Fedora Women’s Day (FWD) is a day to celebrate and bring visibility to female contributors in open source projects, including Fedora. This event is headed by Fedora’s Diversity and Inclusion Team.

During the month of September, in collaboration with other open source communities, women in tech groups and hacker spaces, we plan to organize community meetups and events around the world to highlight and celebrate the women in open source communities like Fedora and their invaluable contributions to their projects and community.

These events also provide a good opportunity for women worldwide to learn about free and open source software and jump start their journey as a FOSS user and/or a contributor.  They also provide a platform for women to connect, learn and be inspired by other women in open source communities and beyond.

We are looking forward to applications for organizing FWD-2019, go ahead and submit applications and help us in organizing this event in various locations in the world. 

Important dates:

Deadline for submission – Friday, 23 August, 2019

Acceptance deadline – Friday, 6 September, 2019

Suggested dates for FWD: September-October 2019

Note: The Diversity and Inclusion team gives flexibility on dates for organizing FWD, thus event can be organized on any dates throughout the month of September and October. The proposals will be reviewed on a rolling basis, so don’t procrastinate until the last date of the deadline to submit a spectacular proposal.

Who can be a part of FWD:

  • We welcome all organizers and attendees whose values align with our mission and goals for the event irrespective of their genders and backgrounds.
  • Diversity and Inclusion team is eagerly looking forward to have more organizers and participants from the under-represented groups and areas.

Why should you organize a FWD in your local community

  • It lets you share your knowledge as FOSS still remains an underutilized area.
  • You can spread the awesomeness that FOSS has provided you with.
  • You might find a fellow contributor to work with or engage locally.
  • You will win lots of goodies and love from the Fedora community.
  • You can get a lot of freedom for arranging your very own event and cultivate your leadership and creativity skills as you plan and organize a FWD in your local community.
  • To empower women in your local community through open source tools and build their skills to contribute to a global project.

Why should you attend a FWD in your local community

  • To know open source and building skills by working on  projects related to it.
  • It helps to connect and gain inspiration from talented women
  • It helps in getting started with open source contributions.
  • To get some surprised goodies.

Steps to organize a FWD event:

Cannot find a FWD in your region? Organize one! It’s simple with below steps.

Identify your goals:

  • Find out the interests of your local community and conduct interactive sessions, it can be a workshop, hackathon.
  • Do they know what open source is? If not, you can use your event to create awareness about open source software and more direction on topics Fedora would be nice.
  • Are they interested in contributing to open source? Make your content more contribution specific and make sure to follow-up with participants after the event to help them get started or to make progress on what they have started. You can also organise some follow up sessions if required.
  • Are they interested in networking? We can help you identify local open source contributors from your region.
  • Set some measurable goals for the event, to measure the success of the event. 
  • Make sure your goals align with our motivations for FWD. Brainstorm and share ideas with us that you feel can bring a massive difference to the audience and would help them learn to contribute to FOSS or Fedora.

Tell us about it:

  • Please let us know if you are interested on the diversity mailing list before the deadline. We would be glad to support you through the whole process.
  • Fedora Women’s Day (FWD) event proposals need to be submitted to fedora-womens-day repository by Friday, 23 August, 2019
  • You can request budget for your event to be reimbursed after writing an event report.

Spread the word:

Start Early! Spread the word before and after the event. Publicise your event both locally and globally to gather as many participants as you can, to maximize the impact of efforts you put in. You can invite fellow Fedora Contributors who are based in your area to collaborate with you. It is important that you estimate your audience well in advance, so that you can plan and ask for a suitable budget. After you are done with the event, let others have an idea of fun you had, by clicking some interesting group pictures and writing an elaborate event report. If you know someone or a tech group who might be interested to organize a Fedora Women’s Day event, feel free to involve them.

Increase your chances:

Finally, to increase your chances of getting an acceptance, go through our internal goals very closely. Start planning early to give yourself enough time to prepare and connect with other hacker-spaces and tech community and enhance your proposal by involving a bigger group. Understand the needs of your audience and make a personalized proposal that fits the best. Identify the resources that you might be required to conduct a Fedora Women’s Day event and inform us if you need any help.