User:Juttavd/AdaCamp report

Wikimedia Australia kindly awarded me with a travel scholarship in order to attend the first AdaCamp, an unconference for people interested in supporting women in open technology and culture, organised by the Ada Initiative. I was interested in attending this event in order to learn more about the challenges that women are facing in open technology and culture, to learn more about concepts such as ‘geek feminisim’ and to connect and discuss strategies on how we can close the gendergap further and better support each other.

To start with, I would like to point to a few useful resources that were published after the event:

The detailed report about the event can be found on Ada Initiative’s website http://adainitiative.org/2012/02/adacamp-melbourne-2012-full-report/

Several attendees also blogged about the event:

- http://riaus.org.au/articles/adacamp/


- http://skycroeser.net/2012/01/19/adacamp-melbourne/


- http://www.chesnok.com/daily/2012/01/20/i-am-a-feminist-hacker-reflections-on-the-first-adacamp/


- http://blogs.gnome.org/danni/2012/01/17/adacamp-and-haecksen/


- http://naomieve.tumblr.com/post/15979150280/adacamp-2012


- http://sciblogs.co.nz/tosp/2012/01/16/tosp-episode-17-january-16th-2012/

I enjoyed ever single minute of this event! We had about 30 very interested and passionate women from different backgrounds in technology, feminism and open culture attending this event and everyone was so excited and happy to be there. I participated in a variety of sessions during the day. The session on discussing the Impostor Syndrome has left a lasting impression on me. I did not know that there was a specific name for this phenomenon and that this subject has been studied and discussed. The session left me (and probably everyone else) with a sense of empowerment and a motivation to go out there and support ourselves, our friends and colleagues more. Other sessions that I attended were discussing on how we can prevent volunteer burnout and a session where we discussed shared “open” philosophies. Someone mentioned that all this “open stuff” has parallels to the idea behind anarchism. I had never thought of this connection before and found it fascinating. I also facilitated a session to discuss the Ada Initiative as a newly founded organisation. It was very rewarding to hold the space for everyone involved and learn more about the organisation and where it is going.

The conclusion of the final wrap-up session was

  • that we all had an inspiring, successful event,
  • that it was very helpful and supportive for us women to come together in this way,
  • that we all want more and
  • that two days might be better than one.

Personally, this event has taught me so much. I got a much broader perspective on the systemic issues that women are facing in open technology and culture as well as the philosophies and history behind feminism.

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