WikiWomenCamp was a very valuable experience for those of us that
attended. We all learned a great deal, had the opportunity to network with
other women and, by and large had our participation with the movement
validated as a positive thing. I also believe, having talked to several
participants and the granting bodies that helped make this conference
possible, that these outcomes validate the money spent bringing these women
together and the time we took out of our every day lives to attend.
Looking forward, there are several positive outcomes from this conference
and things participants plan to do going forward that can use community
support and that will support the community. These include:
*Conference specific outcomes:*
* Sue Gardner attending the conference means those of us who attended can
go back to our communities, especially those of us outside Europe and the
USA, and affirm that Sue Gardner supports women working on issues brought
up at the conference and working on a global local solution to the
gendergap, and that this is not just a problem for English Wikipedia in the
United States.
* We are planning to have this event again and believe we can get
additional support from inside the Chapters to help fund this important
event.
* Organisers have gained experience in organising international events that
they can use to host future events. A session on project management was
held and participants who were not key organisers gained insight into how
to run events that they could take back to their own communities to run
events like the one we did on a local level.
* Participants learned about different chapters, how they worked, some
general internal challenges and how this impacts how they function. This
knowledge means participants can more easily understand why some things
appear like they do on mailing lists and how this relates to them (or
doesn't). It will aid in the ability for chapters to work together.
* A list of reasons why women do not contribute to Wikipedia was created
and actively discussed. The list is valuable because it approaches the
issue from an international perspective that explains some local issues
about resolving the gender gap.
*Wikimedia specific outcomes:*
* A mailing list will be created for support in English and Spanish where
women can ask for help with harassment they are dealing with on Wikipedia
and offered solutions. A private mailing list where several people can be
on call was selected because the problems would not be made public and
aggravate problems.
* A discussion was launched about investigating the creation of an OTRS
women's specific help service.
* Learning/Training materials specific to women will be created and shared
with the community. These materials will make it easier to do outreach to
women's communities.
* The research on women in the movement will be continued to work on, with
a standardised format and a process for determining what gets included
resolved during a session. A committment was made that once this was
completed in English (a goal for the end of September of this year), it
would be translated into Spanish. This research may assist chapters in
recruiting female volunteers, provide benchmarks for researchers, and
giving chapters and the Foundation a very clear idea of where the movement
needs to improve.
* Methodologies were discussed and developed for measuring the impact of
women on Wikimedia related projects that can be used by participants to
conduct future research.
* Translation of materials between languages will be worked on. Materials
created in one place may be very useful to others but people do not know
about them and cannot use them because of the language issues.
* Some of the discussion will focus on why women should edit Wikipedia
instead of why they do not, as this question allows for pro-active
solutions that sound less demeaning to women and require less capital to
improve things like the technology back end if participants can be
motivated to contribute despite these issues.
* Participants will go back to their local communities and continue the
good work they have already been engaged in. Participants have a support
network they can now more effectively utilize in doing this work and there
is the potential for future projects as a result. Example: There was a
discussion about possibily trying to do something between Australia and
Russia for the 2014 Winter Paralympics.
* A line of reasoning was created to respond to questions of "Why women
only events inside the movement?" that make the need obvious: Most local
WMF events are men only, and when they are not, the one or two women who
registered to attend could easily be asked to leave to make the event men
only. This is almost never the case for women in the movement. Other
arguements and lines of reasoning were also developed.
*Broad community outcomes:*
* WikiChix wiki will be re-launched as a wikis in general organisational
space. The wiki will be hosted by Wikimedia Australia. Plans are under
way to work on this following the Ibercoop meeting in Santiago, Chile.
* Efforts will be made to increase work with female in technology groups to
help increase women's participation.
* In organising events in the future related to the gender gap and women in
technology in general, Open Space will be seriously considered as a
facilitation method given the general success of it at this event.
If you are interested in seeing the conference in action, some videos are
available at
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Video_from_WikiWomenCamp_2012 .
Parts of Sue's presentation are available at
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Audio_from_WikiWomenCamp_2012 .
A list of blog posts and media reports for the conference can be found at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiWomenCamp/Agenda#Other_publication .
Thanks again to everyone who attended and others who assisted in making
this event possible.
Sincerely,
Laura Hale
VP of Wikimedia Australia and (one of the) conference organiser(s)
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