Affinity Group InformaTion And new TEchnologies

Aim

The general aim of our group is to increase visibility of women in IT, with a focus on FLOSS (Free/Libre/Open Source Software) and new media. The groups who are member of the Affinity Group are based in several countries, at the moment France, the Netherlands, Germany and Ireland. We want to achieve our goals through preparing next year’s Forum, online debates mostly on the EFF website and one ore more real life meetings of the group.

Current Members

 The Eclectic Tech Carnival “The Eclectic Tech Carnival is a gathering of women interested in technology. It’s held once a year, each time in a venue where there is an interest in it. Women from all over the world organise the /etc through mailing lists, IRC and IRL meetings - and women come from all over the world to the /etc itself. The week-long carnival includes workshops on installing open source and free software, looking at Linux, building websites, chat conferencing. In addition there are art exhibitions and cultural discussions & presentations.”

 Genderchangers “There are three aspects to our mission: women, technology and the freedom of information. Knowledge is context-sensitive and accumulated. It is absurd that the source can be hidden, made secret, or closed. We try to take an holistic approach to technology. There’s more to technology than the latest specs (smaller, faster, cheaper).”

 Grepgrrl “Grepgrrl is a group of volunteers based in France and aims at facilitating the access of women and girls to New Technologies in general and to Free Softare in particular by means of workshop, a website, (video) documents and an IRC channel.”

 Members of the international indymedia network’s women’s working group

Indymedia is a collective of independent media organizations and hundreds of journalists offering grassroots, non-corporate coverage. The indymedia women’s working group is an international working group.

 Ladyfest Romania Collective “A non-hierarchical,grassroots, non-profit group of women and girls that organizes diy events to provide a space for ways of action and thinking that are alternative to traditional values and the mainstream vision of femininity and the social position of women. the main such event to which the group is dedicated is the local "ladyfest", a feminist- and queer-friendly international festival showcasing the work of women artists and activists.”

 WINDOC – Women’s Information and Documentation Centre Belgrade “A media project that was founded in 1997. Main activities comprise the monitoring of newspapers and forming both a press clipping data base and archive of women’s feminist movement in this region from 1974.“

The group is being co-ordinated by Anneke HalbrothSPAMzeromail.org], Berlin, Germany.

Plans for the Future

Many women’s groups have organised around issues of Women and Information Technologies, New Media or FLOSS and it is our plan to help build stronger networks across national borders. Necessary skills are often a major barrier for women to participate in these new networks and to use New Technologies. Our goal is to make this knowledge more easily available, collect and document information on role models as well as best practices of groups who have made good experiences. Finally we want to research why participation of women is especially low in communities of ICTs and then set up workshops and events to counter this issue.

Actions

 reach out to find more groups and individual women who may want to participate
 skill-sharing in several ways, e.g. create or help to set up workshops on tech issues to be used for feminist/women’s gatherings (at festivals or anywhere, in communities, in general)
 write some "code of good practices", gather best practices, get an idea of what certain (gender-mixed) groups do that make women leave / not join and what others do that make women stay
 interview women who are involved with tech/indymedia/etc (video)
 research the group processes in the different indymedia groups participating (and maybe some others)
 research around why tech cultures are so low on women
 as a counterbalance to this: a list of possible "role models", or women who can be named e.g. as speakers for conferences, meetings, workshops
 design a flyer to inform about our group that can be printed and distributed e.g. at conferences or meetings
 get our feminist colleagues’ attention on open source and tech skills
 collect an ’online library’, starting with our favorite bookmarks on women and tech
 have an online debate of some sort on the EFF website on the following issues:
  why open source is feminist
  why tech cultures are so low on women
  gender and race in cyberspace
  to narrow down our own scope of subjects

We want to organise meetings, maybe alongside other meetings and hope to move our ideas and plans along in these meetings.

How to get involved?

For the moment we communicate via a mailing list and invite all interested women to subscribe or send an email to eff[at]systerserver.net

We also use a public wiki