[Chixla] Who are we ... and SCALE 5x

[SMichelle]

Found this article on Slashdot about the lack of self-taught women in
FOSS. It's interesting, not revolutionary, but did start a train of
thought with respect to our SCALE 5x booth presentation. 
http://www.venturebeat.com/contributors/2007/01/02/the-hidden-engineering-gender-gap/
http://www.venturebeat.com/contributors/2007/01/04/a-modest-proposal/
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/16/233204
I stopped reading the mostly repetitive Slashdot comments after a
poster stated, "If you are a female who really wants to make it on
Wall Street or serious NYC-based finance, you had goddamn well better
be OK with going to strip clubs to socialize with your peers after
work." Which implied that a quick trip to the Body Shop with Sysadmin
Mikey and the crew should solve the lack of women in IT faster than a
handshake (excuse the pun). 
But back to the SCALE train of thought. The original plan for a booth
presentation was for FOSS software on the go, e.g., demonstrating how
Firefox, OOo, etc. can be accessed off a USB keychain. But I started
rethinking the topic after noticing the sheer proportion of male to
female comments in the Slashdot article which quite effectively
overwhelmed the female contributors. It's a numbers game. More voices
== louder volume. I'd like to explore ways in which to increase the
number of women voices, and hence increase our volume.
I'd like to start a LinuxChix-LA Wiki and create a place in which
women can increase their volume. As most of you know, I'm a returning
student and I could write an article on what educational
opportunities have been most valuable. Perhaps someone else could
write on their experience in freelancing? or perhaps book
reviews? ...or ?
OK, so those article subjects might seem trivial, but it would be a
very interesting journey seeing which direction our voices take and
what topics are important to the LinuxChix community ... and how loud
our voices can become.
What do you think?  If I install a Wiki on the http://linuxchixla.org/
site, would we have enough time to at least a few articles before
SCALE? Would there be any issue with using this Wiki as the backbone
of our SCALE booth presentation?
I look forward to your comments :)
/Sharon