Summer of Coders at LinuxChix Brasil's National Meeting

Eduardo Silva, 2007 Summer of Coder working with OLPC, recently attended the LinuxChix Brasil National Meeting. He was kind enough to share some of his experiences at the conference and as a participant in Summer of Code. Eduardo writes:

Summer of Code is not just a "geek job," it's a great opportunity to learn a lot and overcome difficult problems, and, obviously, get a new hobby: getting into developing for an open source project. This Summer I've been working with One Laptop Per Child, and the experience as a second year participant has been exciting. But I'd like to talk more about my experiences resulting from participating in the program.

Working with OLPC in Summer of Code has opened a lot of doors for me. I have been able to give a couple of speeches at conferences, and the last one was between September 7th and 8th in Brasil at the 5th LinuxChix-Brasil National Meeting. As you may know, there are far fewer women working on Linux and other open source software, and the best part about this meeting was they way it gave women the chance to come and be actively involved in development discussions, as well as the opportunity to meet other like-minded women (and men)!

The LinuxChix group really impressed me: I've been present at many Linux meetings, and this one was very special, because there were many speakers - more than 30 - including lead developers from Intel, Mandriva, Debian and KDE. In addition to all the great speeches, it was wonderful to enjoy meeting new people and forging new relationships during the coffee breaks. The organizing team really put in a great deal of effort to make the meeting both fun and useful. Special thanks to Priscilla, Luana, Caroll and Sulamita. Not only did they do a great job, they totally showed that they use Linux by Choice and are Geek by Nature.

Thanks to Google for sponsoring my travel to the meeting.

Many thanks to Eduardo for sharing his experiences with all of us. If you're well-versed in Brasilian Portuguese, cruise on over to the LinuxChix Brasil Meeting site for more information on the conference.

Did anyone else attend LinuxChix Brasil or another recent LinuxChix gathering? Post a comment and share your thoughts with us.