 So, let me first introduce my topic. It's about Geek Girls in the Philippines, Meet Dupal. So actually it's more about the female world. But men are welcome to attend this session because we're also giving credit to male people who have also initiated the IT industry and the IT community, especially in the Philippines. So, let me first introduce myself. Okay, all right. Thank you, Miss Donna. Actually I would like to thank the Linux Australia for supporting me and sponsoring my scholarship for this Drupalcon event. This is my first time to ever attend the Drupalcon. At last, it was a dream come true. Thank God and thank the Drupal Association for helping me achieve this goal. So, thank you very much for that. Well, to introduce myself, I humbly introduce myself as just a freelance Drupal developer and I am just one year and a half in the Drupal development. I have not yet contributed any module development in the Drupal core but I am somewhat initiating an event in the Drupal Philippines in Manila. So, I'm also heading the first of Philippine Geek Girls where we founded only last year 2012 which is composed only of five to ten females for a while. You might be asking why ten females? Really, in the Philippines, we have so many female working in different industries. Even in Australia, let me ask you this. How many of us here are developers? Designers? Businessmen? Marketers? Sales? Okay, so many of us. But the pure Drupal developer just like Joris said to his talk is rarely found, right? But it is not impossible for us to evolve into that kind of development someday. I guess that the community really matters. That's what I'm really here. That's why I'm really here because I wanted to encourage, especially the female, the female to have the active involvement in the community like this. Especially in the Philippines because we have a very rare female involvement in the Drupal community, especially in the IT community. We have in the Philippines, I guess we have a total of twenty groups. We have Philippine web designers. We have OS developers a lot. We have Drupal developers group. But rarely you can find females involving themselves in the activities of the community. So that's what main problem that I see nowadays on how we can empower these women and encourage them on how to participate in this kind of activities. So as the main organizer of the Philippine Drupal Philippines, okay about me, first let me say something about me. My interest was I love dogs. Okay, there is a saying that you can test your patience by taking care of a pet. If you want to develop your patience, try to grab some pet or a dog and learn your patience by taking care of it. You will see how patient you are. After one, we kept taking care of a dog, after it poo and then it will give some headache on you. After you will feed the dog, then you have to give the food every now and then. So it will test your patience. So that's why the first main reason why I need a pet is because I need patience. So dog is the number one test for me. So number two, I love twilight. Who doesn't like twilight? You don't like twilight. You tell me why you don't like twilight. Cheesy, right? Okay, but we have our own likes and dislikes and we respect that. But for me, I can see that even though you find it cheesy, for me I find it one more thing with the character of Bella. I see some strong willpower woman inside her. The way that she display her character in the movie, the way she fight for Edward in the movie, really it inspires me that oh, someday if I became a vampire, I will really fight for that. And if ever I have the chance to be a wife of Edward, of course, right? So who doesn't want to fight for Edward? Next is who is crazy of Starbucks? Coffee, yeah, coffee. So you have Starbucks, right? We have Starbucks, right? So anyone that is addicted to Starbucks when you smell the aroma of that coffee or even not Starbucks, you tend to be craving for that aroma. You tend to, where's that coffee? I want to really sip at least one cup this morning. So at least it can suit your satisfaction. Okay, number four. I like this pizza a lot and we have that in Manila. So it's a 65 inch pizza. So if you're going to be traveling to Manila, you're going to try that pizza nero. So it will be a customized pizza of 65 inch. I don't know if you can handle that 65 inch. And you'll be alone eating that the whole day and you'll be stuffed. So, but as a programmer or a developer, if you are doing coding, most of the time when I'm at home, stuck at home, I cannot stand on my chair. It's like my husband is just feeding me some food on the door and just get the food out of there. And I'm just okay. What else? Is there lunch? So I'm just continuing coding. So that's how my life is before, until that I met Drupal. Okay, for just a short history about the Philippines, you might not be shocked about this picture, but okay. So it sounds so boring. It looks so boring actually. Maybe you have asked me if that is my grandmother. No, it's not. It's the women during the 18th century in the Philippines. So I just want to give you a fresh back or outlook about how women dressed up during those times and how are we doing our role in the Philippines during those 18th century. Those years we are bound to take care of our kids. So we are just designed to primarily take care of our husbands, children's needs. So we are just stuck at home during those previous times. So that's our main role in the Philippines before. So you might be agreeing with this, right? Can you tell me something in Australia? Can you share something about your women's history here? Because I've never done some research about women in Australia and the basic task or main role that you have. Yeah, that was from the fifties, late fifties, right? So those are the main role of women sometimes that we are designed to clean the houses and just washing the dishes and ironing the clothes of our husbands until on the old days when women started to be active in the community in the 19th century in the Philippines. So during those times, you know that Philippines have been concurred by Spaniards and Americans and different countries have all over concurred Philippines and Manila. So during those times we have now the access for education. So those times women evolve themselves and try to be curious about education. So during those times women are asking what can I do to improve myself other than just washing the clothes, staying at home, taking care of the baby. What else can I do? So those are the times that women became curious. Until today, on the 20th century era, as you may see in the Philippines, we have now different League of Women, women who are highly involved in the artillery, auxiliary group and women in the Magna Carta and women in the sports field and even in the IT industry. So this one as you can see is Eileen Apollo which is she became one of the marketing representative from Google Philippines and she highly represented Philippines for Google during those times. But I guess the latest news now is she has been replaced by a man named Nersi Soraya already in Google. So okay, this is a case-to-case study. What I want you to do is for every part of this word, I would like to ask for your suggestion, your opinions regarding this because Australianist has a different situation, right? Basically, these are some reasons that I've seen why there is a small population of women in the IT community. Number one is the lifestyle. Depends on the country, depends on the culture. For example, in the Philippines, mostly our Philippine women are basically designed to just primarily care for their children for just designed for the household task, right? So in Australia, women are being educated by the government. So it is different, it is a case-to-case study already. So in your country, if you have other countries, if you have other culture, you may raise your opinion to me and give a suggestion on what you can say about this idea. Depends on the lifestyle. Do you have any suggestion? Okay, other than that, do you have any opinion with the lifestyle? What about your own personal lifestyle? How did you get into Drupal yourself? You and yourself, how did you get interested in Drupal? Okay, that's so boring. Yeah, I agree with you because women are more sociable and that's how there's some misconception regarding to programming. Sometimes they view this as negatively that programming is just a non-sociable work somehow because you're just going to stay at home and coding all the day of your lives and you're not going to do anything. So we're just thankful that we have the Drupal Con Association and we have the Drupal Community or the different IT organization in the different countries because we were able to mingle with other developers and from our boring life of programming and coding from our house, we tend to express our stress or we have the stress relief to express our self in the society and become more friendly, right? So we became friendly by doing activities in the community. So... Yes. I exactly agree with you and the second factor is the interest of women. Women are so vain, right? We are all vain. Admit it. I don't know with guys. Are you guys in vain with your looks, with your... Because in some area, there are guys that are vain, right? You know, yesterday, I was with some Australian friends also. They don't like hair. Hairy thing or what do you call that? Yeah. So women are really vain with their looks. So we tend to really exert an effort to feel more beautiful, to look more beautiful, right? So the interest has something to do with the interest also in the IT industry. Because men are... They are critical thinking, critical thinker, right? So in terms of women, we can also excel with men in terms of mathematical, but they are born with that kind of attitude that it has something to do with the brain hemisper, do you think so? Does it has something to do with the brain hemisphere when we are born? Do you believe in that? Yeah. What about the interest? For us female, when we see the coding or the development in Drupal? Yes. All right. Do you have any other opinions? Okay. Is she also interested in the IT thing or IT stuff? Especially girls. That was a nice opinion. Okay. As we are talking about environment, all right. Unfriendly environment. Because sometimes in Philippines, female used to view the computer, IT world as unfriendly for them. They tend to see it as hard and difficult and how can they be able to adapt to the environment. Because the system itself, I have some question with the system itself because even myself and I first start learning the IT because I'm not a programming, I don't have a programming background. I have some adjustment to make in order to learn a coding. First in the CSS, HTML. So at first when you don't have a programming background for a female like me, it will be very difficult, right? So it's like you're learning from scratch. So in itself, you need to have an environment where you will feel more comfortable, more comfortable with learning. Like the community of Drupal if it gives you training or access to training, mentorship, then that will give inspiration to female to learn more. I guess that's the suitable environment for female to be encouraged in order to involve themselves in the community. More mentorship and more training for them. Since we are females, we need more, we need to be taken care with handily, what do you call this? We need to be handily taken care of. Because we are fragile, right? So females should be taken care of very carefully. So we have the upbringing background also. So in Australia, you have a very good upbringing, right? With in terms of your family, with your kids. So in Philippines, we have some good upbringing backgrounds also. But sometimes it depends on the culture or on the situation of the family. What about for example, a child grew up from a rural area or suburban place wherein your parents do not really graduate from college or you are not really educated. Your parents don't really have the access for education and you are not fortunate. So those female that grew up from that kind of upbringing tend to negatively view the IT world as different. It's something to do with upbringing of parents because if your parents are both programmers, yes, you have the tendency to be like them. So you have the influence of both parents. But what about those children that are born with less fortunate parents? So they have additional insights about this. Did you experience that kind of situation here where children have very small access or low access to the capability to learn the IT world or the IT... Let's consider also the other third world country that are just beginning to grow with their economic stability, especially Africa. Those countries that are not yet being rich by high technology right now a day. And specifically in Philippines part of Philippines are really indigenous. So up to now they're still trying to grasp technology. It sounds so funny sometimes because even in our public elementary school our teachers there were more than 50 years working in the public sector. But whenever you introduce them how to use a laptop they're gonna be scared because they're expecting that the laptop will explode or something that if they push the bottom of the laptop it will pop out from it. So that's another sad thing about the reality happening in the Philippines sometimes. And there are also some schools in the Philippines that are nowadays are not being equipped by technology. Still need to develop more. Like that's why the community is here is for us to help the government and for us to help the society to be aware of this kind of activities. In the Philippine Drupal users group we have this so called road show which is also we have a road show where we do trainings and seminars to different universities. So we go travel different places, provinces to introduce Drupal to them where the geek girls we are included by the geek girls. And then we introduce to them the basic fundamentals of Drupal. First is you need to understand the meaning of Drupal. Of course you cannot learn Drupal until you know the meaning of it and how it has been established by the community leaders. Because there is something with Drupal that has a very valuable thing the community culture of Drupal. And I guess it has something to do with the attitude of the developers. So we need to introduce them that the Drupal community is a community of people working together not working as first for myself alone. So we need to encourage them to be involved in the community. And we need to start on the early stage. Because at the early stage we can still change their points of view. Because if they are their old for example excuse me for those people I guess it is much easier to access the younger people because they are a bit easy to to approach with the system because they tend to ask questions like what is Drupal? I want to learn Drupal. Some of the students that we thought in the Philippines at different universities they were asking is Drupal because they see a drop of water they thought that is it a drop of water or something like that or a symbol of water in your country. No, it's a CMS where we use for building websites so it's a very powerful tool that's how we introduce them. And you need to learn it in an easy way. So we don't teach them yet the local version it's a very long process so we need to show them we use first the webenable.com if you know that so it's much easier for them to point and click for a while and then later on learn the hard way. But there is a in Philippine Drupal users group we have 30 out of the it's 50 out of the 750 but those 750 in the Facebook page are Drupal developers they're just trying to join the group so the total developers that are really attending the session more over on the last event of Drupal developers they are 100 so we have a Drupal camp on February 16 which is we're expecting 250 people but this time it's going to be big so we are happy that Drupal Camp Manila will be near to come and also experience Manila so that will be great so this is also a case-to-case study with women are less confident because it has something to do also with environment in your house for example your family your family upbringing your influence of your father and mother to is very strong and you have developed already self-confident at an early stage so it should not be less confident because the community starts with our family sector so no one just evolved no one just papped out from the community without the parent so the parent are always involved in the development of a person so it should always start with the family sector so why are there so many female that are less confident in doing this kind of development thing so that is the main question so if you have any any insights about this because this is a case-to-case study you can raise your hand and suggest anything do you have any insights about women that are less confident or do you believe that we are less confident alright yeah that's sure yeah I agree with that it has something to do with the negotiation even me sometimes when I'm negotiating with the client I still consult my husband sometimes because the development thing with the project is I don't really know yet the whole information of the project so as a female I should be consulting first my husband in order for me to contract and push it on the client because the negotiation is something to do with your firm firm decision so female he's an IT so I'm also thankful that he mentored me for this so I was able to adopt in the Drupal world so fewer opportunities for mentoring okay do you see that there's also some problem with less opportunities of mentorship in the female industry for example in the IT world why do we see that there's small population of female involving in the IT industry yeah that upbringing factor is one main big factor that affects the female because you know there's some short history about my childhood I was not like this before I'm a very antisocial person I don't grow up in a community where I was accepted I'm not a happy goer I don't go out from the house because my father is a military man so I'm somewhat restricted to go out from the house just study and clean the house that's all my task for the whole day I became curious about the world because it depends on the person actually even if your parents are bringing you like that negatively it depends on you when you grow up we have all the choices in our lives it's either you choose to be bad or you choose to be good so it's not I don't believe in the saying that I don't have a choice I always heard the saying I don't have a choice I was mentally black from the real world because my father was very strict and I don't have friends imagine that how did I evolve here in the community I just thank God because my husband was a very friendly person and he's very alive and active in the community doing advocacy in the Drupal world so that's why you need one mentor at least in your household at least one positive person because if everyone in the household are all negative how come will the child be developed into a positive one? so at least there will be one positive person evolving around you or either you choose your friends you choose where you will be for example you are going out with people who influence you badly so I'd rather choose this good people because this will return me some benefits later on not only the benefits of becoming more social and more friendly but also the development inside myself the confidence so we always have a choice well the upbringing has something to do but you have something to do with yourself also it matters on the person also because we all have the choice number one is when we are discouraged at an early age I'm talking about the Philippine factor this is about the Philippine culture not on the Australian one because in our Philippine culture when we were young parents tend to say during those time when we say something in front of them they tend to shut us up like don't talk if we are talking so female in during those time are very quiet we are very naive only nowadays that we are able to be very very talkative and we are very alive in the community as you can see there are lots of rally going in the Philippines and most of that are active females you can see them in the streets wrong perceptions about computing okay I have so many friends in the Philippines when I tend to introduce to them the Drupal thing they tend to say what's that? it's hard hey you've never tried it you've already said hard why don't you try it first before you say no because you will not say something unless you get there so try it first before you say something no so another thing is that their perception regarding the IT community because the female in the Philippines before when we were not yet very active during those time they tend to see the IT community as being dominated by male oh male again here we go here's the male factor again and then the female out there in the back just listening to the male speaker hey you you you you listen to me this is the coding this is the programming that's how we do it but until some female geek ladies in the Philippines spearheaded the community there are some women being inspired and became active in the community and participated already and I also did some encouragement for this female especially in the Drupal which is really really hard to encourage some female to be active because you know the main reason why female are bounded in the household task we are bounded by the household task we have task in the house so we need to do and then the other factor is that most of us are moms mothers so as mothers we have our designated task for our children left it like that like we cannot leave the task alone with our husband because we are the main person to handle it right because if you are especially giving birth to your child for example you have given birth to your child you'll be the one to nurse your baby it's not going to be your husband of course he doesn't have a breast milk right so should be us if only sometimes I am joking my husband I'm trying to joke him only the breast milk will be transferred to you I will give it to you because I want it to work and sometimes there is a factor between those salary thing that if the husband's salary is much higher than the female sometimes when the child gets sick the mother is already bounded to take care of the child so that's one main reason why why female female are found in the community because they have so many responsibilities don't we have all right so who are parents you already female mothers who are mothers are you all single okay I'm a mother so I have three kids and I'm trying to balance my time and everything in my family it's also sometimes heartbreaking if you left the job for your husband for example you are going to attend a community event then you will leave your child to your nani it's very hard because you cannot entrust your child to someone who is not very trusted right so as a mother you have the heart to always think of your children for their welfare so it's not always like that next is okay lack of female role models that's it in the Philippines situation we seldom find female role models we want to like I've met Angie Byron she's really a rock star for me but in the Philippines we have so many community leaders but we want someone who will really mentor us and give us encouragement like we want someone really a rock star behind us that will really show us that they are really leading the community so that is one factor that is lack nowadays next is the games classes aimed toward men do you agree I have some question about the gaming gaming factor between do you play world of warcraft or who play games here because you know why are those gamers designers or the game designers used to create female versions in the game wearing very big breast and it's so horrible that you can see your character is really wearing nothing but just the underwear right so I was trying to play Dota before but my character is just like is this really the character that I'm having here with a big breast and big butt that's what they view us maybe men are viewing us sexy but yeah so if ever we would be able to see some day some female role models in the game that we are also doing some character I just want to ask that question because some of the females were also looking for something that we will be viewed as not on the body but more on the brain men would see us in here not here right typically that's what I'm looking for also in the gaming industry importance of life balancing okay so this is something to do with as parents or even if you are single and you are the breadwinner of the family you also have responsibilities so if there is a social event that you need to attend to sometimes you have family activities you have to go so we can't be able to attend the session because you need to go there and sometimes your mom is sick you need to attend your mom and go attend the session for dupal con but family matters comes first so we females are really very passionate with our families and with the way we balance our life so sometimes there are also men I know I believe that there are also men who are also taking care of their families but most of our females most of us are also more passionate on doing these things because we are already in it so ever since the world began we are the first one to create the family like we're giving birth we're doing the reproductive thing so that's how we do it so just like what I said it's important that we build a community to encourage more females to be active just like now I was asking with Donna would be anyone or would anyone be interested to attend the session because it's more on geek girls so my idea with that is that as a community we should support one another especially if there is a female speaker as female developers or female community members or female speakers we should support them to show our passion for the community work together as one so when the next time around you'll be the one to talk here we also support you so that's how we work in the Drupal Philippines as a community we help each other we support one another and we tend to collaborate with other groups so how do we collaborate in these settings we have python, we have ruby, we have php there are lots of programming languages but we collaborate with them how we collaborate is that by meetups so is there something to do with the fight of the programming language do you fight with each other for example here in Australia they have that kind of issue for example if you're Drupal and he's ruby I don't know you when you attend a conference and he's Drupal and this is ruby sometimes the community leaders are I am more hard coded than you there's something to do with that I guess that would not be necessary for us to do that because as community we should be helping one another and especially we are open source we're open source community so other than that do I have more time to wrap up I just want to show you some pictures okay so to give us inspiration about this influential women I can see that they are very influential because she's the founder of Slycher Rashmi Sinha you know her already and Angie Byron of Drupal Chicks and Marisa Mayer of Google and Kalia Hamlin OpenID community so those are some of the women that I've included in the Philippines here are the geek leaders Eileen Apollo of Google and Tan Paulman of Python users group me as myself for Philippine Drupal and Cherry and Domingo of PHP and the developers connect Florida Artist okay I've already discussed that and here are some of the pictures that we have with our female female geek girls that are already included in the Drupal community so we've encouraged them already we've already trained them and mentored them to learn Drupal as well they're also doing Drupal now yeah okay let me pass that so these are some geek female events that are included here okay as you can see there are some women already participating in Drupal we have last year our Drupal inauguration day which we already acknowledge the volunteers so yearly we have this what we call acknowledging volunteers for the community because you know it's important that we acknowledge every volunteers so that we they have something to cherish and not only that Drupal Camp Manila Drupal certification we have already if we have yeah sure yeah yeah that's that will be great and yeah we have in order to help them also we we included them sorry for this we included them in the Toastmasters International for female because you know females sometimes na even shy so we try to develop their public speaking skills by involving them in the Toastmasters club so at least they can experience talking in front of the stage and that's not only the program that we have for this future coming events we have more training for the females and not only for the females but for the community volunteers that's how we encourage our volunteers in the Drupal community and this is our logo for the Drupalicon Philippine Drupal users group and Philippine Geek Girls and alright I think that's all my topic all about today so if you have any more question you can raise it up or if you don't have any more that will be fine for the first time that would be great I will not answer your question he was raising his hand yeah Charity so what what do you mean you want to establish a group or a meet up for women with you because he said you want more female really you're not doing anything bad to women it's just like at the reception of some women over this IT thing and we just need some mentorship and clarification with you guys sometimes also it has to do with some snappy people industry especially the executives so women are you know women are emotional right so when we at the first impression when we tend to be ignored sometimes we are sometimes discouraged already so somehow the first impression of a person you should be accessible at first to women and accommodating should be so other than okay well for me I believe that it has something to do with the community leaders because when I was not yet in Drupal I will not say any particular group when I attended one community in there's you know people are people you can change them right even if we are Drupal people and we are open source we have our own attitudes we cannot change that so for me it has something to do with the accessibility of or the availability of leaders to those weak because in the community there are groups of weak people or those people that are less what do you call them they are tend to tend to be aloof or somehow isolating themselves from the other groups so in order to not them do that we should be the one to approach them because we should be more aware as a leader may I learn to be aware of me when I felt something bad happening in my community I am the one first approaching the volunteers well that's in the Philippines I had to agree with her and somehow in our group what we do in the volunteers meeting we have new members in the community this is a long process of task actually we are doing a background check for this person because we wanted to not really the background or the more deeper back but just the family background so we know how to adapt with her emotional tantrums you know sometimes volunteers tend to not appear sometimes so that you know what's going on so you will not be you don't look like to be so dictator with them because sometimes you will be misinterpreted as dictating something for them so it has to be always a request for the volunteer okay thank you very much guys thank you for attending yeah I hope this will not be my last for Drupalcon so I hope next time I will be able to get more audiences for women and I'm glad that you all participated because that's the purpose of this presentation is to be able to heard your voice and your suggestion and ideas because that's how our community right so since it is a community topic we need to get out our ideas so thank you for attending yeah I got an email yeah because we have extended family I told you we have a different culture oh it's easy to invite one of the powerful, one of the powerful brutal women over and get in the newspaper and get program to come and have a look because it's a raw model thing thank you