Some of us got together over the holiday period and poked some sponsors (not fully confirmed yet, but we can now safely promise "prizes" at least! :D) about a way to celebrate International Women's Day with a competition.
The details are at the following Mailing List post: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-women/2010-January/002406.html
And reproduced here:
Greetings all!
Firstly, some introductory reading for those who are not familiar with International Women's Day: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Women%27s_Day and http://www.internationalwomensday.com/
Ubuntu-Women has tried in the past to find some way to celebrate this event, but as far as I can remember it has never really amounted to much other than some chattering on IRC. So let us try a bit harder for 2010!
We have all come to Ubuntu in our own special ways -- every single one of us differently to the next. Yet one of the most common questions we get asked is "How can I get $woman to use Ubuntu?".
Obviously we cannot really answer that question, but we would dearly love to have a collection of stories by women about how they discovered Ubuntu. Such a repository would allow us to demonstrate that there's no one definitive answer, and at the same time maybe provide the gift of inspiration to women who are interested -- showing them that it's really not so unusual to be Ubuntu fans after all.
We are not expecting any particular length, but do remember that these stories should be suited to perusal at leisure and not require someone to allocate hours of their day to read. Anywhere between a few paragraphs and a OO.o Write page is ideal.
There will be two (2) prizes up for grabs. One (1) prize pack will be given to the story that the community votes is their favourite. One (1) prize pack will be given to a randomly drawn entrant. Jono Bacon, the Ubuntu Community Manager will be drawing this entrant in a videocast, and announcing both winners to the world on March 8th.
Please email your stories to ubuntuwomen.competition at gmail.com by UTC 23:59 22nd February 2010.
By submitting a story, you acknowledge that it will be posted on the Ubuntu Women website under the Creative Commons Attribution No-Derivatives [0] licence. If you prefer that your story be posted under a less restrictive licence such as Creative Commons Attribution [1] or Public Domain [2], then feel free to let us know when you submit. All stories are to be non-fiction and of a family-friendly nature. The organisers also reserve the right to interview prospective winners over the phone or other voice chat at their discretion.
We will celebrate International Women's Day by announcing the winners, who will receive gift packs (which are still in negotiation -- we will announce when it is confirmed!).
Good Luck!
p.s: Please pass this along to *any* women you know who *use* Ubuntu -- the more the merrier!
[0] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/ [1] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ [2] http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain
Melissa, Amber, Laura, Lyz and Mackenzie
Please help us make the event a success by spreading the word far and wide! Thanks!