User:Artemis gryllaki/Project Proposal First Draft

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Project Proposal First Draft

What do you want to make

A series of gatherings and workshops to discuss, reveal and reconsider gender roles in the tech world, which is appropriated by men.

[perhaps the research includes giving form or voice to this activity= what is possible?]

I am interested in initiating conversations about the role of women and other gender diverse people as:

  1. contributors in the early stages of technology and software development science
  2. workers in the tech industry and in software development
  3. as contributors/participants in free and open-source movements
  4. and/or as initiators of alternative feminist hack communities

I would like to create "safe spaces" (offline and online) to bring them together, and develop methods and techniques to discuss their common experiences, share problems they have faced, learn from each other and amplify their voices. In parallel, I am also regarding these meetings as initiators for exploring and developing skills in information technologies in the context of open knowledge, free software and open hardware.

For me, workshops and meetings in physical spaces are of great value in order to create bonds of trust among members of (temporary or long-term) communities. This way they can share, produce and protect their common knowledge. Can these physical space meetings get captured, documented, archived online? Can they continue "living" in a box/server/archive/library...? This could be useful for other people who face similar issues to get familiar with them, reflect on them or get inspired by them in the future. What information can be fully public online and what not?

Topics:

  • Communities which produce knowledge in the physical space and their representation in the digital space.
  • Feminist approaches to share knowledge and maintain digital commons, archives, and libraries.
  • Women's labour/contribution to the technology sector and specifically in software development.
  • Women in the tech world, performing basic tasks --> Basis of programming, a culture appropriated by men.
  • What is included/excluded from the free-open source software communities?


How do you plan to make it

I want to start documenting and reflect on my own experiences as a short-term computer science female student, as a participant in tech forums and as a worker in a web-development company with 90% male colleagues. I would like to interview other women with similar or different experiences to find conflicts/commons and better understand why and how they are included/excluded in tech culture and foss communities. What can we do to make ourselves visible?

I am going to experiment with formulating questions which can solicit memories, experiences, and ideas. In the workshops different methods could be tested such as group reading and annotating texts/references around the subject; sharing practical skills in programming(tutorials); show and tell; role-playing;

I would like to find similar festivals/workshops/meetings/projects in order to understand their approach, be inspired and compare their views/methods/participants. In October I will travel to Athens and participate in a festival with similar content https://eclectictechcarnival.org. I will prepare interviews and organise a workshop there to start my research and prototypes.

The "knowledge" coming from these series of meetings could be archived in a curated travel library(?) (reference: internet in a box(http://internet-in-a-box.org/), anarchaserver (https://anarchaserver.org/) , Communitism WLAN(http://www.alexzakkas.me/portfolio/communitism-wlan/) ), which expands as it visits workshops and meetings of women talking about their experiences/stories/skills through their existence in tech environments.


Timeline

Oct-Dec: Research into foss communities, women labour in the tech industry, women's participation in foss communities. Participate in festivals/conferences/workshops (like etc), interviewing people, prototyping ideas for workshops and archive/repository library. 10-14 October: participate in Eclectic Tech Carnival (/ETC) Jan-Feb: Organise events and meetings, continue prototypes


Why do you want to make it

As an amateur and woman with a background in architecture and design, I struggled to prove myself among groups of men who work in high-tech environments or create communities to develop free-open-source software. I met really few or no women present in these circles. That makes me curious to understand why/how that happens, what's the history behind it and how can we reverse that.

I want to meet and share my thoughts and experiences with other women. Not trying to acquire the same "tech-alfa-geek-hacker" attitude, always efficient, the highest tech, always online. Make ourselves present and visible, amplify our voices, develop free software and share skills - Focus also to the social and cultural aspect of it with a feminist approach.


Who can help you and how

XPUB peers, Femke Snelting, Manetta Berends, Lidia Pereira, Aymeric, XPUB tutors

Relation to previous practice

In my previous work, I researched the concept of the commons from an autonomous perceptive, and I was curious about how intellectual property laws seem to restrain rather than share knowledge. I wanted to look at what drives people (commoners) to meet and form communities in order to produce, protect and share knowledge commons. I got inspired by free-open source software movement and communities and I decided to dive more into software development practices and somehow become a contributor. At Trimester 3 of XPUB I was part of a group which structured the workshop "Marginal Conversations" (2019), exploring the potential of reading, annotating texts together and performing our annotations. I consider organising and participating in workshops to be one of the most direct and vivid ways to acquire and share knowledge and initiate conversations.


Relation to a larger context

Forming communities, sharing and discussing subjects that matter to them, produce and reproduce commons is the main field I am interested in, and the way I would like to live, work and have fun. Technology and software is a big part of my everyday life not only as an architect/designer interested in technology but also as a woman living her everyday life in the post-digital era. Inspired by the ethics and ways of thinking/doing/collaborating that the free software community proposes, I would like to understand and reveal its more complex processes and the problems which appear. How can an amateur, interested in contributing woman like me be included?

I think the above also represents a form of highly social and political action towards making knowledge public, against only individual career-making efficient ever-working tech production, strengthening the commons and documenting our common experiences, teach each other and document our work, hopefully in order to be an inspiration, become a paradigm for other communities.

References

  1. Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology by Ellen Ullman
  2. Close to the machine: technophilia and its discontents by Ellen Ullman
  3. When Computers Were Women by Jennifer S. Light
  4. When Computers Were Human by David Alan Grier
  5. Zeros and Ones by Sadie Plant
  6. The Future Looms: Weaving Women and Cybernetics by Sadie Plant
  7. Xenofeminist manifesto by Laboria Cuboniks
  8. Feminist Server Manifesto, a collective outcome of the Constant december meeting in Brussels (December 2013)

Projects

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