The 27 of August is the deadline for delivering my masters's thesis. After that, life can go on! So, 10 days to countdown. In fact, it feels more and more now like a number.

Cartoon by Andi Singer

If it would be just writing an thesis, it would be too easy. Just in a week time at the country, I managed to write a whole chapter, and read about 600 pages (with notes). And then, I will need about 3 weeks off in order to write a paper for the JoCI, and to make a presentation at a colleague, who is doing for the first time a course in "Computer science and society" at the Technical University. I will need to prepare for a 5 weeks missing from home, a wrap-up for my thesis for the end of August....

Dans le cadre du cours "Informatique et société", donnée par M.Robert Dupuis aux étudiants en informatique. Le cours cherche à insister sur la responsabilité professionnelle des finissants-finissantes en informatique. Ma présentation, d'une durée de 30-45 min, portera sur la place des femmes en TI actuellement.

The Fourth Oekonux Conference has just passed (27-29 March). My lecture was my first actual academic presentation of findings, which I have made in public. There were two feelings at the beginning: enthusiasm and disappointment.

Enthusiasm, because I really wanted to share my work and ideas, and I felt I had moved far from previous popular presentations done at Open Source conferences. I did not like to stick to the "one million dollar question" on WHY there are so few women in Open Source, I actually bypass this issue, and go deeper to see actually WHERE are the women in the FOSS movement, and what specific contributions they provide. Some answers to these questions might actually better motivate FOSS community groups to make efforts and encourage women's participation.

Disappointment, because all the male participants had left for another session (I heard a bit later that I have had a fierce competition with a famous lecturer), and all the female ones have stayed. Few minutes later, it was not so bad, when some late comers joined the conference, and we were actually almost as many women as men in the room.

So, in brief, my 1,5 hours lecture was not recorded, except on my small voice recorder, therefore with very bad quality. I listened to it again, in order to note the questions and the comments made by the participants (the worst part of the recording). So, here they are, in a summarized form, with some of the answers, also in résumé.

Conclusions.

• Women do valuable work in FOSS development, which is often informal, therefore invisible
• Majority of women do the “boring job” in FOSS projects, such as usability, training, documentation...
• Women have low confidence in their work, coming mainly from the fact they are not developers by education
• Need for minimization of the importance of programming, in order to value the work of “other contributors” and of users, for producing a better and widely spread code.

Le Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur la science et la
tech­nologie tiendra le mercredi 19 mai 2009 son 13e Colloque des
cycles supérieurs. Ce colloque donne l’occasion aux étudiants membres du Centre, qu'ils soient inscrits à la maîtrise ou au doctorat, de présenter leurs résultats d’analyse de leur mémoire ou de leur thèse.

Date : Mercredi, 19 mai 2009 - 9h00 à 16h
Lieu : CIRST, Université du Québec à Montréal, Pavillon Thérèse-Casgrain, 5e étage, salle W-5215, 455 boul. René-Lévesque E. (entre Berri et St-Denis)

Yesterday was the deadline for admission to UQAM. I don't know what illusions I make. Will I really be happy to do research for another 5+ years?.. Thinking about this, here is one of the latest Phd Comics which confirms my occasional feelings about staying in university for longer time...

Colloque LabCMO et CIRST
20 mars 2009
Salle des Boiseries (J-2810), UQAM

Programme

9 h 00 : Accueil des participants

9 h 30 : Serge Proulx – Les contributions numériques : entre l’empowerment de l’utilisateur et la captation commerciale des données par les entreprises de l’Internet

During the past decade the phenomenon of Free Software has become successful and well-known. It is still amazing how in the realm of software the creativity of so many volunteers leads to products which are useful for the whole mankind. In 1999 the Oekonux Project started with analyzing this phenomenon and trying to understand the special features of Free Software as a social and political enterprise.

Nous vivons une époque en accélération, sous l'emprise du déploiement impressionnant des technologies de communication et d'information (TIC) dont les répercussions s'étendent aux sphères sociales, économiques, politiques et culturelles. Partout dans le monde, l'inégalité d'accès ainsi que le faible taux de participation et de contrôle des TIC par les femmes sont flagrants.

Christina Haralanova is a feminist, a Free Software hacktivist and an IT trainer.

Christina has been working for the past 10 years with the feminist movements around the world for the appropriation of information and communication technologies through principles of solidarity, software freedom and privacy of information. Within this role, she has given a number of training, research and presentations around the world. Christina has been a founding member and Managing Director of the Internet Rights Bulgaria foundation (from 2002 to 2008), a Board member (since 2002) and coordinator (from 2005 to 2007) of the Women's Information Technology Transfer (WITT), and is a Board member of Gender, Education Research and Technologies (GERT) since 2003.

As a free software hacktivist, Christina has participated actively in the creation of the Free Software Association – Bulgaria (FSA-BG), and is a member of FACIL - pour l'appropriation collective de l'informatique libre (since 2006) and Koumbit (since 2006) in Montreal, Canada. Christina was the Project Leader of the Legal Case Management Software (LCM) (2004-2005), a LPI proctor (2003 – 2005), a SPIP-bg translator.

Training experience in strategic communication, GNU/Linux and Free Software applications such as SPIP and Drupal. Some examples: three trainings in Bulgaria (2003 to 2004), one international on-line workshop (2003), two international three-days training sessions for women from Central and Eastern Europe (2004 and 2005) and one in the Czech Republic (2006). Trainer at the Feminist Tech Exchange (FTX) in South Africa in 2008. At the end of 2005, Christina trained 10 Comunity and Voluntary Centers in using Ubuntu/Linux on their desktops through the East of England Free and Open Source Software project. Christina is a Drupal trainer since 2009 for Studio XX.

Christina has participated to the World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva (2003) and Tunis (2005) to two ICANN annual conferences in Marina del Rey (2001) and Bucharest (2002). Also participated to the European Social Forum (ESF) in Paris (2003) and London (2004), as well as the World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre (2005). Christina has also given a number of presentations to different types of events, including academic conferences, some of which are the Know-How in Mexico city (2006), and Oekonux in Manchester, UK (2009). And at hacker conferences, such as the Free Society Conference and Nordic Summit (FSCONS) in November 2009.

MA in Communications in Montreal, Canada obtained in 2010. Topic of thesis: Women's Contribution to FOSS Development. Debian GNU/Linux user since 2002.

After taking this so important decision that:

1. I don't want to plan 10 years in advance and apply for PhD
2. I wish to go and find something else to do, some target group for which I can later write a PhD work
3. I will now concentrate and finish (after I start) my master's thesis

I just got to the conclusion, that what I really was struggling about, is to preserve my freedom. Because, "freedom, Sancho, is one of the most precious gifts that the heavens gave men". And if I would be kept into universtiy for so long, no matter how good it can be, I will be feeling my freedom taken. So, I need to go ahead slowly and to find out my way.

"La libertad, Sancho, es uno de los más preciosos dones que a los hombres dieron los cielos; con ella no pueden igualarse los tesoros que encierra la tierra ni el mar encubre; por la libertad, así como por la honra, se puede y debe aventurar la vida, y, por el contrario, el cautiverio es el mayor mal que puede venir a los hombres."

(Source : Wikiquotes)

I have been having a major dilemma for the past two days: to PhD or not to PhD. The problem is that for the past 2-3 weeks I am doing nothing but preparing my set of docs for a 3-years scholarship. It is getting almost done when the last document, the one where you describe your 3-year studies plan (2 pages only) just did not go well. What was wrong?

L’action communautaire québécoise à l’ère du numérique, c’est un ouvrage récent (2008, 252 pages, D1536, ISBN 978-2-7605-1536-9, PUQ) qui vise à reunir l’expérience des différents chercheurs et chercheuses du Laboratoire de communication médiatisée par ordinateur (labCMO), dans lequel j’ai la chance de participer. L’ouvrage a été publié sous la direction de Serge Proulx, Stéphane Couture et Julien Rueff par les Presses de l’Université du Québec (PUQ)

Deux séminaires donnés pas Christophe Lejeune un collègue de l’Université de Liège, spécialiste des méthodologies qualitatives, sociologue des sciences et développeur en logiciel libre. Il a développé le logiciel libre "Cassandre" qui permet l’analyse qualitative collective des données. Il viendra nous présenter ce logiciel à l’occasion de ce séminaire du 26 septembre.

Christophe Lejeune animera au LabCMO ce séminaire de 9h30 à midi le vendredi 26 septembre : "Quand l’analyse qualitative devient collective : le logiciel libre Cassandre"

Résumé :