“‘Fem-Tech Edit-a-thon sparks discussions about Wikipedia gender gap'”

Our Wikipedia editing event a few weeks back raised some important questions about the politics of Wikipedia editing practices. Wikipedia editorĀ Adrianne Wadewitz, who led the edit-a-thon, has magnificently recapped this in an article about the experience, titled as above: “Fem-Tech Edit-a-thon sparks discussions about Wikipedia gender gap.” While nothing was entirely resolved, it is great to have questions and critiques raised and explored through both the meeting and the social media follow up. Also, it’s likely future edit-a-thons will be planned with attention to issues related to editing, knowledge production on the internet, and gender.

 

Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon is this Friday

This Friday will be a FemTechNet Edit-A-Thon at Claremont Graduate University from 3-6pm. Here are the details:

“Join us for a Wikipedia edit-a-thon! Learn to edit Wikipedia and contribute to articles about women and technology!

The event will begin with a roundtable on feminist, anti-racist approaches to technology featuring Liz Losh, Lisa Parks, Lisa Cartwright, Anne Balsamo and Alex Juhasz (at UCSD, UCSB, UCSD, New School, and Pitzer College, respectively).

If you are a scholar, please bring some books related to your area of expertise in feminism. You can edit Wikipedia articles related to this area! If you don’

t have an area of expertise, yet, don’t worry! We will have resources for you!

Albrecht Auditorium (http://www.cgu.edu/pages/1418.asp)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/FemTech_Edit-a-thon;

https://www.facebook.com/events/471210806242621/”
See you there!

 

 

Details on how to participate remotely in tomorrow’s meeting at UCLA

We have details listed here on how to participate remotely in the UCFemTechNet Brainstorming Session on Saturday, October 6 from 1-3pm Pacific Time, at the Center for the Study of Women at UCLA.

Broadcast

We are excited to announce we will be broadcasting the event LIVE on our YouTube channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/ucfemtechnet

To watch, on Saturday at 1pm Pacific Time, go to our page. Click on “Feeds,” and choose the video titled “October 6 Brainstorming Session — 1-3pm.”

We aim to start our live broadcast at or shortly after 1pm Pacific Time. You do not need a Google account to view the broadcast, the live feed will be open to the public.

Real-Time Participation

There are three ways to participate in the conversation in real-time:

1) Twitter. Twitter is an easy way to share short messages and to participate remotely in a conversational style. If you do not yet have a Twitter account, one is easy to create. Go to Twitter.com and select ‘sign up’. Once you are all set, search for our handle “@ucfemtechnet.” Click on “follow” to receive updates on our activities.

To comment during the session, you can write a post on your page. Include the hashtag #oct6brain somewhere in every post you make so that we can easily find your messages about the event.

We will monitor the Twitter feed throughout the session.

2) Email. You can follow up with us during or after the session with ideas or questions; send email to Lisa at lisac@ucsd.edu.

3) Google+ Hangouts. Google+ Hangouts offers the option of including eight additional Google+ users onto one screen to participate in our enhanced “hangout” (which is our broadcast on YouTube).

If you would like to participate in the session using your own webcam and microphone, we invite you to join “UCFemTechNet”‘s circle on Google+. Once we are “connected,” we will invite you by Google+ notification to “join” the live stream remotely. Please fill out the form below to indicate your interest and we will contact you directly by Google+. We would like to accommodate as many people as possible, however Google+ limits us to eight users on our channel.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/gform?key=0ApA5qNL0qAE1dF9ELWZFaDU2MTd0N0xmZTFwazZKUnc#invite

A word on broadcasting

Please be advised that the quality of our video stream on YouTube and the “hangout” may be compromised or intermittent during the event, depending on the strength of the broadband connection in our meeting room. We aim to have our main broadcasting computer hooked up to a direct Ethernet connection, which should provide us with a strong enough signal to ensure that our Web community has a smooth viewing and participating experience. In the event that the technology malfunctions, however, we will record the event and post it later for viewing and comments.

UCFemTechNet is on Facebook!

UCFemTechNet now has a Facebook page, click here to “Like” the page.

http://www.facebook.com/ucfemtechnet

And also we’ve created a Facebook event to publicize and gather RSVPsĀ  for our October 6 meeting:

http://www.facebook.com/events/368944346519543/

RSVP, please!

We’ll be regularly using these social media tools to disseminate information about our happenings and be in touch with you.