Written by Sarah Julia Kriesch, (Co-)Chair of the Linux Distributions Working Group, and openSUSE Release Engineer for s390x and Teamlead openSUSE zSystem
Today, February 11, is International Day of Women and Girls in Science, declared by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015 to achieve equal access to and participation in science for women and girls. As a recognized IBM Champion and Today’s Architect by IBM, I want to tell you about my journey into science, which is similar to my path into the open source world.
Curiosity is Key
My mother has boosted our curiosity during our childhood, so we had a lot of activities in nature and made experiments. We were allowed to follow our interests with music and other hobbies. Maths and physics have been my favorite subjects at school, especially with integrated experiments to expand the knowledge and the final goal was to use the results.
When I was younger, there was a youth challenge called Youth Researches in Germany. I wanted to know more about my violin and how it is working. Therefore, I wanted to apply with the topic about the swinging of violin strings. All participants interacted more as a community than as competitors. Based on this experience, I started living by the motto: “Taking part is everything. Join or leave it!“
I have used this challenge network for learning more about the other scientific disciplines. I was really interested about Computer Science and how the others have learned programming. Most male participants learned it with the support of their dad. One gave me the hint, that I should choose a dual education as a Computer Science Expert as a foundation education after school, if I want to learn it. Studying Computer Science requires this pre-knowledge in Germany.
Linux as the Foundation of Enterprise IT Environments
During my first weeks in the education company, I came in touch with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) as a Linux operating system. It was fascinating that I can see and experiment with another operating system, which is much more adoptable. I wanted to learn more about it and read all the different documentations, from the Apache2 web server via the MySQL database until the DNS service BIND. I had my education server for installations available. At vocational school, I was in discussion with my classmates about what they have learned and what I should try. It gave me that community feeling again, where we support each other.
openSUSE Conference as my first open source event
I have learned a lot in forums from the open source community and wanted to give something back. The open source culture lives by the motto that “everybody is welcome” and contributing has been unique for me. I loved it and thought “I want to stay in such a community with this open culture for my whole life!”
I wanted to organize a class trip to SUSE to gain insight about Linux development. I have been invited to the openSUSE Conference then. I have met people from all over the world and with different backgrounds. Farmers can contribute to translations and documentation. A wine maker has learned so much in the community, that he can contribute as a Package Maintainer. The openSUSE Board is a mixture of SUSE employees and external community contributors. I was surprised about this diversity and creativity!
openSUSE Conference 2019
Women in Tech
At the OpenSUSE Conference in 2019, there were only 3 women. Even though all have been living equality and everybody is welcomed to contribute, where he/she wants to. I have met other women from other Linux distributions, like Debian, at FrOSCon and Chemnitzer Linuxtage as open source events. Some Linux distributions have got special programs and networks for women. I have built friendships to the other Linux distributions in this way. So I built relationships to other Linux distributions and different upstream open source projects, understood the real open source principles as an advocate better. My colleagues in the area of System Administration in the company had been also active in the open source community as part of Debian, Fedora and FreeBSD.
openSUSE booth at FrOSCon
openSUSE Board
After 4 years at openSUSE, I was nominated to the openSUSE Board. We had the goal to receive women into our community leadership. I was in my second semester of studies in Computer Science at the TH Nürnberg and our professors have encouraged me also to open source contributions to improve my qualification based on my work experience before. I have chosen the area of Release Engineering in openSUSE as my technical area, because all parts of Linux operating systems are interesting and you have got a good overview about latest technologies in this position. You can use it and improve it also. As a Member of the openSUSE Board, you are responsible for conflict management, decision making, communicating with the community and creating partnerships. That was the first time for me joining also Debian and Fedora conferences for exchange, that all can use our technologies and we can be inspired by others.
Growing as a Conference Speaker
Conferences are an essential part of scientific research. Did I know that, during my time as an openSUSE Advocate? I started with openSUSE marketing on top of my Advocate role as my first public speaking contributions in Germany. After 3 years of work experience, I created my first technical presentation about performance monitoring based on the used open source tools in the company. During my studies, I gave my first courses about Linux via the student council and my working group open source. I have used my conference network to invite Open Source Professionals as guest speakers, that our Students can gain an overview about the amount of existing open source projects and what you can do with all of them.
I had written my Bachelor Thesis about Kubernetes on the Mainframe (supported by IBM). Afterwards, I received the responsibility for the s390x port at openSUSE. Therefore, I used the chance to speak about openSUSE on the Mainframe at the Open Source Summit as my first bigger conference by The Linux Foundation. Then I spoke about Kubernetes protection at the DoK Day @ KubeCon. Google and Women Techmakers are providing a Women Developer Academy for educating female Open Source Contributrs for speaking at bigger conferences. I have used this chance for being accepted also at conferences like FOSDEM, Grazer Linuxtage and DevConf.cz.
DoK Day @ KubeCon
Founding the Linux Distributions Working Group
I wanted to interact pro all Linux distributions and not only for openSUSE on the mainframe. Therefore I reached out to our Linux distribution partners Fedora and Debian for founding the Linux Distributions Working Group at the Open Mainframe Project. We are applying all my learned practices, with sharing knowledge and technologies, the same as collaborating together for a common success. My (Co-)Chair Elizabeth Joseph from IBM has the same mindset. So we are good female Duo for Women and Girls in Science.
Elizabeth Joseph and Sarah Julia Kriesch
