The LinuxChix coordinator, Mary Gardiner, is planning to begin IRC chats with the LinuxChix community approximately fortnightly. Each chat will last for an hour. The idea of the chats is to just for everyone to be able to talk about the LinuxChix community: who is doing what, what we've achieved recently, what we'd like to achieve in the near future. There will be no formal agenda.

The first such chat will be held in the IRC channel #linuxchix on the server irc.linuxchix.org. The chat will be held from 0900 UTC on May 28 for an hour. (Please keep in mind that this is still Sunday in a very few locations!) To find out your local time, please see the timeanddate.com conversions.

A regional chapter of LinuxChix is forming in Dallas-Fort Worth (Texas, USA). If you're interested in joining, see the chapter listing for information.

Carla Schroder has been running a course called "Spineful Living" since the end of March. (The title she really wanted for this course was "how not to be a doormat but instead a confident person who gets what she wants and doesn't waste half her life kicking herself for being a spineless wuss.")

This course is open to everyone. You can check out existing posts in the archives and sign up for the mailing list here. Lessons will run approximately one per week for however long it remains useful and interesting.

For about the past year, volunteers inside LinuxChix have been working very hard to bring us a new www.linuxchix.org website, with a new design and new management features.

The new website launched today, and you're looking at it!

Thank you very much to the team behind it all.

Mary Gardiner has been chosen as the new Linuxchix Coordinator. Please make her welcome. Mary has some great ideas for Linuxchix, and has the experience and energy to make them happen.

The other nominees were Terri Oda and Noirin Plunkett, please congratulate them on their nomination and their near miss - it was a difficult choice and a close poll.

If you are a female student thinking of applying to Google Summer of Code, but not sure what to do, who to approach, which project to pick or what would work in your application, join the LinuxChix grrltalk list: we're trying to get students to talk to women involved in the projects and hopefully help them with their application or choice of project.