Gender & Computing

If you are thinking about organizing a conference this fall, please avoid mid October! Statistically we do a lot of things in certain patterns, and one of the patterns seems to be to choose mid October for conferences. Probably sounds sensible when planning it 8-10 months ahead, and I can easily imagine the discussion as if we’d had it ourselves: “We’ll have the conference next fall - mid term is probably best: after the term start and before the exams. Let’s make it mid October.”

And the result? A number of interesting conferences competing with each other.
As a participant of the Meta-analysis of gender and science research project I will be at the conference Beyond the leaky pipeline, 19-20 October 2010 in Brussels, Belgium.

Which means that I will miss out on HiNC3 where I’m also part of the program committee:
The Third IFIP WG 9.7 Working Conference on
History of Nordic Computing
HiNC3
18 - 20 October 2010
Stockholm, Sweden

And I will miss out on this:
NordiCHI 2010: Extending boundaries,
October 16th - 20th, 2010
Reykjavik, Iceland
(CFP Deadline April 12)

I could reach AoiR’s 11th conference, if I don’t go home in between:
Internet Research 11.0 – Sustainability, Participation
October 21-23, 2010 in Gothenburg, Sweden

Call for paper

Meta-analysis of gender and science research is inviting to the conference Beyond the leaky pipeline, to be heldt 19-20 October 2010 in Brussels, Belgium.

I have represented Norway in the Meta-analysis project. Working with this project has been really interesting, including going through research and debates on women in science and research from the early1980s until today. One of my favorites from this material is a quote from a letter from the early 1980s, written by a female researcher to the male minister of education, where she lists the first names of the newly elected members of the board of the faculty: all male, followed by ” That was all for now, Love” and her own first name: the only woman. Plain, straighforward, impossible not to see the absurdity of the situation. A lot of things have changed in Norway during the last three decades! Not only the changes, but also how we see (or don’t see) them is one of the things I’m working with at the moment, for instance in this short paper: “Disrupting the Impression of Stability in the Gender-Technology Relation” (presented at The 5th European Symposium on Gender & ICT, in Bremen last March).

There’s already a number of reports from the META-project online that would give an idea of the project and the kinds of discussions that will be of interest for the conference audience.

25-26th March 2010 in Bradford, United Kingdom

Programme isn’t out yet, but the list of invited speakers looks interesting.

Go to their web site for information and booking
http://www.womeningames.com/

The deadline for contributions to CATaC in Vancouver this June has been extended to February 18. Still time to write a paper!

Interested in computer history? This conference focus on the history of “Nordic Computing”:

The Third IFIP WG 9.7 Working Conference on
History of Nordic Computing
HiNC3
18 - 20 October 2010
Stockholm, Sweden

28 February: Deadline for contributions (extended abstracts or papers and suggestions).
Mail to hinc3pc@dsv.su.se

Call for Contributions

HiNC3 will take place in Stockholm 18 - 20 October 2010. Besides invited talks, contributed papers and panels, the conference will also honour the successful completion of a project on Swedish ICT history. Called “From Computing Machines to IT”, the Swedish Computer Society initiated the project with the support of the Division of History of Science and Technology at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) and the National Museum of Science and Technology.

Read more on the HiNC web page

This has been a week of intense inspiration.

Monday: I gave a lecture at a conference about “Maritime trade and industry - the last male bastion“: About gender and technology and women who risk being “sent back to the kitchen sink”.

Tuesday: JoinGame conference on Pervasive Games. There are many interesting Alternate Reality Games from Norway that I didn’t know about. Some of them already finished, like Rottenetter and Varg Veum, but also some, like Mørkeboka (The Dark Book) by Sigbjørn Mostue just about to be released.

Wednesday: A very inspiring talk by Charles Ess here at Digital Culture, about The Embodied Self in a Digital Age. Charles gave the kind of talk that makes you want to go home and read, write, produce!

The 5th European Symposium on Gender & ICT will be in Bremen later this week, and I’ll present a paper: Disrupting the Impression of Stability in the Gender-Technology Relation (short version here).

Abstract:

Technology researchers have emphasized changes caused by ICT during the last decades. Recent gender research emphasizes that both gender and technology are flexible categories. However, a recurring argument in feminist literature is that the situation of women in ICT “still” haven’t changed, despite three decades of continuous efforts, thus producing an impression of stability in the gender-technology relation. We still criticize mainstream research for being gender blind, but have we become blind to changes in the gender-ICT relation? This presentation invites to a thought-experiment, asking what we can learn from focusing on change, and exploring what seems to be a gap between the theoretical and empirical level of gender research.

I just returned after spending a week walking in the forests in Yorkshire. It’s amazing how far away from work a week like that can bring you! Good for health, bad for preparing conference presentations…

Istanbul is a nice place to visit, and the Equal Opportunities 2009 Conference, dealing with “equality, diversity and inclusion in the world of work”, could be a good excuse to do so.

I’ve been invited to present something at the stream about Gender equality and career progression in Science, Engineering and Technology, but there is a long list of workshops with other topics.

Important dates for this conference.

I’ve visited Istanbul before, but there are so many things to see that I would love to do it again!

Last week: THINKING MEDIA AESTHETICS in Oslo and JoinGame in Trondheim.

This week: WOMEN IN ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH in Paris!

Supermarit Bombastic

Exhibition, workshop, lectures and debates about women and games in Visby 13-15. September.