Open Source Bridge Presentation: “Faking It Til I Make It”
Last week, I gave a talk at the first Open Source Bridge conference. “Faking It Til I Make It: A Woman On The Fringe Of Open Source” was supposed to be a talk about my changing view of community contribution over the last few years.
Little did I know that giving a talk about being a woman in open source is something of a rite of passage for a woman in open source. This led to a post-presentation discussion that was more about the challenges of being such a woman rather than to the importance of individual contribution at all experience levels.
The old adage “fake it ’til you make it” is often used to get people moving when they lack experience in some area. The idea is to just get in, pretend you know what’s going on and eventually you’ll get the hang of things enough to participate.
This can be a good thing, but I’ve found there’s a negative side to the idea when applied to my engineering career. You can’t lay low in engineering, or programming, or development. You’ve got to roll up your sleeves and build stuff yourself.
The presentation was well attended and folks were more than happy to contribute to the discussion, which was great. Thanks again to all the folks in the room, and to the folks who attended the unconference breakout session the next day.
For those who are interested, here are my slides from the presentation: mariawebster_opensourcebridge09. (The document with the associated notes will be posted as soon as possible.) Comments are, of course, welcome!
Related posts:
- Live, From Open Source Bridge 2009
- Open Source Bridge: Day Three’s Unconference
- Open Source Bridge: 10 Reasons Why I’m Going
- Open Source Bridge: The Conference For Open Citizens
- StrangeLoveLive: The Open Source Bridge 2009 Interviews
Leave a Reply