ApacheCon US 2009 Session
Standing Out in the Crowd
How far have we come in ten years? Kirrily Robert has been working as
a web developer and Internet technologist for more than a decade. In
that time, the world wide web -- driven by Apache -- has become
ubiquitous, and with that ubiquity has come a broadening of the
market: from geeks and specialists to anyone and everyone.
But while half of all web users are women, women make up only a tiny
fraction of the open source developers whose work underpins most
websites. A 2006 survey showed 1.5% of developers are female,
compared to 24% in IT roles across the US. Many women in open source
have had the experience of being the only one on their project or at
an event. Kirrily will talk about the experiences of women in open
source, and present two new open source projects that have 75% or more
women contributors. What can we learn from these majority-female
projects, and how can it improve open source overall?
