BANGALORE: With a name like LinuxChix-India, you might think its mission is trivial, but their goal is serious: creating equal access for women to enter the world of technology.

Archana Raghupathy of Chennai started LinuxChix-India in 2005. It is the Indian chapter of the global women techies' network Linuxchix.org, and "tries to empower Indian women to use, develop and contribute to the world of free and open source software (FOSS)."

Globally, LinuxChix is a community for women who "like Linux and Free Software" and for women and men who want to support women in computing. Its members range from novices to experienced users and include professional and amateur programmers, system administrators and technical writers.

It also works to bring together women around India involved in various FOSS projects, foster participation and share knowledge in a geeky world where males usually dominate...
read the rest of the article

Our own Tina Gasperson has been recognized for her jewelry-making:

"Did you go to school for this trade or was it something self-taught?"

"I taught myself the actual craft of putting the jewelry together, mostly from reading books, online articles, and watching cool YouTube videos; then trying the basic functions myself, practicing over and over again to learn the right touch with the wire, to learn how to wrap a loop just so without nicking it all up, to figure out the right amount of pressure to put on the wire to make it bend smoothly without angles. The whole thing started when I decided it would be a great idea to hand make 50 tiaras for a women’s conference - and I had never worked with wire before and had no clue what I was going to do."
http://www.theexpressionist.com/2008/08/04/tina-gasperson-jewelry-artist/

Aussie(Linux)Chix and AussieDevChix will have their regular joint
meeting in Sydney before the Sydney Linux User Group meeting this month.
Feel free to forward this message to any women you think might be
interested in coming.

  Date: Friday 25th July 2008

  Time: 5:30-6:15pm

  Location: Lindt Chocolat Cafe, Shop 104–105, Cockle Bay Wharf, Darling
            Harbour

  Directions: The Lindt Cafe is on the ground floor of the Cockle Bay
              Wharf building, between the two halves. Look for the

Your faithful one-third of the TresChix, Carla Schroder (that's me!) just got a very cool, fairly high-profile job as the managing editor of Linux Today and LinuxPlanet. w00t!

Got any old O'Reilly shirts at home? If so, bring them to OSCON! Be one
of the first 50 people to come by the O'Reilly booth (#313) wearing one of
our t-shirts to win cool prizes and be included in our t-shirt photo
collage. The grand prize goes to the person who has more O'Reilly shirts
than everyone else, so bring 'em all!

Follow the O'Reilly booth on Twitter during the conference:
http://twitter.com/oreillyatoscon for your chance to win prizes during
the show.

You can also follow http://twitter.com/oscon for ongoing conference
updates throughout the show.

Linux.conf.au has announced the opening of the call for papers on
Friday 4th July 2008, giving the open source software community the
chance to present at one of the world's premier technical conferences.

Hobart TAS, Australia-- (4th July 2008) ---- The call for papers will
remain open for a month, after which the best papers will be selected
by an expert panel.

Ben Powell, President of the Tasmanian Linux Users Group, says the
10th annual Linux.conf.au is expected to attract influential speakers
from the international and local technical Linux and Open Source
communities.