[BangPypers] Pyladies Bangalore

[svaksha]

Hi,

On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 10:34 AM, Annapoornima Koppad
<a.koppad at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> I recently started the Pyladies Bangalore chapter. I wanted to know how

Thank you. Its been a long wait :)

> many lady python programmers are on Bangalore python users group. I will be
> really interested in the numbers in terms of,
>
> 1. How many lady python programmers are on Bangalore python users group?

/me waves. I've had brief trysts with other languages, but I prefer
Python since the last few years.


> 2. How many are active in attending the Bangalore meetups?

I never have attended, either because the topic was not what I was
interested in, or because the meetup time/location is inconvenient
(read, too much travel time). That said, I try to avoid talks (unless
the talk is about something I absolutely want to learn); much
preferring the practical form - workshops.


> 3. How much is the participation of these women for any of Bangalore Python
> outreach activities.

I tried replicating the Python dojos concept from a talk I heard at
Pycon. I got a lot of support online, but then realised the ground
realities in India are different, and the effort died as quietly as it
began, http://svaksha.com/post/2010/Weekly-Python-Dojo-at-Bangalore


> 4. Of the active members, how many have been active in producing good
> quality talks, workshops, etc.

Never spoken locally as I dont know if there is any interest in
scientific topics. IIRC, most of the list posting are web-related
topics.

I've spoken at PyconCA and for two years in a row my Pycon talk
submissions were converted into poster sessions; but I had to withdraw
due to insufficient travel funding. (yes, I'm aware of the FA, applied
and was granted partial funding). Last year, I organized a Pandas
workshop (this while I've never used it, but later worked with it)
which was funded by the PSF, and the day-long event was covered by the
CoC too. Had fun :)



> I did a little bit of research before deciding to email the group here.
> There are 570 members on the Bangalore Python user groups. Of which 20 are
> ladies. Of the 20 number, 3 are recruiters. This number is really
> disconcerting to me. Am I missing out some people here? This is leading me
> to ask these questions.
>
> 1. How many women really attend workshops/meetups?
> 2. Are there any efforts to understand the problems associated with the
> poor attendance of women?
> 3. Aren't there any women who want to learn Python but are too afraid to
> ask questions. What is being done to address these problems?

A survey would be nice as it would help the Bangpypers and meetup
organizers understand the other half. I have two suggestions:
0. Please keep the survey results open so that everyone can view it.
1. Respecting user privacy and choice:  Surveys (or forms) that insist
on collecting irrelevant personal information are incredibly annoying.
For privacy reasons, many people dislike being profiled and mandatory
fields that insist on real name, location, where you work/study,
designation, etc.. are a huge turn off. I'm ok with these questions so
long as they are not mandatory (read, asterisk) fields.



> That said, I am attaching the links to Pyladies Bangalore.

Fwiw, the way Pyladies is run internationally is that women interested
in opening a local chapter can easily start one in their own city.
Please keep in mind that 'men' starting a group for the women is quite
strange - yes, there was a student who would frequent the irc channel
for weeks, insisting that he wanted to start a Pyladies chapter to
encourage the women in his college to contribute the Foss.


> While I want to keep this community pro-woman, I am not restricting it to
> women alone. I would really appreciate if there are men willing to come

It would be nice if any upstream developer would like to hold
workshops and encourage newbies to contribute. Contributions could be
in any form, not just coding, as most projects require good technical
documentation <-- this is a great way to start out as you will learn
how to use the software and create documentation while learning other
skills, like DVCS, collaborating via lists and irc with the core
community, etc..

-svaksha ॥ स्वक्ष