Hi all,

March is an amazing month for raising awareness, excitement, and initiative around broadening the presence women in our community and our content.

In that spirit, West Virginia University is hosting a stellar panel through its Talking Publicly symposium series at WVU Libraries and the Reed College of Media.

*Where Are All the Women? Wikipedia’s Gender Gap* *March 4th 7:30pm EST * Watch it Live: http://tlcommons.wvu.edu/Webcasts/ #WikiGenderGap https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=WikiGenderGap&src=typd

The panel includes: *Adeline Koh -- Co-founder of The Rewriting Wikipedia Project which supports and advocates for efforts to add entries and posts to Wikipedia that focus on postcolonial studies as well as ethnic/minority and marginalized peoples. Koh is currently an associate professor of literature and the director of the Stockton College Center for the Digital Humanities. She also is a core contributor to the Profhacker Column at the Chronicle of Higher Education. Koh uses Wikipedia research writing assignments in her classes and teaches others how to start activist instructional initiatives of their own.

*Jami Mathewson -- Educational Partnerships Manager at the Wiki Education Foundation where she develops partnerships with educational institutions and academic associations to systematically bring more student editors and high quality content to Wikipedia. Over the last three years, Mathewson has focused her volunteer editing on improving content about women’s issues. Mathewson identifies ways to support partners who are looking to promote the use of Wikipedia as a teaching tool on a large scale.

*Sydney Poore -- Wikipedian in Residence at Cochrane Collaboration an international not-for-profit research organization that provides accessible, credible information to support informed decision-making health care. Poore is a member of the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) Fund Dissemination Committee and was a member of the Wikipedia English Arbitration Committee and the WMF Ombudsmen Commission.

*Frank Schulenburg -- Executive Director of the Wiki Education Foundation and former member of the executive management team of the Wikimedia Foundation. His work primarily has focused on broadening participation and developing the public understanding of Wikipedia, especially among subject matter experts. Schulenburg has been involved with Wikipedia since 2005, both as an author and as a photographer.

The following day WVU will host a 3-hour workshop to address strategies on campuses underway for correcting the gender gap and introduce the protocols of writing for Wikipedia at WVU with ideas for proven course assignments and strategies for adoption in their courses.

This is only the kick-off in a year-long focus at WVU on Women and Wikipedia. WVU Dean of Libraries Jon Cawthorne was touched and inspired after he heard the story of Adrianne Wadewitz and is dedicating this year of discussion, experimentation, and action to her.

For full information about both events: http://reedcollegeofmedia.wvu.edu/about/featured-events/wiki-panel

*Again, March 4th at 7:30pm EST* *Watch it Live: http://tlcommons.wvu.edu/Webcasts/ http://tlcommons.wvu.edu/Webcasts/*

Cheers,

- Jake Orlowitz (Ocaasi)