[WFS-India] Fwd: [IndiChix] Poster Competition

[Satabdi Das]

Forwarding Svaksha's mail since she is not in our group (yet).

Satabdi
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: स्वक्ष <svaksha at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 3:18 AM
Subject: Re: [IndiChix] Poster Competition
To: LinuxChix - India <indichix at linuxchix.org>
Cc: techtalk at linuxchix.org


On Mon, Jun 3, 2013 at 1:23 AM, A. Mani <a.mani.cms at gmail.com> wrote:
> WFS India in collaboration with Glug-Cal, Fedora and Mozilla announces
> a poster competition on women's, LGBT and gender-related issues in
> India using free software tools as part of the extended Cultural
> Freedom Day celebrations.
>
>
> http://www.wfs-india.org/p/poster-competition-womens-and-lgbt-issues

Hey, Where can I submit a patch for the "Background" section? I found
the language quite brusque which wont help if we want to bridge the
gap. Since it is about women, I am taking the liberty of providing a
bug-fix below :)

First a short note on why I'm rooting for a change: Like most Indian
woman I too have experienced all the issues first-hand, written
(erm..ranted on my blog and in IRL discussions) a lot on sexism and
other issues we women face BUT all that has been limited to my blog or
IRL discussions. When we are creating a poster to get more women and
students involved in FOSS, it is easier to use language that is more
professional and inviting. People respond better to politeness (I
know, I do) than sarcasm and rudeness. We can speak the truth about
women and LGBT in a friendlier, polite manner - the impact will be
greater.

That said, here is the patch (its not perfect, so feel free to bug-fix it):

Background

India being a multi-ethnic, multi-racial country, while coping with
challenges of corruption and a billion (and growing) population is
slowly coping with the silent half - women and the LGBT populace.
India has a 5000-year history that straddles the the modern - the
spectrum of a cell-phone totting farmer, a tweeting teenager, a
technophile home-maker, an artistic designer, and half a billion more
who are embracing technology in Planck time.

And yet, this majority are still finding their voices in their
struggle to retain their space while retaining basic human values
within our society. Your challenge is to bring out your virtual
brushes and paint away your thoughts that will pictorally depict this
struggle while celebrating their diversity.

Can you retain the essence of India's 5000-year history that straddles
the modern world? Exercise your creative freedom with Free/Libre open
source software and other technologies. Your poster may just be the
inspiration that gives them a voice to fight for their rights, a
vision of a better tomorrow, a tomorrow that has the freedom and space
for their dreams while allowing them to remain rooted in the Indian
ethos.

</end-patch-for-Background-section-Poster-Competition-on-Women's-and-LGBT-Issues>

If you have hosted the poster text on github (or any other dvcs),
please point me to it so that I can make a pull request for the above.
I just spent over an hour being creative in my editing (instead of the
Julia workshop announcement) and its 3 am, so please be kind in your
criticism. I have also tried to retain some text that talks about the
social problems in a discreet manner - it alludes to problems that
need solutions but does not explicitly describe it. In a country that
struggles to keep the "girl child" in schools, its easy to scare them
off with words like "sex education" - At some schools, parents would
be up in arms over it.

I also wish the rule #2 would be relaxed a bit. When I started
volunteering in 2005 as a list-admin for two mailing lists at
linuxchix.org, I was still using Windows on a partitioned drive. It
took me a few months to ditch the dual-boot and switch over completely
to Ubuntu Linux. ...and I still have never used more than half the
tools listed there. So yeah, I plead ignorance to the xcf and eps
formats too.

Hope you can consider some of my suggestions !

Thank you !
--
svaksha ॥ http://svaksha.com ॥
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-- 
Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you, but it is most important
that you do it <http://bangalore.aidindia.org/>.
Find me on the internet <http://about.me/satabdi>
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