The Blonde and the Scruffy Coder: Postscript

Four months ago I gave a talk titled the Blonde and the Scruffy Coder at the Chemnitzer Linux Tage in Germany. A video recording has just been released, so here are twenty-seven minutes of your host talking with a bigger-than-usual accent:

It has been an enormous pleasure being there in Chemnitz. The organisers of the CLT have a precisely and neatly-run event set-up, and have all my admiration and gratitude. Very fast diesel trains, icy wind gusts, a startlingly inexpensive luxury hotel, and long deserted housing buildings all also add-up to the memory.

Giving the talk has been furthering and joyful. I am indebted to Meike Reichle, whose talk preceded mine, for some thoughtful remarks during and after the talk. Some of these are online and I heartedly accept the criticism:

The talk itself, in my impression, left a few open issues though. It was rather brief and focussed mainly on stating the usual numbers, asserting that the Women in FLOSS movement wasn’t about affirmative action or discriminating men[,] explaining how women feel discriminated by sexist behaviour and advertising[,] and how objection to such things should not be mistaken as prudery. […]
What I missed most was practical advice to projects wishing to attract more female contributors, such as mentoring programs or low-threshold entry points.

Already a veteran both on that topic and in FLOSS communities, she comments:

[…] Instead of talking about how there should be more women in Free Software I’d rather just be one and try to encourage others with my example. The usual quota of female speakers at [Linux] events is somewhere between 2 – 4% and I just don’t like the idea of having a conference with n men talking about Free Software and 1 woman talking about women.

Nothing I’ve read or heard cuts it so well.