Yes, it was a great event! Definitely a fun thing to do if you can get a
critical mass of people. (Three in my book :-)
Forced to leave my own narrow interest ghetto, I discovered a
fascinating woman artist - Rachel Feinstein- who is her own kind of
libertarian and feminist whose husband John Currin (who does satirical
quasi porn art) had an article but she did not, even though they are
considered a "Power couple" in NY art world. Almost finished and I
hope to get it up by tomorrow night, holiday housework permitting. Also
will add more info about her to his article, as well as some of his very
supportive comments on feminism.
Epicly yours! C.M.
On 12/18/2011 12:00 PM, Sarah Stierch wrote:
Hi folks,
I'm going to be a little selfish here, so pardon me. But, yesterday I
coordinated a "fine art" themed edit-a-thon at our local downtown
library, here in Washington, DC, followed by a meet-up at a local pub.
I'm proud to say we had 13 people at the edit-a-thon, and six were
women. The meetup? We had 16 people and 9 were women!! These numbers
might seem small compared to larger events, but, to have an event like
this, and have such a healthy mix, made me so happy.
User:Aude, the President of Wikimedia DC joked "I remember when it'd be
just me and Mindspillage, as the only women," and we gushed about having
such a healthy group of "all genders" at the event. I noticed, when
saying goodbye to people, that I got a bit emotional - not only did we
have a gender-mixed Wiki-event, but, we also actually wrote new articles
and expanded articles - and anyone who attends an edit-a-thon knows -
it's often chaos and just socializing, not actual editing.
You can see our outcomes here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/DC_26/To-do_list#OUTCOMES
Which includes new articles or expanded articles about seven women
artists!!!
Obviously, I'm on a bit of a high from this, as I love outreach and
coordinating things like this; I do believe the power of invitation
helped with the success of this event. I don't use bots for invitations,
and I do my best to individually reach out to people "I hope you'll be
there." I genuinely do believe that invitation is one of the strongest
keys in making sure that events, participation, and programs succeed in
regards to closing the gender gap.
Thanks for letting me gush =) One event, for me, leads to one more woman
feeling inspired to continue participating. It also shows that offline
events make for such a rewarding experience - we get to come together,
put our differences aside, and work together for the common cause of
providing free knowledge to the world. One woman who came had never
written a new article - and this was her first time - and she really was
proud. That just made me so happy.
I also got to meet Carol Moore, which was rather epic, I must say. :)
-Sarah