Name: Maria Majadas
Email: mmajadas@gnome.org
Affiliation: ATG for European Space Agency
Hi there!
My name is Maria, @marimaj, I have been a community member for some time (let’s not put a number). We might have crossed paths in an event but let me introduce myself a bit.
My first community involvement was helping out in arranging events with Hispalinux, a Free Software association in Spain, around the year 2000, which led me to the GNOME community as part of GNOME Hispano. From 2004 to 2008 more or less I was part of the Spanish Translation team. Since then I continued to be part of the community, attending events and helping whenever I was able to.
Like many people in this community, I am not a developer but I contribute in other ways. This does not come off without a heavy impostor syndrome as it is sometimes hard to find your place when you don’t code. I want to help make people see that you can contribute to this community in many different ways.
But although I am not a developer, I recognize the strength of code. One of the things that I was most interested in Free Software is the freedom that it provides us. Freedom to modify, distribute but also the freedom to be sure that we are safe using our computers. This is something that I feel we have lost as a component in our conversations while talking about Free Software and it is something that right now has to come back more than ever.
Free Software is by nature inclusive. It does empower people across the entire globe with access to information they might not have been able to.
I joined because of the ethics but I stayed because wonderful people helped me feel included and feeling that I could help other people to feel included themselves, with my translations and the events I helped organize.
And it does only make sense that the Free Software communities are in the vanguard of social equity and diversity. We have come a long way since I started attending events and, with a handful of exceptions, diversity was nowhere to be found. Now we have an amazing group of contributors from diverse backgrounds and an amazing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiative, yet I feel we still have work to do to push forward in terms of representation.
I think a diverse community must be led by a Board of Directors that attain themselves to the highest standards in following the bylaws and transparency, just as I think unity in the community is paramount. An united community does not mean we all think the same, but it means we all row in the same direction, making compromises with each other when needed. That is how GNOME ended up with 25+ strong years of history.
Therefore, I want to join the Board with your help. Please feel free to reach out in Discourse, Matrix (@marimaj), or Mastodon, (@MaRIa_MaJ, many cats might be included in this one).
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French?