Hello everyone! 
We are just starting out with this forum, so it would be great if everyone can take a moment to introduce yourself.
Tell us who you are, where you are, what you like doing most on a daily basis, what brought you to open source diversity, and what you’re most excited about for this community. Tell us as much or as little as you like!
(Credit to Simon from Open Source Design for the format!)
Hi, I’m Jona 
and I’m from Albania. 
I love contributing to open source and I’m part of different communities such as Fedora, LibreOffice, Nextcloud etc. I think D&I is very important in open source communities because diverse teams work better - and also having a welcoming/friendly/inclusive community is extremely important to grow the community base and make people feel appreciated and encouraged. That’s why we thought to create Open Source Diversity - an umbrella that will have all these initiatives/communities that aim to have more diversity and inclusion in open source.
Hi everyone 
I am Jessica originally from the UK but living in Berlin Germany since 8 years. I made my way into Tech this year after leaving my job as Coffee Roaster last year. I currently code in Go, Python, Javascript and PHP. I consider myself as much community taught as self taught which is why I want to give back and support my local communities.
As with many industries diversity and inclusion within tech is far from where it should be and I want to see that change. I joined Open Source Diversity this year with the goal of further educating myself on the subjects of inclusion and accessibility while also supporting the initiative to have more diversity & inclusion within Open Source. I am also a co-organiser for PyLadies Berlin. 
If anyone needs help with a project be it programming or organisation please reach out. 
Hello 
I’m Jan from the German countryside, and work mainly on Nextcloud. Originally I got involved in open source communities because I’m a designer and saw a lot of potential to improve the projects. Over the years, in more projects, at meetups and conferences it seemed similar with diversity & inclusion, and how including underrepresented groups can improve communities & projects in lots of ways.
(In 2010 I went to my first GNOME conference and was impressed with the very welcoming community and their Outreachy program.)
There are a lot of initiatives and different people out there, and with Open Source Diversity we want to build a hub for everyone to find and push each other forward.
A warm hello from Tirana 
I am Silva, and I have been involved with different open source projects as well. I started contributing in open source when I got in touch with the local community of Open Labs in Albania. There I had the chance to meet with with several people who helped me become part of various projects such as: Nextcloud (big thnx @jan for your support), LibreOffice and Wikimedia.
I feel very lucky to have had the chance to be part of these communities and always try to give back especially by contributing in a local level by organizing events related to open source. Currently I’m part of Collective68 where we get to work on cool projects related to free and open source software.
Hi everyone,
I’m Dina from NYC and always look to be involved in open and free software projects. I went back to school to get an MFA in communications design a few years back and my focus/thesis was on exploring why the design community knows so little about open source software and only knows Adobe. After graduating, I became involved with the Open Source Design Group and helped create the NYC extension. We aim for monthly meetups that cover various appropriate topics. The Open Source Diversity seems like the perfect place to help continue grow and push our community forward. Looking forward to working and getting to know everyone here! Let’s do this! 
Hi,
I am Kristi Progri, I have finished my bachelor degree on International Affairs and Diplomacy, I am doing my masters on " Information Systems Security"
Been involved with Free Software for 6 years now and I have been the chairwoman of Open Labs Hackerspace for around 4 years.
The first project I have contributed to, is 
Mozilla
I have been a basketball player for more then 5 years and in my team we were 4 people with the same name (Kristi) so my friends were calling me Kiki or Kiti so feel free to use them as well.
Cheers from Tirana,
Ckemi!
I am Greta from Tirana, Albania, now based in Berlin! I have finished my master studies for ICT last year.
I’ve been involved with diversity events since a very young age. When I was in high school, I used to teach Roma girls how to use computers as a motivation for them to go to school. After that, co-organized couple of events about women in science, until I got stuck with Open Source and Free Knowledge. Im heavily involved with Wikimedia projects as board member of our User Group (Wikimedians of Albanian Language) also a modest contributor of different Open Source projects, mostly as a translator or bug reporter.
I’m very happy to see how much open source diversity is grown.
Cheers,
Greta
Hi everyone!
I’m Marina from Boston. I work at Red Hat as a Senior Outreach Specialist focused on the open source community diversity and inclusion. I’m one of the co-organizers of Outreachy. Really appreciate this forum for connecting with others passionate about diversity in open source and sharing related information!
Cheers,
Marina
Hi. I’m Ecaterina Moraru, friends call me Caty and my GitHub username is @evalica. I’m from Iasi, Romania. I work as an Interaction Designer for a company that is sponsoring the open source project XWiki.org. I’ve been hired for about 10 years, but I’ve contributed for this community for more than 13 years. I was also involved with WoMoz a long time ago and I’m also a member of OSD (Open Source Design).
Since I’m involved in Open Source for such a long time, I can say that things are improving: in open source and also in computer science. Many more women are participating and don’t think anymore that this field is not welcoming. I have a B.Sc. in Software Engineering, but I’ve decided to focus more on Human Computer Interaction and to create software that is simple for every user.
Software, and open source software in particular, needs as many and diverse contributions as we can give. I’m very glad to be part of this community, and although I cannot meet you in your local gatherings, I am supporting this initiative from far away
Hi everyone
I’m Xheni (Jenny) from Tirana, Albania and my usual username is xh3n1. I’m a fresh graduate in Information Security and currently working as a developer at phpList, an open source software for managing mailing lists. I love both coding and security 
I am a contributor to some open source projects, and I support Open Source Diversity.
Cheers,
Xheni
Hi everyone,
I co-founded the CHAOSS Project and contribute to the CHAOSS D&I Workgroup. Over the last 13 years, I contributed to OpenOffice.org (before Oracle bought Sun), Drupal (around Drupal 7), and Toolkit for YNAB (a life changer for managing our family budget). I research corporate engagement in open source as part of my PhD studies 
.
I live in Omaha, NE where I married my 
, bought a 
, and plan to raise children. About twice a year, I visit my family and long-time friends in 
. Fun fact: I grew up on the premise of an 800 year old 
. I follow a keto lifestyle because 
foods upset me. I volunteer with the American Red Cross and assist a friend with his hot air balloon.
Best,
Georg
I’m Drashti from India. I’m Java Dev (younger one) and with opensource since last 3 years. I contribute in Mozilla, Localization Lab, Openstreetmap and OSCEDays I care about women’s contribution in tech. I speak in opensource conference still a naive in tech speaker 
I like to explore different cuture, traditions and FOOD still skinny. I’m also part time law student, just to complete my dad’s wish 
Thanks!
Hi awesome open source people!!
I have contributed to open source for about a decade and recently started a youtube channel to try and encourage more D&I into open source and tech events and hackathons by sharing my adventures. I get invited to volunteer at many D&I events where I always learn so much. Its great to meet and learn from so many awesome people at these amazing events. I look forward to sharing and learning with you all in this wonderful community.
I am in London, UK, if anyone would like to join me at tech events and/or hackathons (and even the EU) let me know, glad to have you join us 
Eddie
Hi everyone,
I am Kaja, born and raised as a half Croatian in west Berlin by a teenage mom. This gave me my Pippi Longstockings mindsetplus street credibility. In university I studied philosophy and historical linguistics and my perspective on code is heavily influenced by these two subjects. Now I work as a web developer and in my freetime I go on demonstrations for social justice issues and play football (soccer) in a feminist fooball club. Also I am a proud organizer of the Rails Girls Berlin aka. code curious. During the Rails Girls Summer of Code 2017 I contributed to Discourse together with Jen who is now a beloved friend of mine.
During the RGSoC I also supported @jessica0greene and her team as the coaching company.
I am looking forward to finally participate in a meetup!
Hiiiiii! I am the Community Manager at Magento, an Adobe company, and focused on quite a few diversity and inclusion initiatives there. Before working for Magento, I was a developer at small merchant that was developing on Magento, among a handful of other open source technologies.
Looking forward to connecting with others. 
Hi, my name is Justin. I am involved with free software for the past six years. I am in my final year of studies at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where I major in Networking and Systems Administration and double-minor in Free and Open Source Software and Free Culture, and Women’s and Gender Studies. I also volunteer with the Fedora Diversity and Inclusion Team.
Diversity and inclusion is a fundamental component of building collaborative and global free software communities. I believe it is valuable both for social justice and also building better and more representative technology. This is my primary motivation to contribute to diversity work in free software communities.
I’m interested to learn and discover how other free software communities handle diversity work and understand wider context for these issues across multiple different communities. Sometimes diversity work is lonely work and I think we all stand to benefit by sharing knowledge and strategies for how to design inclusive communities.
I hope to share my knowledge and learn from others here. See you around. 