On August 2nd 2018 ~20 people met for a Debian Women (DW) lunch at
DebConf 18 in Taiwan.

We had two main subjects:

- the future of DW
- Outreachy & GSoC interns
- Mentoring outside of internships

Mailing list & DW @ DebConf
===========================

There was a proposal to merge the debian-women mailing list with the
future debian-diversity list. Several reasons for this proposal: 

- the list does not seem to be used very much nowadays

- is seems better to have no communication channel than a dead one

- it has lost some of its previous purpose (being an information channel 
  on an internal mentorship program)

- it nowadays seems too restrictive to reduce the list to people who 
  identify as women instead of opening it up to a diversity of genders 
  (female, nonbinary, queer, genderfluid, gender*) and have a more 
  intersectional approach to underrepresented groups.

As there was no clear consensus between participants and because we have not talked it through with the Debian Diversity team in the becoming, we agreed not to decide on the matter during the lunch but to give it some time. (Note that this was already similarly proposed during DebConf15 in Heidelberg three years ago.)

Some version of "we" also felt that it's still important to be able to meet and connect with (newcomers|old) people who identify as women at
events such as DebConf, where many genders are underrepresented. It helps to create connection and link between each other, and also makes us more visible.

→ It would thus be great if the DW lunch took place earlier during the event. (hint: content team) (On a personal note: "we" might want to make & rename this event to something more inclusive.)

→ It was mentioned that at previous DebConfs there were "New to DebConf" sessions. We think it would be great to reintroduce those. (hint:
content team)

Outreachy & GSoC
================

There were ~5 current interns with Outreachy/GSoC present at the lunch.

We said that Outreachy rounds are currently not very visible in Debian,
and we should either automate sending updates about new rounds to Debian
Women or count on Molly to do it.

A question that came up is: How do we keep volunteers in the project? It
seems that some of the current interns said they'd like some guidance on
how to continue to work for the Debian project and were currently
lacking it. Interns that worked within teams however seem to feel better
integrated and able to continue.

For interns to be able to connect to our community (and vice versa), it might be useful to have Outreachy and GSoC students have a plenary session about their work early during the conference. (hint: content-team)

- Tassia proposed to write down some tips for mentors in Debian / 
  Outreachy / GSoC in order to better integrate interns in our 
  community.

- Helen proposes to list some follow up tips for work in Debian for 
  current and future mentees.

- We could also create a wikipage on how to contribute → this should 
  eventually be done under the debian-diversity umbrella. (Volunteers?)

- On this wikipage let's also link to the debian-mentors mailing list  
  (not IRC, which is for packaging).

- It has also been said about mentoring that many people don't dare
  asking on mailing lists out of fear: a question perceived as silly 
  might stay there forever.

- Karen stated that it is currently hard for people who are neither 
  mentors, mentees or admins of Outreachy to help out: Outreachy should 
  become more volunteer friendly in that regard. (This item lacks a 
  concrete TODO.)

Mentoring
=========

Another thing that DW did in the past was mentoring. However, the
mentoring program has since been replaced by the Outreach program. We agreed that it would be great to have another kind of mentoring, which is not limited to Outreachy or GSoC, and that would help people who start or continue contributing to Debian.

- Helen is currently proposing a packaging workshop every Thursday 
  evening, in portuguese. If people are interested, she could also do 
  such a workshop in English

- Ulrike proposed to one person present to help her on a one-to-one 
  basis find her way in Debian and be her rubberduck, something she's 
  trying to do since a year, after having attended DebConf twice.