About Us

Historically, the women-in-FLOSS miniconf at linux.conf.au has been run by members of LinuxChix, and thus, not unreasonably named after it. This year, although the majority of the organisers are also 'chix, we decided to do something a bit different.*

The success of Girl Geek Dinners (henceforth referred to as GGD) in New Zealand and Australia demonstrated the number of women who identify as geeks and/or nerds, but are not necessarily being involved in something traditionally *nix. They include interactive designers, smart crafters, usability experts, OLPC developers, embedded device hackers as well as system administrators and programmers.

To reflect this diversity, we chose to register haecksen.org.nz, and name the miniconf accordingly. Haecksen is the feminine plural in German for 'hacker'. This, we felt, was a better fit for the way these women engage and create with technology.

*women-in-FLOSS abbreviates to WIFLOSS, and it was decided that it sounds entirely too much like a Nintendo cleaning kit.