Ubuntu Women: Career Days: Media Liaison Wrap-up

On Wednesday, April 18 at 16:00 UTC Emma Marshall (System76Chick) presented on being a Media Liaison.

Career Path

Has been a journalist since she was 14, working for school and local newspapers throughout high school and college
Began using the social networks to report and promote local businesses that she encountered while working for the newspapers
Established great relationships and became addicted to this new kind of reporting and staying connected with the businesses
Stayed with the newspaper industry for a few months after college, as a managing editor of a local paper
While working at the paper she did promotional work for a company called Apex Movement where first witnessed viral growth through social media promotion
Transitioned from the newspaper industry into marketing and social media and feels it was “best choice I ever made because I now I have the best of both worlds- reporting and social media”
Discovered the power of FOSS by using WordPress.org, beginning in 2010
Developed the company intranet for a large corporation and created a place for the employees to come together as a community to share their daily work experiences
The community she created as a result of bringing employees together on wordpress.org fueled the internal viral marketing campaign, which led to a Guinness World Record
She also produced 60 videos in a year and was acting as a reporter within the company
Describes her work using WordPress.org was what Jane Silber mentioned as a “stretch job” and to keep going with the open-source pursuit where she wasn’t limited to proprietary restrictions

Currently works at System76
“Discovering System76 and Ubuntu was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Her daily work involves a lot of Ubuntu promotion, especially with our Loco efforts
They offer free stickers, which takes time to manage and coordinate all the other groups who send them out in other countries
She was also put in charge of all the social networks and they route all the press inquiries her way
The CEO allows her to work on different computers every month and allows her to take time in the hardware room “to learn more about computers in one day than I’ve learned throughout my whole life”
Currently working on a series of how-to videos for 12.04 to help people transition from different OS

The session wrapped up with a Q&A session, with questions including:

How do you find the energy to maintain social media?
How many requests from LoCos for fliers and stickers would you say you get in a 6 month cycle?
Have you got any tips for people who would like to promote/market a opensource/freesoftware project or opensource/freesoftware company?
In starting to get involved in FOSS, have you felt your level of expertise to be acceptable, or is there a lot of pressure to keep becoming more “techie”?

And more! Full logs which include answers to these questions and more are available on our wiki:

If you’re interested in getting involved, please see the Ubuntu Women Career Days wiki page or email Cheri Francis or myself (lyz@ubuntu.com).

These sessions are open to the whole community, you don’t need to be a woman to attend or participate.