will be dedicated to keeping the discussions on a not too technical basis and paying special attention to new visitors and their questions.

So if you have never before visited #debian-women, this might be an opportunity for you. If you have further questions about the #debian-women channel please refer to our irc FAQ, our irc guidelines or ask in the channel.

On the occasion of this year's Software Freedom Day the Debian-Women Project was running several events. In order to appeal to all levels of experience there were multiple activities: A new irc channel, #debian-women-new, was opened for until then inactive people who would like to get involved with the Debian-Women Project. For more experienced members there was a "help day" on the usual #debian-women channel. Erinn Clark installed a local BTS, dak and buildd for people to try out and practice with. Last but not least a Bug Squashing Party was organised by Hanna Wallach at #debian-bugs. All three events were well received and many women used the opportunity to catch up on the Debian-Women Project and general Debian development.

Thanks to some great work by Clytie and Thierry, the wiki now also offers pages in Vietnamese!
The wiki currently offers eight different languages. Add your translations!

From June 22nd to June 25th the LinuxTag will again take place in Karlsruhe. As usual this will be a large venue for all kinds of Open Source projects with a big fair, talks, workshops, forums and tutorials.

There will also be two talks featuring women in FS: "The Debian Women Project" (link) by Meike which will be given as a part of the Debian Day and "Free Software with a female touch" (link) by Fernanda. There will also be talks by other Debian Women members. Check the wiki for more information. If you plan to come, please drop a line in the wiki.

Wheeeeeee!!!

Hanna M. Wallach gave a talk about Debian Women at FOSDEM. The talk attracted over 80 people, among which were about 15 women. The slides of the talk are available from Hanna's blog. A short summary can be found in Jill Walker's blog.

Following up on last week's story about the Debian Project Leader Elections: Helen Faulkner and Martin Krafft will be chairing the IRC debate, during which this year's six candidates will be answering questions asked by the Debian community. Everybody is encouraged to send in suggestions.

Miriam Ruiz moderated a discussion about Women in Free Software on IRC in the #linuxpreview channel. She has made slides available in Spanish.

Several Debian Women people were actively involved in the weekend BSP called by Frank Lichtenheld, and mentioned on the Debian Women mailing list. In addition to this, some DW people are becoming very involved in bugsquashing activities, notably Margarita Manterola, who has recently closed a great many bugs in the evolution package.

Helen Faulkner called for any more people who are interested in the mentoring program to contact her. As a result of this, several newcomers to the project have posted to the mailing list or joined the IRC channel. All these people are very welcome, and there is actually still space for a few more mentees, so any interested people are welcome to contact Helen.

Manoj Srivastava has announced that the nomination period will end this week. The Debian Constitution is certainly an interesting read for those who want to know more. We will keep you posted about the progress of the elections.

On Saturday, the 4th of February there will be an IRC python tutorial in #debian-women on irc.oftc.net.

From the announcement email:"The topic is Python for people who can program (at least a little), but don't know Python at all. We will cover the very basics: syntax, basic data types, lists, dictionaries, control structures, functions, classes and objects, and modules. Or possibly less, depending on how time allows. Certainly not all the details of everything. Most of the examples will be about string manipulation, since that is common in most kinds of programs."

Feel free to join in!

A tutorial on Debian packaging will be held on IRC in #debian-women on the freenode network on Sunday 30th January at 21:00 UTC. See the mailing list announcement for more information.

A Debian Women bug squashing effort will be held on the weekend 8th-9th January, in conjunction with the main Debian Bug Squashing Party announced for that weekend. See the Debian Women mailing list for more details.

Topic: Debian Women advocacy. What are the right and not-so-right way in which to advocate Debian Women?
Date: January 16
Time: 0500 UTC
Location: irc.debian.org (freenode) #debian-women
Moderator: Matthew Palmer
Length: 1-1.5h for the official meeting, though many of us will stick around and chat.

Rules:

• No public logging
• Listen to the moderator
• Act like civilized adults

Colleen Hatfield will take minutes of the meeting which will be posted on our wiki so that people unable to come can see the results of the discussion and talk about this on the list. Our future meetings will also be at various times to accomodate the myriad timezones represented in our group.

We hope to see you all there!