[WFS-India] Revised Report on Poster Competition

[A. Mani]

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Report on Poster Competition on Womens and LGBT Issues

This will be one competition that provoked plenty of debate and in my
opinion, exposed the lack of awareness of a wide spectrum of FOSS
contributors and others. The idea was definitely supported by large
sections of the FOSS and many other communities, but some had
reservations.

We did not have too many submissions though, the number of submissions
were less than the available prizes. So all eligible submissions were
awarded prizes. These were all submitted by the 13th. The extension of
dates, modified 'positive' text and publicity did not help in getting
any new submissions

The prizes included Live Fedora design and TexLive'2013 in the Flash drives

The winners are

C. Srividya

Ani Dalal

The submitted posters are available on the site gallery under CCSA
license. The posters were made with GIMP and Inskscape mainly. Ani
Dalal's was done in GIMP only with custom brushes. There were
differences in the technical quality of submissions as can be seen
from the exhibits.

Participants were asked to describe the intended representation of the
posters. The ideas chosen were simple and direct.

Ani Dalal's poster uses an interplay of an image of two people holding
hands with a large amount of anti-discrimination related words layered
over it. It is intended to suggest "freedom and courage, and dawn of a
new world, a better world for all, irrespective of their gender or any
other form of discrimination."

Srividya's first poster carried the message that LGBT people are
humans and that humans should be respected irrespective of their
gender or sexual orientation.

Srividya's second poster is intended as a simple call for a change in
the culture associated with free software through the involvement of
women in all stages of its existence. Many women have achieved much in
the free software world, why don't more women get involved?

The publicity of the event went into various Google+ communities,
socio-political discussion groups, reddit and social channels (apart
from FOSS channels). This by itself must have helped in increasing
awareness about FOSS tools. There is a difference between a person who
asserts "I know Fedora and GIMP" and one who asserts "I have not heard
of free software".

We had many positive comments all through in these channels.

Some of the ways in which the impact of events like these can be improved are:

A. We should have conducted online courses on the free software tools
before the competition.

B. The language of the target community should be accommodated in a
better way. Unfortunately differences within the organizing committee
led to fairly placid approach. The earlier version of the background
text could potentially help people with repressed sexualities (that
arguably constitute a overwhelming majority) as well.

C. For events like these it is important to work on addressing
closeted people and groups in hostile environment. As it is the
disparate real communities or persons in the abstract LGBT community
are extremely alienated from Indian society and even if people want to
participate, they may not be bold enough to do so.


All things considered, this stands as a good community effort!


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Best

A. Mani


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A. Mani
CU, ASL, AMS, CLC, CMS
http://www.logicamani.in