Hello, I'm Lori, a stay at home mom and museum studies graduate student in Indianapolis who has quickly become known as "the Wikipedia girl" in my grad program. I'm a project leader for WikiProject:Public Art, along with Sarah Stierch (thank you for the kind words, Sarah!). I'm also the current Wikipedian-in-Residence at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis and I've developed some Wikipedia-related programming for the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Nina made some great points about the Mommy blogger world and the Wikipedia world. I am of both "worlds" and feel that they really should be brought together. Stay at home moms especially utilize technology to feel more connected to the outside world; being a stay at home mom can feel very alienating otherwise. So many moms are extremely well educated and have left their careers to stay home, only to begin to feel restless (*raising hand*). It's very true that if this group was more aware of the altruistic nature of sharing knowledge on Wikipedia, they would jump at the chance to join such a community. I've had many of my fellow Mommy bloggers curiously ask about what I do. There's real interest there. They're also very interested in Wikipedia's role as an educational tool, which is something I'm very interested in too. This is not all about SAHM's but felt that I should expound on that point, because it's a great one! I also want to reiterate the American Association of Museum (AAM)'s Future of Museum's tweet yesterday that brought together the points of the NYTimes article and Nina Simon's recent post<http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/2011/01/want-to-get-your-content-out-… museum's should put their content on Wikipedia. They made the point that the museum world is very much a female majority, and Wikipedia is a female minority - it makes sense that the cultural sector has been so slow to warm up to sharing content on Wikipedia. I hope to help change that through the Wikimedia GLAM initiative <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM>. This year I intend to complete an Independent Study to research & write a (hopefully substantial) article regarding the role of Wikipedia in museum programming in order to teach 21st century research/technology/collaborative skills to our communities while also sharing museum research and increasing accessibility to collections. I think that the gender gap issue is an important factor to consider in this. This is certainly an important topic and I look forward to learning & sharing more! As Sarah said - we'll hopefully make a big splash at Wikimania! :) Lori -- Lori Byrd Phillips | Museums & Motherhood <http://hstryqt.tumblr.com/> On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 7:58 AM, Nina Wikipedia &lt;nina.wikipedia(a)gmail.com&gt;wrote;wrote: _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap

Hello Nina, (and Aude, Sue, Erik, Sarah, and Fred) Looking through the archives I see fuller introductions are in order so I'll explain my history with Wikimedia Projects and my reason for joining. My name is Sydney Poore. I currently spend most of my time in Florida. By eduction is as a Registered Nurse and Sociology. In the past I worked as Obstetrical and Gynecological Registered Nurse. More recently my husband and I bought a Merle Norman Cosmetic Store and an art gallery in St. Augustine Florida. I began editing Wikipedia English in 2005 and later started contributing to other projects, primarily Commons, English Wikiquote and Wikisource. As a volunteer I've gotten very involved with the administrative side of English Wikipedia and to a lesser extent the Wikimedia Foundation. I've helped out by serving time on the Wikipedia English Arbitration Committee and hold Oversight and Checkuser tools there. Also have assisted with the WMF Strategic Planning Project as facilitator of the Community Health task force (which looked at ways to help the WMF projects grow and thrive). Currently I hold a seat on the WMF Ombudsmen Commission (reviews complaints about the violation of the WMF privacy policy). My frequent contact with women in my daily work is in sharp contrast to the number of women who I encounter on WMF Projects and I think this makes me especially sensitive to the gender issue. Sydney On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 7:58 AM, Nina Wikipedia &lt;nina.wikipedia(a)gmail.com&gt;wrote;wrote: _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap