GHC08: Women in the Brave New World of Open Source

This was my first time speaking at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, and it was so exciting! I had just met most of the other panelists yesterday (didn't meet Stormy Peters until lunch today), and found it was so cool to find all the things we had in common and just as interestingly, all the differences we had in experiences, opinions and careers. The panel went really well - the more we talked, the more ideas we all had that we wanted to share. It was great sharing my eperiences with working on OpenSolaris with others, particularly the students. I hope between the OpenSolaris bite-sized bugs, the Linux "janitorial" work and the Google Summer of Code that we will gain many new women in the world of open source after this conference. I wish we'd had more time, and do hope to hear more from the students that were there as well as the other women in industry. Together we can learn and discover more in the world of computing. This is not the official blog, just my experiences being on the panel. More later...

Valerie Fenwick