*35C3 preroll music*
Herald: I will now hand over the microphone to our moderator, Geraldine De
Bastion, who apart from the French name does not speak French.
Thank you very much.
*laughter*
Geraldine De Bastion: Thank you so much for having me here and hopefully enough
English to moderate the session. Hi everybody. My name is Geraldine and I'm
very proud to be moderating this session. Maybe a few words to kick off with;
usually sessions at CCC come together because one person or team of people hand
in a topic that they feel they would like to talk about here on one of these stages.
This session came together because several people handed in sessions where they
wanted to address how they're trying to build communities or spaces that are
specifically feminist, diverse, and inclusive. And we thought it would be a
great idea to give not just one person who handed in a session, or two people, but
all the people who handed in sessions on this topic the stage. So this is how the
session came together: by us grouping together different submissions on the
topic. And so I'm very happy that we have five very interesting and excellent humans
here to speak on the topic matter and will be presenting their different approaches
and their different strategies to building feminist spaces and communities. And I'd
like to welcome them here on stage. So first off we have Hong Phuc who runs FOSS
Asia, which is a community in Asia/Southeast Asia for developing
software and hardware specifically open source. Welcome Hong!
*applause*
GdB: We have Azam and Sarah from Le RESET, which is a feminist
queer hackerspace.
*applause*
GdB: Welcome! We have Em O'Sullivan former hackerspace and maker fair organizer, now
researching how to improve women and non binary people's engagement in maker a
spaces. Welcome Em!
*applause*
GdB: And last but not least we have Lena Mohr, who is a UX designer from Stuttgart,
started an initiative called Ready to Code, teaching young girls to code.
Welcome Lena.
*applause*
GdB: And as I said, my name is Geraldine de Bastion. I run a community called the
Global Innovation Gathering, which is a network of different maker spaces, hacker
spaces, different kind of innovation, makers and innovators across the world. So
a quick housekeeping note for the session. The format is that we're going to give
each of the teams here on stage the opportunity to present their work to you
in about seven to 10 minutes, and then we'll get to gather here to discuss the
difference and the likenesses in approaches and in perspectives,
experiences and ideas. And then we would like to invite you all to join this
discussion and open the floor. So to kick things off I would invite you first to
share a little bit the story of FOSS Asia and your work at the last 10 years, Hong.
Hong Phuc Dang: Thank you. I did not expect that I would go first, but that's
okay. *shuffling*
There we go.
Hong Phuc Dang: Okay, so hello everyone! My name is Hong Phuc Dang, or HP Dang if
you want to look for me on the web. So today I will talk about how I get involved
in open source community in the first place, and also some highlights of my work
at FOSS Asia during the past 10 years. Before that a little bit about my
background. I was born and grew up in a small town in South Vietnam. It is called
Can Tho, I don't know if any of you have been there before, but it's about 200
kilometers south of Hoh Chi Minh City. This is my first 20 years of my life, so
I've been always there, feel like a confusing little girl because I keep
wondering what I really want to achieve in my life. My family, my parents were not
so... were poor at that time. In 1987, most of the families there were poor due
to the war. We just finished the war and then the reform of Vietnam. My parents
been working very hard so that me and my sister could have a better future. And the
only motivation that I have in my life until I was 20: to get a very good job
somewhere after graduation, so that I can earn some money, take care of my parents,
and be able to afford something that I could never have when I was a kid. So this
is what I was thinking when I got to 20 years old. I went to school, I studied
super super hard but I never had really interested in school and I also don't
understand so much what I learn and get out of school. I just know that if I study
hard I would have a good future. In 2007 I met Mario Behling who later on became my
mentor and also a partner later on. Not on Tinder, but at a free event, a free
technology event in Hanoi. In 2007 it was the first time I learned about free
software. In the same year, I switched from Windows XP to Ubuntu and started to
use open source. And then so I started to involve with different user groups in the
region, and also contribute small bits, like localization into some software
project. At the same time I also learned how to submit a bug report, make an issue
to different projects. And by involving in the open source community I got to meet so
many interesting people that inspire me. So I always have very cool conversation
with people who've been involved in one project for over 15, 20 years. That really
inspired me, how people can be so persistent and continuously work on
something for so long. And when they talk about their job, is so positive and
energetic. Even though it keeps repeating, but they're very patient and when I joined
the community it's so good that people always like very patient and took their
time to explain to you when you don't understand something. So two years later
in 2009, Mario and I decided to found the FOSS Asia organization. So FOSS Asia, the
goal of FOSS Asia is to bring together an inspired community across Asia, a lot of
different communities to view a better future with open technologies. Since then
we have developed so many different projects with the FOSS Asia communities.
These are some of the software and also hardware projects that we've been working
on. SUSI.AI is an alternative to Alexa or Google Home, and Pocket Science Lab is our
newly released open hardware project. You can find all the projects on Github of
FOSS Asia actually. Eventyay is an event solution that's similar to what you have
here, the*[unclear]*[???], just scheduling and also ticket selling open source did
entirely by the FOSS Asia community. We also organize a lot of events, conferences
and meet-ups throughout our regions. One of our biggest events is the FOSS Asia
Summit, happens every year in March in Singapore. Throughout the year we also
have smaller workshops and events in China, in India, Vietnam, Indonesia,
Malaysia and many other places. Some of the highlights of my last 10 years. In
2010 it was my first time into Europe. It was so difficult to get a visa to come
here. I know, for many of you, but it was a big thing for me to enter Europe for the
first time. I got invited to the Libre Graphics meeting. This is the photo taken
when I was giving a talk. You can see it, I was super nervous at that time. And the
next picture, after the talk I went to dinner with a group of friends, the people
from the Libre Graphics communities. I was the only girl but I did not realize that
until somebody comment on my Facebook, why you was the only girl in the picture. But
it was really cool and very welcoming in the community. 2012 we built a hotel in
our hometown Can Tho, and we labelled it the Open Source hotel. You can look up,
Hotel Xoai is the name of the place. So basically it's built by the Open Source
community member. So we set up the wireless network with OpenWRT. I did
the entire wiring for the telephone myself. I did it for three weeks but I was
very proud of it and we have the declaration inside the hotel is donated to
us by the Libre Graphics community, so by some artists in that community. And in
this space we hosted a lot of workshops and we hosted many open source
contributors in our place. So we have dDebian developers, we have GIMP contributers, we
have people from all over the world to come and stay with us in this space here
in Vietnam. In the same year I also hosted the group of artists and designers that I
met in Brussels in 2010 in Hoh Chi Minh City. So we did an open source design week
in Saigon, and surprisingly more than 40% of the participants are female. So what we
did in this design week, we showed people how to make artwork with free tools, with
free software, and at the end we also made an exhibition, what kind of work that you
can do with free software. And 2014 it was my first time attending the CCC, and this
is the first person that I met in the speaker room, who spend several minutes of
his valuable time to explain to me what is the difference between free software and
open source.
*laughter*
Hong Phuc Dang: But I was very happy I was also a speaker at that time, so we got a
photo together. 2016 we launch Code Heat Program, which is an online coding
programme done by the FOSS Asia community. So the goal of this program is to help
young developers and contributors to start to work in open source software and how to
become an active contributor to open source. So we have our FOSS Asia members
to guide them, so everything happenes on GitHub, we have GitHub channels where
people can post questions. And at the end the winners will win a trip to the FOSS
Asia Summit and present about their working experience during the programme.
2018. So we released our Pocket Science Lab to the market. So the project been
going on for the past two years and we will finally produce them in China and now
started to distribute them all over the world. So we have a shop in Japan which
has sold out in two days. We also distributed in India, in Singapore, in
Europe and it's been piloting in school in Singapore, in India and also in Vietnam.
So basically it's a small device that helps you to make science experiments.
It's an oscilloscope with logic analyzer and many different functions. We have a
workshop here as well at the CCC if you want to find out more. Okay some of my
approach and lesson learned for the question about what strategy that you do
to engage many people in the community and how to rear the communitiy. So what I
learned from the past 10 years: The first thing is to be sincere with whoever you
meet. That how my reaction in the community to be sincere with people, and
empower the people in the community. Just like when I first joined the community,
the more responsibility to give to people, they feel empower and they, it's also
better to scale up the community. Motivation; in order to work with people
and to find the right approach you need to understand the motivation behind
individuals and it's really important to rear the community. And my philosophy is
it always better by sharing. So we share our knowledge, that what's the reason we
are here – we share our resources and we bring people together. Finally, in the
FOSS Asia community, I made friends. Their friendship is important over the years and
I know that the people I've been working with or engaged with will be friends for
life – so that is a good thing about the free software community. And next year
2009 will be our 10-year milestone of the FOSS Asia organization. We have a big
celebration in Singapore between March 14 and 17. If you happen to be there or you
plan a trip to Asia you are very welcome to join us. The website 2019.fossasia.org.
And here at the CCC we have a group of FOSS Asia member flew in from Singapore,
from France, from Spain and also in Germany. We have a laser cutter here,
built by a FOSS Asia member in Singapore, open source laser cutter. The small
picture here is [???] carrying it and is at our FOSS Asia assembly if you want to
check it out. If you want to get in touch with us, or you want to look for me at the
end of the talk, you can search on the navigation app for FOSS Asia and our
number is a 8575. Thank you.
*applause*
GdB: Thank you very much Hong for that introduction into FOSS Asia and your work.
Azam, Sarah, would you like to go next to present Le RESET?
Le Reset speaker (left): Okay so we both come from France. We are part of Le RESET,
which is a feminist and queer hacker space and we're going to explain a little bit
what we are doing, why we're doing it and how. So our hacker space welcomes actively
people who usually do not feel safe or included in many other hacker spaces. So
mostly queer persons and women, because most of straight men feel really entitled
to learn and share what they learn and teach everything. And on the other side
you have queer persons and women who have major imposter syndrome when it comes to
technology. We observe these things and also that the solutions to fix all issues
are also designed by straight men so they are not adequate with our issues and that
we have a big lack of transmission in our communities. So as we were to the geeky
ones around queers and queer ones around geeks we did Le RESET to have a space that
is the intersection of queer and geek people. So it takes place in a queer bar
in Paris every Sunday. And I'm really scared, I'm sorry. We started in 2016 and
we speak directly to women and queers so that they feel welcome and included and
would come to our space. We built a code of conduct that we may discuss further,
that we embody so we endorse it and not just write it somewhere. So our basis are
feminist ethics based on the "Ethics of Care" by Joan Tronto. We do workshops for
beginners every session and we really insist on the things for beginners. The
workshops are mainly hosted by queer or women and we do not treat differently
infosec, coding, gaming, crafts, care practice and all the things we do not make
a hierarchy. We analyzed the board dynamics with material feminism and
most of our projects are cyber feminists. Le Reset speaker (right): So I'm going to
talk a little more about some projects that we have at Le Reset, what is it, so I
took three different examples. The best example is the crypto bar. So it's
basically a one on one crypto party with just one person as they were launched by
Asher Wolf and those security talks, they are menu oriented toward cyber harassment
because women and queer people usually ask us about security issues when they have
trouble with cyber harassment. And so we have identified it to be the main threat
model for us, and not like the NSA or something else. Another example of a
project that we have is "everything about health reappropriation". So as women and
queers our health is often in the hands of doctors that don't explain stuff to us or
that don't do what we want them to do with our health because they have norms that
we're supposed to follow. And so we work around. We work with transgender people
around hormones and also with trans people and women around gynecology. And so we
have a partnership with women doing self gynecology workshops. So we create zines
and we share knowledge and practices about those and we also have a lab project that
is inspired by the je ne peine club from Calafou and also by
the Open Source estrogen project by Mary Maggic that was presented in the CCC last
year [https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9036-ope n_source_estrogen]. And so the goal of
this lab project is to take and analyze our own cervical smear so that we can do
an our own analysis with it. And the third project I wanted to talk about was "the
queer games". So the queer games is an artistic and political movement that was
initiated by an Entrepeneur Mattie Brice. So the idea is that they're using
game design as a tool to criticize oppression systems. And so we're doing
monthly queer games workshops in order to empower queer people. We empower them
through rendering our own narratives visible through video games and also by
learning skills to make our own video games, even though most people who come
don't have any idea of how to code, so we also learn coding through it.
GdB: Thank you very much *applause*
GdB: Thank you for that introduction into your work. I think a lot of points raised
that we're gonna debate also in a minute. Em, can I ask you to go next.
Em O'Sullivan: I didn't have any slides but I do have some notes and my story is
maybe a bit different to my other panelists because I don't come from a
specifically feminist organization. I live in Brighton in the UK and our hackerspace
is called Build Brighton. It started in 2009 so it was a fairly early hackerspace
in the UK. It grew out of an existing meetup that was focused on robotics and
some of the people involved in that group decided to set up their own hackerspace.
So it began fairly organically. It was inspired largely by the early U.S. hacker
spaces in particular Mitch Altman visited the robotics meetup when he was in
Brighton and basically said, "hey you look like the kind of group who should start a
hackerspace" and that kind of triggered the idea to go and set one up. So, it
followed the same kind of ad hoc kind of democracy structure. It had some informal
leaders but things were kind of largely decided by group consensus. For example
when we first moved into our own dedicated space, we spent the first couple of years
meeting once a week in a coworking space and then in 2011 had an opportunity to get
our own workshop and the decision about whether to do that was put to the entire
membership around whether we wanted to take on that responsibility, those extra
costs and that decision was passed by consensus and that's kind of how things
have typically been done. In terms of activities there's a lot of electronics
projects typically, especially with it going out to robotics group. The laser
cutter has always been really popular and was one of the first tools that was bought
by the group. And we've recently had lots of wood work workers coming in because we
do have a fairly well-developed wood working shop. In terms of gender diversity
is also a fairly typical hackerspace. There's currently 115 members of which
around 10 to 15 percent are women or femme presenting people and the aim of that
statistic isn't to point out like how low this representation is in this particular
space. It's to highlight that this is a typical number for a hackerspace. For me
personally, a bit like Hong Phuc said, I'm used to being in masculine spaces like I
trained in media production originally which is very male dominated. Then when I
went to work in IT it was normal for me to be at events that were mainly men and I
suppose I just got used to this and it became invisible to me. At the time I was
working for a software development company in Brighton and the company had two
offices one for the technical team and one for the rest of the staff. So like admin
team, production team, HR, finance and so on. My desk was in the tech room and I
looked up one day and realized that I was the only femme presenting person in a room
of 20 men. It took that to kind of dropped me back into realizing how weird the
situation was and I also realized that "Build Brighton", my hackspace, was a
similar environments as well. And I became really interested in why this was
happening, because hacker spaces they are theoretically open environments, like our
space anyone can join. Membership is on a pay what you can basis from five pounds a
month. So the financial cost to entry are very low. But we are still seeing the same
issues as in other technology environments and that's women and femme people were
very underrepresented. I saw this as a useful opportunity to look at the cultural
issues that continue to prevent women's engagement in technology spaces even when
some of those structural and financial barriers have been removed. And the reason
this was really important to me as a topic was because like for me personally joining
my hackerspace was an extremely empowering experience. I didn't have much experience
before with DIY, with hardware, with working with materials, and joining that
community and having access to those tools and that knowledge had a huge impact on
how I see the world around me, on my confidence to fix and adapt things when I
need to and I really want more people to have access to that empowerment.
Especially people who don't necessarily have existing experience with technology.
So in 2016 I began my PhD looking at how some hacker spaces and maker spaces have
been more successful than others in engaging women and femme people. I'm
currently still in the data collection phase of my research, but I visited
various hacker spaces and maker spaces around Europe and the US, spoken to lots
of people from these spaces and seen a wide range of approaches to dealing with
gender diversity, ranging from acute hostility towards any suggestion of
specifically trying to engage women, right through to spaces that have made this a
core part of that group culture. So I hope that range of perspectives can come in
useful to discussion today. And I'm also currently putting together a zine with
contributions from hacker spaces and maker spaces that have developed inclusive
practices, not necessarily focused on gender but also on engaging other
underrepresented groups like people of color, people with disabilities, people
with lower socio economic statuses because I think it's really important that those
practices are publicized as widely as possible so that other spaces can learn
from them. So if any of you have any suggestions about spaces that should be
included in that zine please do email me. My contact details are on the Fahrplan and
I would love to hear about any spaces that you could recommend.
GdB: Thank you! And last but not least Lena. Lena Mohr: I'm Lena, I'm one of the three
founders of "ready to code". We are an organization based based in Stuttgart in
the south of Germany. Our story started... so know first what we do is we inspire
women and girls to learn how to code and to work in tech and support each other.
There are two main reasons why we do what we do. I think the first one is quite
obvious that there are not enough women who work in tech, and the second one is
more personal because I am a user experience designer, and part of my
studies was learning how to code and I found it extremely difficult because I had
all these biases and pictures in my head and I just knew that I was going to fail
at coding before I ever wrote my first line of code. I was not alone with this. I
saw this and a lot of my friends and a lot of the girls who studied with me. And the
good news is that we had to pass the exam so we sort of had to learn it. and I also
had really great and really patient friends who not only taught me to code and
taught me the facts but also convinced me that I was able to do that. And the moment
when you clicked like you said that was a really empowering moment, because I felt
like the not only the knowledge opened a whole new world of opportunities, but also
the self-confidence that I gained through that. And that is what we also want to
share with other women and girls. So what we do is we run workshops for women and
for girls and like Le Reset we make sure that they are for a beginner so everyone
can participate, and I think we're probably going to talk about that as well
a little bit further. And we also have a networking event that's called cocktails
and code where women in tech can meet and connect and share their experiences and we
organize lightning talks from female speakers so yeah people who are new to
tech can come and it's fairly low level and everyone can participate. And we also
organize different events. For example a couple of weeks ago we organized a social
hackathon on and I think what we do a little bit different is that one of our
founders is a guy, a straight cis guy. So a lot of the volunteers that are working
for us are also male and we had a lot of good experiences with this because we
think it's important to include everyone. But we talked a little bit before and I
think we're going to have a discussion about that afterwards as well, that a lot
of women who come to us are also looking for females only space, so they really
appreciate a safer space where they can just be around other women.
GdB: Thank you very much, Lena. So as you've heard we have very different work
rounds that say very different rooms of experiences. And we'd like to just jump
right into discussion. We're going to take about 15, 20 minutes to discuss a little
bit amongst ourselves before opening and including all of you in the debate. So
let's pick up straight the point that you closed with and I'd like you to join in
but I think I'll direct the question at you first. Sometimes we have to, or it
seems that way, we'd have to be exclusive in order to increase inclusion or
fairness. And if I understood you correctly you've created a space that
doesn't necessarily exclude anybody but it doesn't put straight men in the focus. Can
you explain a little bit exactly how you try to shape that community that you're
working with and where you're where you drew the line of inclusion and exclusion
in your approach. Le Reset speaker (right): So we have a
code of conduct. Everybody is welcome to come into hackerspace as long as they
apply to the code of conduct. So we are open to everyone but everything that we
organize is directed to queer people and women. So our communication is oriented
towards them. The workshops organized also by queer people and women. So basically we
just don't care about straight men. Gdb: But they can come.
Le Reset speaker (right): They can come. (laughter and applause)
Gdb: Lena you said one of your founders is
a straight man, so that's something that you do that you do differently.
Lena: We just started a year ago so we are also still trying our different
approaches. And I like what you said that, I think you mentioned that they are
invited if they want to come but you're not marketing for them. You saw our logo.
And in the first workshop that we ran for kids we said it's only for girls. And the
second one we said we have reserving a number of seats for girls because we want
to increase diversity and no boy signed up. So from now on we're not even putting
it's only for girls on our flyers but because it looks so girly no boys
interested in joining us apparently and I think that's interesting because usually
it works the other way around so probably subconsciously or unconsciously it's
posters or websites look like they're made for boys or for guys and women don't feel
attrackted to it. And we do it the other way around and it works quite well. But
yeah. But we also have men that are asking us like "Oh we we also like cocktails and
code, Why can't we join?" And it's like yeah of course you can. You're welcome. We
didn't have any negative experience with it so far.
GdB [to Em O'Sullivan]: you're going to be our academic sounding board at this panel.
In the research that you've conducted, do you see certain kinds of trends emerging
or sort of maybe perhaps as a strength of certain strategies of those hacker spaces
or communities or programs that try to specifically target not straight men but
other communities. On the question of "how exclusive do you have to be, to be
inclusive". Em O'Sullivan: So, I've been to spaces
that are women only or women and non binary people only, and they're really
important for getting over the question of "is it just that women aren't interested"
which is something that I've encountered in a few spaces. It's like well you know
we're not excluding women they just don't seem to be interested. They're not coming
here. And then when you provide a women only space and women go there, then you
can point to that and go: Well okay that's just not true. That must be something
about these other spaces that isn't including them. But then the next step is
how do you get that inclusion to work in an all gender space. Because, we live in
an all gender world. And how do you it take out of those safe spaces and take it
into other environments and that there does need to be a specific aim to be
inclusive. It's interesting that you say it's like, we don't exclude men. We just
kind of don't focus stuff on them. And that seems to be the approach of maker
spaces, and hacker spaces in general. Except there's no recognition of that.
There's that, well, we don't exclude women. You know, they're just not here.
Like, they could come here and there's not the recognition that all of their
presentation, like all of the their culture, from the outside looks like it's
geared towards men. And so of course that's the kind of people that they
attract. But yeah, they haven't made that decision, it's just what they're doing and
there's no recognition of it. So yeah, to change that there does have to be a
recognition that if you want to attract people from different groups then you do
need to reach out and specifically engage them. it's not going to just happen by
itself. GdB: Thank you. Hong, how has it been for
you in the last 10 years of managing FOSS Asia? Because, there's another level that
comes in. You do this across different cultures and across different countries
within Southeast Asia. How do you find that it's developed over the last 10
years, and how much do you have to put an emphasis on trying to bring in not just
women, but perhaps also people from different backgrounds into your community.
Hong Phuc Dang: So, if you look at Southeast Asia, and I look at and FOSS
Asian community we find diverse and inclusive. It would take forever to talk
about of different cultures from Singapore, Malaysia. It's also related to
the religions and the culture of each country. But, could I ask the Le RESET
hackerspace a question? I was curious. I kind of have the same opinion with Em. I
was curious, was there any experience in the past that motivated you to create a
base that or focus more on women instead of men. Is there any bad experience, an
incident that occurred to you? Le Reset speaker: Yes, of course.
Hong Phuc Dang: Could you share a little bit about it? Because, I always say I,
fought it passive, you know that maybe I was lucky, because in our community I
haven't experienced that much of a kind of incident that make me feel that I need a
space for myself. Because when I joined the open source community, I feel that
everyone's very welcome, and also people don't look at you as who you are. People
always look at your work and your contribution to the community. So,
sometimes you're in a conversation and you don't even realize that you are with a
bunch of other people from Europe or men. You focus on the topic, and the work that
you do. So I'm curious to learn about the incident that you had before.
Le Reset speaker (left): I have a few examples if you want, but I think it's not
about what you can do or not, that it's about coming in the space and you feeling
that you can come here and stay and be well welcomed. So, as a woman actually...
I'm sorry I'm a little sick. The people were asking if I came with my boyfriend,
where he was. So, they were wondering what I was doing here, because I was a woman.
So, sorry, I don't have any boyfriend, will never have one, but many girlfriends.
So, no. And also, I was waiting to do lock picking and waiting in the line to do
that. When I came to the tools the guy said: Oh sorry, you have to leave the
place for the guy, because I was just here to look not to try. Many things like that.
Hong Phuc Dang: Did that lock picking happen here at a congress?
Le Reset speaker (left): Yeah, I know. Hong Phuc Dang: Okay, so now we know what
prevent women from joining the tech community. So maybe it wasn't intentional?
GdB (to Hong Phuc Dang): So you, I mean I think it's really interesting what you
said, when in your community and experience you have you see the code and
not the gender. I think a lot of people here in the room. I'm guessing it came to
the session but also on the panel have had really different experiences, but of
course this is really positive here. Maybe even a little bit surprising to hear,
because perhaps that would have been maybe a stereotypical perception that in some
other societies which are part of South/Southeast Asia the very traditional
and it's maybe not so typical for women to be or people of different backgrounds.
Maybe, like I said not just women but also people of different educational
backgrounds of different cultural backgrounds to be part of this community.
But of course it's very nice to hear that you've had a very different experience.
That's I think a keyword that we've heard from many of you and you also mentioned
your core values is empowerment and creating empowerment empowering
experiences for others. You've already said a little bit about how you try to do
that and giving people space to create their own narratives. Do you want to share
a little bit more, what have been like successes for you were you noticed this
has been working for your commu nity. Lena Mohr: Maybe I could start?
Le Reset speaker(right): Go on. Lena Mohr: I think one of the women who
came to our meetup afterwards. She came to us and she was really happy and she said
like: "Ok, I have a place where I can be among my geek friends and talk about geeky
stuff and I have my feminist friends to whom I can come and talk about feminist
stuff and but I never had both." So I have friends and I think it's also important
that you mentioned that it wasn't it probably wasn't intentional, when someone
asks you like: "Hey where's your boyfriend?". Maybe it was trying to start
a conversation, but that doesn't make it any better.
Le Reset speaker (left): I'm not sure, but...
Lena Mohr: Ok, that's even... GdB: Yeah, I mean I can also say like I
have the same experience regularly and it's an... Even in spaces where I've been
member for years and that I really love dearly and I think you know you sort of at
least me, past me I never try to take offense, but of course it is offensive and
this is something we had a quick chat about your level of tolerance for this.
The threshold of acceptance is for me at least becomes less and less and I think we
had a quick conversation and one of the keywords was patience. So, when you have
tried to sort of, yeah, already create spaces that are different for communities
like all of ours that are different you want... You know, you expect more
basically. Expect people to be better at this game and things to change faster. So
I think the sort of level of frustration that builds up when you find it is not
changing as you know just as you said in your talk. It's shocking to hear that that
level of apprehension of including women and doing things to actually really
support women coming in and making sure all parts of society are equally
represented is still that strong. Do you... Have you looked into like the "why"
a little bit in your research. Em O'Sullivan: Like something that's
really interesting is that, in the absence of groups like people with disabilities is
more readily seen as something that can be helped by changing the space by
introducing kind of ramps, wheelchair access technologies and rearranging the
space, so that it's more accessible. But then when it comes to cultural aspects,
such as including women, that seen as something that's unchangeable. So spaces
are often willing to change to be more diverse, but they have kind of a mental
block on being able to include people like women or people of color, who they see as
more kind of. There's no way that these groups can come and join us. They're just
not interested and so like that's a very unusual thing to see.
GdB: So you mentioned earlier, that you have a code of conduct. And... and I think
that's, I'd love to hear like, how did you develop this code of conduct for your
community? And is this sort of a living thing? Did you come up with this in the
beginning and it's been set like that or is it something that you revise and how do
you implement it? Le Reset speaker (left): Actually it's a
really simple code of conduct with 10 phrases and sentences and it says not to
discriminate anybody and to respect boundaries and things that are making us
all live together well. That's the important thing is that we endorse it
really, so we put it on the walls. We talk about it and we observe the dynamics into
the hackerspace. What do people do. How do they feel we welcome them. We apply ethics
of care that do the things I was talking about. We help people, but we do not do
things on their behalf. We do not speak for the persons, but we are here to
support, if they need. That's how it works.
GdB: So are there many cases, where you find, you need to mediate or have you had
cases where you've had to exclude people based on your code of conduct?
Le Reset speaker (right): We haven't excluded many people, but we feel totally
fine with having to exclude someone, we're not afraid of it. But usually we try to
talk to the person before we have to get them out and remind them of the code of
conduct. Our code of conduct is something that we have to apply, but it's also full
of keywords and so the idea is that every time we're saying that organizing a
workshop or doing your conference we talk about it and we tell people to read it
before they come. So that they also can google the words that they don't know, so
that they come into hackerspace and they know what it means to actually respect
somebodies pronouns or things like this. GdB: So. How would you all balance sort of
the mission of what your space is about to do and what your communities are there to
do in terms of creating safe space for the people that you have as part of your
community and educating the rest of the world.
Hong Phuc Dang: I can say something. So code of conduct is a good way to ensure
that safe space for people. And in terms of inclusiveness, so there, so I think
that in order to solve this problems at first, is a good way that we bring people
together who can talk about the challenges and incidents; that they had in the past
so that the people in the audience also aware that they might not intentionally
raise this question. But now people aware of what could be offense do to another
members. But I think one of the bigger challenge is that the people in the
community sometimes people are not aware of the level the difference of background
of different people in the community. For instance, I want to give one example. So,
when you visit one of the hackersspace in Singapore. Normally when you come in even
though this is your first time entered a hackerspace, nobody would come and talk to
you, try to introduce to you to the space, what other equipment is, because they
assumed that you already have the knowledge. If you enter this, there's got
to be good you know everything. And sometime I found a little bit intimidated
that I did not understand some joke that make by my male colleagues, because they
have different kind of knowledge coming from the west from Europe or America. So
it's very important that we are aware that people coming from different backgrounds.
So something that you think that is so obvious to you that might not be obvious
to people. And it might raise some kind of conflict and misunderstanding. Something
if we are all aware, that piece of knowledge we have might not be relevant to
another person and always be aware and be more flexible, then that could be less
complex in the community in my opinion. GdB: So again like I said
(applause) GdB: you're free to applaud.
GdB: How do you try to balance that? Le Reset speaker (right): We welcome
everybody that comes into this space. We're here every Sunday, so we usually
know who has come before and who hasn't. And every time we see a new person there
is always someone who comes and explain the code of conduct, but also like: what
is this space, where you can find the stickers, where is the workshop. So we
explain everything. GdB: I think that sounds really nice. I
think from what you've explained there's a lot of magic in that very personal
approach. You know, it's not that you're like take them into your space when they
come in, but it's like this taking care of each other and looking out for one
another, which should be part of respectful human conduct. No matter what
kind of human you are. Right. Maybe one last topic on the panel before we open up
a little bit or maybe wanted to. I thought it was really interesting to read on one
of the little things on your slide. I really like the one that said, I was writing
too fast now I can't read my own writing: "It is just privileged people's choice."?
So in my experience very often we create spaces like yours or like community, or
creating the mind of creating. Bringing in new people and giving people, who maybe
haven't had sort of their typical tech career, a chance to explore and see that
they can be the creators of technology themselves. But we end up also creating
kind of bubbles and usually attracting people with a certain background, usually
creating spaces with people. We live in Europe, we're like, you know, middle class
white communities. And that's also, perhaps, not the level of playing fields,
when it comes to creating inclusive technology. Is that something that you
address in your spaces? I'm not looking at you specifically because it's a little bit
of a different intercultural setting that you have with FOSS Asia. But how does
that come into play, when we talk about diversity in your experiences?
Le Reset speaker (left): Actually we are located in a queer bar. So the people that
are used to come to this bar to party and date - they also come on Sundays, so we
have people that would never enter a hacker space, you know, in other times. So we
have, actually, met many women, many trans people and queer people. One time we had
this girl, who never touched a computer. We have people who have never played video
games and so on. So we have really diverse public.
GdB: I think that's also interesting as that was mentioned before the setting of
where your space actually is, which is a really important fact of how to make
spaces accessible to different communities as well. How's that for the space that you
have out there? Em: So this is such a tricky question and
particularly with the volunteer one spaces. You have a limited amount of time
and energy and do you spend that on educating people, or do you spend it on
engaging with people, who can use your resources. And I lean towards the
engagement. I feel that it's important to kind of get people in and to share what we
already have with other groups. There are resources out there, where people can
educate themselves - like people in technology communities, like very
intelligent people, like they are more than capable of kind of finding other
resources and educating themselves. And if the group has the capacity, for example,
to run workshops around specific issues, around consents, around kind of
introductions to feminism and other topics - then that's great. And that can be a
great way of educating our own community and also taking those ideas into the
outside community. But I think if it was... if time was limited then I would
definitely want to dedicate more to engagement rather than educating people
who are capable of educating themselves. Le Reset speaker (right): About that
education. Our hackerspace has been invited to give feminism 101 talks
like a lot. And so we answered yes to those invitation and then we did not do
feminism 101, because we believe that there has been enough talks about
feminism 101 already and there is plenty of things available on the
Internet. So we make usually talks about ethics of care or cyber feminism. And
every time we go somewhere we have a wiki page about it with all the links about
four lines definition on Wikipedia or 40 pages PDF that you can download, or
podcasts, so all the feminism 101 and all the education has already been
done. So we are making sure that it's accessible and then we are moving on,
because as you said we don't have this energy to do again and again what other
have done before us. *applause*
Lena: I think you've mentioned it already. And I think you're also working
voluntarily or a lot of volunteers come and so, do they have the time and energy?
As for me it's also sometimes... I'm just not in the mood to explain everything
again, like the really 101 stuff. But other times, when I feel like someone
is really curious and really wants to learn something, and is respectful, and is
not trying to provoke a discussion just to have a discussion - because then, yeah, I
don't know... With some persons I feel like: okay, for him it might be a fun
discussion just to, I don't know, just to test the borders and see how far you can
go. But for me it's like: okay I'm talking if I have the right to be here as a woman
and I don't always feel like I want to discuss that.
GdB: Your patience level is going down as well. Hong Phuc, how is it for you, how do
you try to engage people in open source communities that perhaps wouldn't normally
walk into a hackerspace? Or don't yet know about the work that you do.
Hong Phuc Dang: Yeah. So I found FOSS Asia. And then for me it was quite lucky,
because the founder of the organization is a female. So it also help make other
people feel more comfortable to engage with the open source community. But I
think as Em and Lena also said that the number of women, who work in the tech
community, is very small. And I think it's important to understand that when you talk
about technology - it's not only about coding, because there are so many
different responsibilities and a possibility that you could engage the
woman or other community members in the community. So it's important to have the
guide lines to help people, a lot of good documentation. To show people that by
joining the community the first step you did not have to fix a bug or write a line of
code in order to join the community. You can do a translation, you can do design,
localization - many things that any single one of us can be involved in, can
contribute as our space. So I think that is one step to lower the barriers to enter
the community. GdB:Thank you.
*applause* GdB: I'd like to start opening up the
questions and comments. We have I think two microphones here in the center of the
room and... you're first. Mic: Hello. First of all thank you girls
very much for this session. I kind of relate to that, we're so to say from the
same club. I came from Estonia and there I'm the organizer of the conference women
in cybersecurity and also head of Google women tech makers in Estonia. And I can
rely to a lot of things, which you have mentioned. But what I am really interested
because you're from different countries is... Ms Dong has answered this question
partially, but I'm interested in other answers. How do you actually attract more
women into IT? Not from the marketing perspective, but from the perspective for
your mission of your hacker space or your community. And how do you make those
people stay and come to the events or, if not come to the events, how do you make
them thinking of that and continue studying? Yeah. And the success story that
is something what we all would be really interested in hearing. Because, for
example, from Ms. Dong's story we can see the open source projects I guess still a
lot of girls might have been involved there; and the hotel and other projects.
But what about the Europe? Tell us, that's very curious. Thank you.
GdB: Thank you very much. So we collect a couple and then go around or how would you
like to do it? Mic: I can remind the questions if needed.
How do you attract, how do you keep people and how do you... the success stories.
GdB: Thank you. So let's do that. Do you have your community, is it very
fluctuating? Or do you have a kind of stable group of people? Do you ever have a
problem of connecting them back to your space?
Mic: Just before we start from the answer for ladies - there is something else I
wanted to mention. I also come not from a....
GdB: There is a long queue behind you, and we've already collected a couple of
questions, so maybe just one more sentence.
Mic: Of course. Yeah. Thank you... No, then go ahead for the answer.
GdB: Okay. Thank you. How long time is your community, how much does it
fluctuate, how do you sort of keep people? Le Reset speaker (right): We have people
that come like every Sunday and we have people, who come just for one workshop,
because they've been interested in that topic. What we do to attract people is
that every Sunday we have a workshop, at least one workshops, so people are usually
interested in the topic or just interested in meeting new people. But they always
know that they won't just stand there and have nobody to talk to. There is a
workshop, like they have a purpose for being here. And because the topics are
always oriented towards women and queer we don't have any issue attracting women and
queers in the hackerspace. We've never had a majority of straight men in the
hackerspace that has never happened. GdB: Thank you. So Em, and your
experience? Em: Well, I mean it's a huge question how
do you attract women into IT and retain shortthem. Just to keep my answer fairly sure:
one particular tip I have is to get a bit academic for a second, kind of focus on
developing like the social bonds within your community rather than necessarily the
tech aspects. Like when people have friends and people they care about in this
community - they're much more likely to join it and want to stay there and to get
more out of it. So sometimes focusing on things that seem quite tangential like
socializing and people spending time together, like outside of the physical
space and kind of doing like fun non tech things together, like can actually do that
job of bringing more women than and femme people in and helping them to feel
comfortable and welcome there. GdB: I think there's a challenge maybe the
other way around too. In my experience it's for many people spaces, like the ones
that you create, become a home and so sort of keeping people, having people want to
be part of that home is not so hard. But making sure that you remain open for new
people to sort of join that family and feel as equally welcome can sometimes be
an even bigger challenge than attracting people and keeping them in the beginning.
Next question. Mic: So my question will mostly be related
to this mergery of the feminist hacker spaces and the male hacker spaces. So I
see that you are making spaces for women and for a queer to get creative, but
making these separate from other hacker spaces in a bit of an isolation and I
guess this would be a next step to merge these kind of societies. So from a male
perspective it's sometimes hard to understand what female don't find
attractive or find distracting about joining male societies, because feminist
activism usually do not target male to express what the problem is. So what do
you think that could be done towards this mergery? So to make women try to get
involved in male hacker spaces and to make men more acceptive to female. So this
mergery to get involved together. I hope my question was on this...
*laughing* GdB: You can all feel free
Le Reset speaker (right): I don't think our goal is to merge our hacker spaces. We
are creating hacker spaces around our issues, if you want to come you're
welcome. But what you will find here is things that concerns us. But of course
you're welcome. And... *applause*
Le Reset speaker (right): We don't have any interest in your issues so we're not
coming to your hacker spaces. But... *applause*
Mic: Yeah. I understand this. And I don't think that what you do is wrong. I just
think that this is a sort of isolation between two different kinds of creative
energy. GdB: Let's...
Le Reset speaker (right): I think you've been in isolation much more longer than
us. *applause*
Mic: I mean probably separation, not isolation.
GdB: Let's.. Again I'm gonna say, there are many people queuing behind you, so we
do want to get in a conversation with everyone, but we want to give everybody
the chance to speak as well. I think I'm gonna rephrase your question if I may,
when it comes to the actual creation of technology. Because I think that... let's
see if there are two separate things or not: the one thing is that you have a
community and you have a space for that community, and you want to prioritize the
issues of your community. The other question is when we create technology and
we create technology for the general public. How do we ensure that that
technology is created by the public as in all members of that public and then
reflects all of our values equally. Le Reset speaker (right): I don't believe
in the general public. GdB: Sorry?
Le Reset speaker (right): I don't believe in the general public.
*applause* Hong Phuc Dang: So I could answer your
question. I also don't want to give comment about if we merging the two
groups. But if you want to make your space, any hacker space, more welcome to
woman or any member, the first thing: just like in a normal context - if you have a
new guest coming to your home, the first thing is that to show the guest around.
Like to interact with a person and to be patient, and show them what they can do.
And also one thing that I mentioned earlier: because people have different
background knowledge so it's more important that you find out what is their
motivation, to get to know the people better. So make this more like the women
feel more comfortable to come you to your space instead of asking them to merge
together with another space. Just create a more friendly environment in your space.
By just approaching the people, the newcomers and welcome them.
*applause* GdB: Next person please.
Mic: So I have some more of experience to share than the question. I organize events
for geeks and they are very male heavy, let's say. And what I found is when it
comes to disabled people and that the community is more likely to actually
change is because then they change environment and they don't have to change
themselves. *applause*
Mic: The huge problem usually is that the male populated hacker space are generally
community in general, feel that when they have to open to female presence or a gay
presence, etc. they have to change their own behavior. And that it's not something
they are willing to do. Sadly enough. Thanks.
GdB: Thank you. Was that question in there you just wanted to share. Okay good. Thank
you. There's an online question we'd like to take next please.
Signal Angel: The question was answered. GdB: Oh...
*laughing* GdB: Okay then. In that case.
Mic: Hello. Thank you. First of all thank you for all of your great work. I just
want to have a question about something that maybe a little bit missed in this
conversation. And so we talked about all of the communities and the hacker spaces
that focused on a woman and non binaries. But imagine a scenario that there is a
company or there's like a startup and there is not much diversity and we want to
improve like representation of people of marginalized group or anyway. How
we can achieve that? There are lots of suggestions like hire people who are like
visible to others, to be very open about this and try to attract more people. But
is there any sort of way to talk to get these successful stories about to improve
the diversity of companies and startups and other types of communities?
GdB: Thank you. Lena: I think it's often you have biases
sometimes in the hiring process, so maybe you go through different CVs of different
persons and then you... I only know examples from Germany, but I guess it's
the same everywhere. If you read a CV with a name that sounds foreign to you, you
might put it to the side or might automatically think: okay maybe this
person is not equally capable. Even if the skills are the same. And also in your job
descriptions you can make sure that it's more inclusive so you don't say like: okay
the perfect person "he" should have this and that's, put "he and she". And I think
a lot of times it's about really really subtle changes and small things. And like
you said it's a change of the mindset. So it's...
GdB: Yeah, please. Le Reset speaker (left): Actually, you
know, in Le Reset we do not value success stories at all. We don't care. We value
partnership. Partnership and being well together, and that's what works actually.
We do many things, but not by pushing things. To be a woman or queer, or
whatever... we do what we want to do, what we like and that works. That's just that.
Mic: Thank you. GdB: Thank you.
*applause* GdB: Maybe we can exchange after this. Oh
there's a lot of great written walks already out there that give advice to
companies and startups that want be more inclusive. But like the the simplest thing
if, like you said it yourself, if you want to be inclusive - have an inclusive team.
You cannot have an inclusive or diverse startup if your team are all men and the
excuse that you didn't find the right people out there doesn't really go. Either
because, like you said, then maybe you're looking the wrong way. And if you
seriously can't find anybody with a skillset you're looking for - then help
people build that skillset. So there are always ways to actually do that in your
team. Please. Mic: Hi. Six of you proposed talks. We got
one talk. Yes you are six awesome women. It's an awesome topic. We've got an
audience of roughly 50/50. It's one of the most balanced audiences I've seen that
this entire event, but I'm pretty certain that the men in here are majority male
allies. The women you're preaching to the perverted here, why is it that we have
allowed ourselves to be gerrymandered in this way. Why do we have only one session.
Why do we not have six sessions. *applause*
Mic: Adams, Borg, Clark, Dijkstra. The meeting rooms are named after men! Women
are 50/50 of the population. Why are we allowing this to happen. I appreciate. I'm
looking you in the eye and I'm guilty here of preaching to perverted too. But
why are we allowing it. Why is it happening. It's 2018. It's soon to be
2019. We deserve better. *applause*
Hong Phuc Dang: Thank you. Thank you very much for your concern. But I think that...
don't you think that is good to bring people together because, of course like we
can have separate section, but it also very good to have everyone come together
and share their opinions so we can have a conversation, in which we can learn for
each other. So again that the congress is very busy. Not everyone can come to every
single talk. Maybe we'll not be able to attend always our friends who are the
panelists here. But it's good that we can come all together. So are always pro and
con. But thank you very much for your concern.
*applause* GdB: We have exactly time for one last
question/intervention and that shall be you.
Mic: Thank you. Thank you for the talk and thank you for this opportunity. I'm
probably in the category of a straight male engineer. But I also more or less...
but I also have, I'm running a coworking space in Copenhagen and I'm specifically
focusing on making it inclusive. So I'll be trying to find an information and tips
on how to do that. But I have two other questions then. What would be your top
three action points on ending the digital gender divide? It's a big topic, I know.
*laughing* GdB: There's a small question for the end
of session. Mic: Yeah.
GdB: And you had a second one even. Mic: Yeah. The second one was...
*laughing* Mic: I guess that's, I mean, I really see
the points being raised about designing. I mean just down to the level of design:
designing a website targeted to a male audience versus targeted to a female
audience. And the second question was... What was that... The FOSS Asia. In Asia I
read an article lately from after access magazine about Internet usage throughout
the global south. And it's thus in Asia you have like 20 percent of the population
on the Internet. Do you see that as a problem? And what do you think could be
done about it? GdB: Okay so how do we close the digital
divide as such and how to close the gender divide. Specifically. Okay. Thank you.
Hong Phuc Dang: And I don't want to announce that I am suggested we have a
after panel discussion, so we hosted a follow up discussion at the FOSS Asia
assembly after this. If you have more questions and you want to continue the
conversation we can meet there at 8:15? GdB: 8:15 to 9:15. We're not dodging your
question or we're just going to move it to that meetup. I hope that's okay. As we
have run over time. But I would like to end maybe with a little bit of a closing
round, because I think this came out of a number of statements that you made, on
your specific and of course work as a leader of the open source community, which
is on shared resources. So you mentioned that a lot of times you're putting your
resources out there and they're out there for other people to share and learn from.
I'd be interested and a little bit of closing round of either recommendations,
reading recommendations, places to go look for further information, maybe places
where you can be publishing your research. But although the question of connecting
like how do we strengthen each other's work. Not just by coming together at
conferences like this but by making our knowledge open and sharing it and perhaps
also exchanging experiences with one another. So if maybe you want to leave
with an idea or a recommendation, or a point of inspiration, or question on that
issue. Let's do a quick round. You want to start?
Em: So we're quite lucky in the UK that we have the UK Hackspace Foundation which is
a kind of Umbrella group for the [not understandable] hackerspaces in the UK and
these kind of organisations can be great for raising discussions about these
topics. I'm really pushing to have more of focus on inclusivity and diversity in the
UK Hackspace Foundation at the moment and that can be a way of kind of funnelling
best practices out through all of the member organizations.
GdB: Thank you. Lena: I think for us it's we really focus
on, like you mentioned as well, the personal connection. So yeah we would of
course prefer that you visit us for coctails and code, and I think there are a
lot of almost.. I think in the bigger cities you will find of feminist or women
only or women and non binary people only spaces. And if there is none, maybe then
you should found one. Because I think it's really important and I think it happens a
lot through personal connections. GdB: Thank you, Lena.
Hong Phuc Dang: Yeah. So it is something you all are welcome at our open source
hotel in Vietnam now if you ever want to visit and welcome at any FOSS Asia events.
At the same time I think that we could share our best practices and the
successful story on our website. So whatever the FOSS Asia developed and what
we do we publish everything. I think that is a good way to share resources with
other communities. And a panel discussion is always good to learn and to continue
the conversation. GdB: It's definitely good moment with you
guys. Sarah. Le Reset speaker (right): There is only
one thing to do is to go to our Wiki. We have all the resources that you need, in
French. *laughing*
Hong Phug Dang: Our website is in English *laughing**applause*
Le Reset speaker (right): So yeah, we will try. As after this conference and this as
I say we will try to put the video on our Wiki with a page with all the references
as we do usually in French and so we will do it in English this time. So you should
find it in a few days on our Wiki which is Wiki.LeReset.org.
GdB: Excellent. *applause*
GdB: I would like to thank you all for hanging in such great ideas for this event
for sitting on this panel and sharing your thoughts and experiences. Thank you Azam.
Thank you Sarah. Thank you Hong. Thank you Lena. Thank you Em. For being part of the
session. Thank you all for attending and your inputs and ideas as well. And let's
say a big thank you to the stage host and the translators for doing a wonderful job
as well.
*applause*
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