Gender Changers' Residence Brazil june 2007

Why: Women are struggling to particpate in technology.

What: Our goal is to address the imbalance of women in technology, to increase global and local affiliation between those women that are interested in technology.

How: There will be two active tracks during the residence: firstly we will organise and present a series of tech workshops for women, specificly with regards to long distance communication and collaboration, most importantly IRC, conference VOIP, audio and video broadcasting. The second track will relate to preparational work for the planned /ETC in Brazil. We will look at previous /ETC's, other events and project management generally.

Who: A Gender Changer will visit three women's groups in Brazil, namely DesCentro, Estilingue and IP://.

When: friday 1 June until tuesday june tuesday 26 June 2007.

Where: the cities of Belo Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro and ?

The Gender Changers' goals include wanting to involve more women in technology. They do this by giving women-only workshops in the spirit of Open Source principles. They realised that there is a need for spaces where woman can exchange experiences, break things, make jokes and ask dull or silly questions amongst themselves. They regularly give workshops around the topics of hardware, open source software and new media techniques. At the moment of writing there are two local groups active: in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and in San Fransisco, USA. In addition they annually organise an international gathering for women interested in technology called the Eclectic Tech Carnival, also known as the /ETC. In 2007 there will be one /ETC in Linz, Austria from 11 to 15 July, and one in Brazil, the date and place are yet to be determined.

DesCentro is an umbrella organisation for a number of collectives in Brazil. These collectives consist of individuals and themes originating in the NGO, media, art, academic and tech sectors throughout the country.

The main aim of DesCentro is to facilitate communication and work between the collectives in Brazil as well as between these projects and initiatives around the world.

Within this context the idea of an exchange between the DesCentro and the Gender Changers was born: someone from the Gender Changer group was invited to visit Brazil, to stimulate the exchange of methodologies, contexts, tools and experiences around the question of women and technology, concerning specifically Brazil and The Netherlands. The residence also aims to fortify independent spaces that work with media, technology and free software in the Southeastern region of Brazil: Estilingue in Belo Horizonte and IP:// in Rio De Janeiro. The guest will spend between 4 and 7 days in each one of these spaces, presenting her experiences with the organization of past /ETC's and working in workshops and the organization of /etc in Brazil together with local partners. The idea would be to work together with the women of these spaces, mapping the necessary demands and resources for the accomplishment of the Eclectic Carnival Tech in Brazil.

The Gender Changer will conclude the residence with a written report, including photographs, between 6 and 8 pages long for the Waag.

Links:
http://genderchangers.org
http://eclectictechcarnival.org
http://descentro.org
http://estilingue.sarava.org
http://ipe.sarava.org