# Fedora Women's Day 2020

## Overview
Fedora Women's Day 2020 was a celebration of personal growth, community, and love for open source software. Over the course of three days, women and non-binary folks from the Fedora community were featured in a speaker series where they shared stories about their lives and work in tech. From the challenges and barriers that they encountered to the achievements and success that they earned, we had the privilege of learning about gendered experiences that informed the journey of each of our speakers.

While in previous years, Fedora Women's Day has been organized locally by organizers around the world. In response to the pressures put on everyone by covid-19, this year Fedora Women's Day went virtual. In a time where we can all benefit from a little community, this move created space for Fedorans and open source users everywhere to come together to learn, network, and be inspired. For many of the attendees, this was their first Fedora Women's Day.

The event was hosted on Hopin.com following the success of Fedora Nest. We had 67 attendees and 24 speakers. Our event organizer Marie Nordin did a fantastic job putting together the speaker list and breaking it up with social occasions such as "Cake with FCAIC", one on one networking sessions, group discussions, and pictionary.

## Our Speakers

Our speaker list this year included: Amita Sharma, Aoife Maloney, Mariana Balla, Sarah Finn, Renata Gegaj, Ramya Parimi, Smera Goel, Alisha Mohanty, Aleksandra Fedorova, Maria Leonova, Rain Leander, Gabrielle Chang, Cali Dolfi, and Marie Nordin.

Some brief highlights of the conference include:

#### Origin Stories
Many of our speakers discussed their beginnings with Fedora and open source software and how they have found fulfilling jobs through these journies. Maria presented on her work as a graphic designer with Fedora and Red Hat. She had previously worked with closed source tools as a designer and talked on how her career changed as she began workin in open source. Aleksandra is a principal software engineer at Red Hat. She talked about how she went from being a Fedora newbie and junior tech support engineer to her current job along with becoming a member of the Fedora Council. Renata Gegaj talked about her work as an open source UX designer. She got her start by working on outreachy internship with a focus on Gnome UX research. Renata continues to conduct UX research and design on a variety of open source projects.

#### Undaunted and Resiliant
Many of our speakers discussed their experiences as women workin in male dominated spaces. Aoife Maloney spoke on her experiences with the CPE team and the victories that she achieved while establishing herself as a woman in tech. Marie Nordin's presentation showcased resilience as she discussed some of her experiences as woman with a non-tech background and how she became the Fedora Community Action and Impact Coordinator. Cali Dolfi showcased struggles that she faced while conducting sentiment analysis of Fedora mailing lists in order to emperically show the need for D&I work to be done to make Fedora linux a more inclusive space.

#### New Contributors
We also had a few newer Fedora community members present. Ramya Parimi is a newer member of the Fedora D&I team. Her prsentation was encouraging for other newcomers as she highlighted the experiences of learning how to collaborate using git. Her presentation also demonstrated the recurring theme of bravery needed to be a woman in tech. Gabrielle Chang discussed her experiences and work as a Red Hat summer intern. Gabrielle emphasized the importance of good communication and asking questions - something that can be challenging to newcomers in any community.

## Open Source, Together

Fedora Women's Day 2020 was unique by virtue of the times. In that uniqueness, we created a women's day that was accessible from all over the world. This event embodied and strengthened the truly global nature of our open source community. It served to bring together open source enthusiasts and professionals, who may not have been able to attend an in person event, to celebrate women and non-binary people in tech.

Thank you to the Fedora Diversity and Inclusion team for all of their hard work in putting this event together. Events such as this are so important for building stronger relationships within a community. Thank you to all the women and non-binary folks that presented. You provided examples that inspire and encourage others to be be courageous in their own lives. And finally, thank you to everyone who attended. A speaker series is just as much about the people there to hear, learn, and ask questions as it is about the speakers' hard work.

We look forward to see you all for Fedora Women's Day 2021!

#### Stay safe and <3 Linux.