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From Winter Camp INC
Proposal
Network description
The Genderchangers is a group of women originating in the ASCII hack lab (around 1999 in Amsterdam). The main aims of the initiative is to get more women interested in information technology and the principal of universal interoperability of systems. The first activities which the Genderchangers organised were tech knowledge-sharing workshops provided by women, for women. Through the enthusiastic response to these early local activities, the idea of an annual international meeting or event was borne. This gathering, called the Eclectic Tech Carnival (/ETC) has taken place with success every year since 2002.
Both the Genderchangers and the /ETC are organised, or not organised, in a collective and non-hierarchical manner, with locally-autonomous branches. Most activities depend on someone coming up with an idea and finding the will and support to implement it.
What is our Achilles Heel?
The fact that we are all volunteers means that many of us have priorities that take precedence over our work for the Genderchangers, e.g. paid work, artistic practice, relationships and other passions. If and when there is no-one to organise our core business of knowledge transfer, we will become dormant. The Genderchangers is a precarious network, where the fear of it folding looms over us constantly.
The people resources needed to organise the annual /ETC event has at some points stretched our resources too thin.
Doing-it-ourselves and doing it collectively is a strong refrain throughout our network. While these two statements are emancipatory and empowering principles they do not always work seamlessly together. These two ideological principles can undermine individual responsibility when organising collectively. Finding a system, a way or a place where individual action does not hinder the group, and where the group activity does not discourage individual action or effort, is a fine balance at times. Certainly we have been successful in building our network, but we want to ensure its ongoing survival and growth.
Possible remedies to our struggles?
Of course we could decide to "professionalise" and move away from an ad-hoc, volunteer based network to a financed, layered and managed organisation. However, none of us want that at this point in time as this would be a radical change to the organisation.
While we recognise the importance of physical spaces where people can meet and work on improving their networks and skills in a fun, creative, undemanding or non-purpose driven way, we are too dispersed and international for a single space to make sense. We will leave building labs, libraries and community centers to local chapters of lifehackers. That also means that we need to research strategies of empowerment, using the old ones, finding current ones and developing new ones.
Our conclusion is that the best strategy for cultivating a sustainable community is to:
- clearly define who we are (create a slogan if you will) and clarify our purpose (write a mission statement or manifesto). With this clarification we will be better prepared to make the best use of our minimal resources;
- improve our systems of communication and organisation so that we can be efficient in our work both locally and internationally; and
- keep attracting new women to bring fresh energy into the group. These new participants must be motivated (politicised), have the time and energy to take on activities and be committed to sharing their work with the rest of the network.
Winter Camp product
The products that we have identified to work on at Winter Camp with regards to the above strategy, are:
- the writing of a manifesto;
- the creation a slogan that succinctly encapsulates the spirit of our manifesto; and
- a list of requirements (needs analysis) for a re-build of the Genderchangers website.
Manifesto
The Genderchangers is a very engaged, even politicised group of women. We consistently get questions from both outside and within the group about why we do what we do. We feel it would be beneficial for both the current participants in our network and for potential future participants to have a clear manifesto that guides our activities both locally and internationally. This manifesto becomes the essential content on our website.
Working on the manifesto will satisfy the need for discussion around how we have organised in the past, what has repeatedly inspired new women to become actively involved in our network/activities, what our aims and goals are, who our target audience is and how we want to continue.
Slogan
We need a single sentence (slogan or tag line) that encapsulates the spirit of our manifesto. We would use this ""slogan"" strategically on our website to clarify who we are and what we do. Our slogan makes the essence of the Genderchangers crystal-clear to the net surfer. Anyone that only glimpses our site should feel it in a fraction of a second. The manifesto is the deeper exploration of this slogan, and our logo.
Website
Essential to a widely dispersed network is an easy-to-use and effective online communication and organising tool.
We need to change our website to become a tool that works for us. We already have a logo - an image that we feel portrays our essence. We feel the logo needs the assistance of a slogan and manifesto. The current Genderchangers site is a one-way, static site and could be upgraded to a CMS. However, as we have learned from our own sister projects, a CMS in itself does not guarantee participation. The CMS must meet the technical and socio-cultural requirements to be intuitive and effective for our user base and target audience. It must be rich enough for us to be able to manage our core activities, but simple enough that our audience can easily contribute and participate. It must also be built with the technologies that our current network can maintain and build on.
At the Winter Camp, we will discuss how to improve the website, including:
- getting to know our audience;
- what sort of CMS and what components it will require to help us achieve our core mandate of knowledge transfer and sharing (e.g. blog, image upload, integrated chat);
- the benefits of text-based versus image-based informational structures;
- how to represent the essence of Genderchangers to people who have not heard of it before;
- how to give women the "Me Too!" feeling when going to the site - to instill in them a feeling of belonging and wanting to contribute;
- what empowering tools can be included in the website;
- what other people and networks can we tap into for mutual support;
- organising the existing "how to's" - what works, what does not, what is missing;
- clarify or define the relationship between the Genderchangers website and the website of the Eclectic Tech Carnival (/ETC).
Participants available and countries travelling from:
- Aileen Derieg, Linz, Austria
- Amaia Castro, Madrid, Spain
- Audrey Samson, Amsterdam, NL
- Donna Metzlar (coordinator), Rotterdam, NL
- Petra Timmermas, Amsterdam, NL
- Reni Hofmueller, Graz, Austria
- Taliesin Smith, St. Johns, Canada
- Uschi Reiter, Linz, Austria
Participants not available to travel to Amsterdam but who will be online:
- Anna, Berlin, Germany
- Helen Varley Jamieson, Wellington, New Zealand
- Vesna Manojlovic, Amsterdam, NL
Participant involved in spirit but practically with another network at the Winter Camp:
- Tatiana de la O, Amsterdam, NL