geekgirl

Call Out: 2012 Grace Hopper Celebration of #Women in #Computing #geekgirl

The 12th annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC) has opened its Call for Participation. The annual conference, presented by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, is the world’s largest gathering of women in computing. The Grace Hopper Celebration will take place from October 3 – 6, 2012 at the Baltimore Convention Center in Baltimore, Maryland. This year’s theme “Are We There Yet?” recognizes that technology and the culture of technology are continuously evolving but there are also concrete goals we are striving to achieve.

At the Grace Hopper Celebration, leading researchers present their current work while special sessions focus on the role of women in today’s technology fields, including computer science, information technology, research and engineering. The technical conference features well known keynote speakers and invited technical speakers, panels, workshops, new investigator technical papers, PhD forums, technical posters, birds of a feather sessions, the ACM Student Research Competition and an Awards Celebration. The attendees who range from students to executives use this global platform to get inspired, stay on top of emerging trends, learn and network.

http://gracehopper.org/2012/participate/call-for-participation/

The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is a program of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology.
http://anitaborg.org/

Steamscape #Melbourne #exhibiton #steampunk #geekgirl

steampunk bustle by clockwork butterfly

Clockwork Butterfly
www.clockworkbutterfly.net
Garments for the discerning Neo-Victorian

Exhibition Steamscape: A participant of the 2012 L’Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival Cultural Program 3rd – 25th March.

Steampunk is a movement that is best described as “victorian Science Fiction”. A rebellion against the mass production found in today’s consumer goods, it concentrates on individually crafted items that reflect the classical aesthetics of the late 19th century, with a twist of dynamic industrial influences and an often whimsical sense of fun.

The exhibition will feature the exquisite, timeless clothing creations of Clockwork Butterfly partnered with Jos Van Hulsens’s fantastical scupltural creations.

Post Industrial Design, 638 Barkly Street, West Footscray 3012.

love the robots: live robotics [putting this one in my diary] #Brisbane #robots #geekgirl

_love the robots :: Live Robotics Theatre at The Edge, Brisbane_
_Performance 2.00 – 5.00pm 28 January 2012 :: Live Streaming at
lovetherobots.com _
_love the robots _is a showcase combining media art, workshop, network
performance, informal lecture and discussion centered around the theme of
robots, contemporary art, culture and society. The hybrid format combines
practice, theory and an exhibition showcase, serving as a catalyst for an
international network of collaborations and contacts among local and
international artists and audiences.The _love the robots _event encourages
diverse creative and artistic approaches to the presentation, process,
production and practice of contemporary robotics, audience engagement and
community building. Artists will present live and via remote
participation. The performance will also be streamed live on the internet
to allow participation by audiences outside of Brisbane.

http://www.lovetherobots.com

[4]http://edgeqld.org.au/love-the-robots

Serial Space Time Machine Commission Call Out #experimental #arts #geekgirl

In  2012 Serial Space is introducing a brand new platform for the   development
and presentation of interdisciplinary and experimental art   practices: Time Machine
[http://serialspace.org/events/112/call-out-time-machine/].

Time Machine will be a week long festival of experimental, time-based art taking
place at alternative spaces across  Sydney during 16-29 July. In  the lead-up to
this festival, Serial  Space will offer a number of   commissions and development
residencies for  the creation of new work   to be presented in the festival. Serial
Space is seeking bold, ambitious, experimental and  exciting ideas to support
and  present as part of Time Machine.

Deadline: 19 February 2012

#Melbourne Media Lab #Sprint Call for Collaborators #unconstrained #hackers #geekgirl

MELBOURNE: MELBOURNE MEDIA LAB SPRINT CALL FOR COLLABORATORS
From 21 – 29 January Melbourne Media Lab [http://www.medialabmelbourne.com.au/sprints/]
will host the Unconstrained sprint (sprints are short periods of intensive project
development, based on a theme), an investigation into everyday  technologies and
the way in which they have become so complex, powerful  or taken for granted. Melbourne
Media Lab will be developing a number of parallel projects and brainstorming  various
topics to fruition. If you are interested in the social and  political dimensions
of technology or just like to have fun and/or enjoy  tinkering, crafting, performing,
hacking or sculpting, then come and be  part of the team. All disciplines are welcome.

Holy Families: a new artwork needs your help #ivf #renaissance #photography #families #geekgirl

holy-families

Please help Deborah Kelly  find subjects for her photographic portrait series!
She is looking for families, queer and straight and otherwise compiled, whose children have been conceived with the assistance of any reproductive technologies, from turkey basters to IVF.

Participants will …be posed in beautiful and serious formal arrangements based on renaissance Holy Family paintings of disputed provenance.

The work will be exhibited at the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane from April. All participating families will receive a signed, museum-quality artists’ proof of their portrait.

Deborah really needs your assistance, especially to find (any) families with little babies.

deborahkelly@iinet.net.au
until Friday, March 23, 2012 at 12:30am
Any city in Australia

Melbourne Mini Maker Faire – follow up for bits, bobs and knobs. #steampunk #hackers #robogals #arduino #geekgirl

The atrium at Swinburne Jan 14th, (2012) for Melbourne Mini Maker Faire was bursting with busy people making ‘things’. Cardboard boxes were de rigueur: so were peeps travelling from one session to another like industrious ants scurrying to erect a new home. Such are the vicissitudes of people who make things – synapses crammed with crafty ideas and soldered attitudes. It was a pretty good arvo, with all ages and sexes, from whack to knack, hackers to robogals! Here are just a few of things I discovered: plus I now know I really want a 3D printer, and that red teapot (or any teapot) made by @atosha.

@atosha
http://www.mortartown.com
About
My name is Atosha McCaw and I am a graphic designer. I work for a trade union. I am also one of the founding directors of Creative Unions, www.creativeunions.org, a not for profit aimed at improving the level and reputation of graphic design in trade unions.

Prof. Uncle Festa
Steampunk Inventions
- Inventor – Explorer – Artist – Philosopher
profunclefesta.wordpress.com
About
I grew up with steam trains, well model ones at least. Some of my earliest memories are of beautiful old trains roaring around a track, and a live steam engine making a wheel turn rapidly. Very exciting! And then along came Michael Moorcock’s great book “Warlord of the Air” which I read in about 1974 at the ripe old age of 14. Then I got fully into cyberpunk novels and the whole cyberpunk role-playing and sub-culture in the 90s.

Jump forward to Neal Stephenson’s “Diamond Age” in the late 90s and I was fully hooked on what became known as Steampunk. I’ve always made things rather than buy them where possible, from a very simple mechanical computer in the mid 70s, through to a kit computer in late 70s, to a fish-pond recycling system last year, and along the way various steampunk things. Well I’ve missed out 20 years of various cyberpunk and steampunky things, but I’ll show some on this site…stayed tuned old chaps and ladies.

freetronics
www.freetronics.com
About
Freetronics designs, sells and supports a range of flexible, easy to use Arduino-compatible boards and modules (right here in Melbourne). Arduino is the most popular microcontroller board in the world/ It’s been used to make robots, home automation gadgets, automotive projects, for sensing and controlling lights, motors, locks and servos, sound and video, interative objects like animated sculptures, toys and games, radio link and just about anything else you can dream up!

Hack melbourne
Connected Community HackerSpace
http://www.hackmelbourne.org/
Next meetup CCHS
Tuesday general meeting
Tue, 31 January, 18:00 – 22:00
Camberwell, Victoria
General meeting, open to all.
Email AndyG at Geekscape or Twitter DM @geekscape for specifics.

Humanity+ @Melbourne with Aubrey de Grey
(picked up a flyer)
Aubrey de Grey has seen much attention about his theories on robust rejuvenation.

Here is an article in the Age in 2005:

“With the right engineering and maintenance, humans can live until they are 1000″, says Aubrey de Grey. John Elder investigates.

AUBREY DE GREY looks like a scrawny Ned Kelly, with his beer-catching beard and red-rimmed eyes, a thriving survivor of the long past. His name suggests someone born a long time ago. Maybe it’s a name that will come back in vogue hundreds of years hence?

Dr Aubrey de Grey — despite his love of ale and junk food — hopes to be there, walking around in that far-away future. De Grey says he knows what is required to cure ageing.”

See Aubrey speak at Humanity+, 5 -6 May 2012 — Location to be announced.

Squarebit
www.squarebit.com.au
facebook.com/squarebit
About
Squarebit is an online store stocking useful electronic bits for students, hobbyists, hackers, experts and anyone else interested in learning about electronics!

robogals Melbourne
http://melbourne.robogals.org.au
About
Robogals is an International, student-run, organisation whose goal is to increase the number of females pursuing engineering in their tertiary studies and in their careers.

Gay Nuptials Wedding Cake Bash! “Whack shit without Fear” #bridezillas #midsumma #Melbourne #geekgirl

On January 22^nd, women in bouffant gowns and stylin’ tuxes will converge in Fitzroy’s Edinburgh gardens for an all-in wedding cake brawl – in the name of equal love and as part of the Midsumma Festival.

The ‘Gay Nuptials Cake Bash’ is the latest in a series of women’s only fights held by ‘Femme Fight Club’ over the past two years from Melbourne to Berlin. The fights are non-spectator and were conceived as a place where women could express their natural aggression without fear of judgement or injury. In keeping with this weapons have included tomatoes, flowers, wine, wet newspapers, breadsticks, balloons, lettuce and beer.

As event organiser Casey Jenkins explains “We’re more interested in breaking stereotypes than bones”

For the bash on January 22^nd, they’ll be fighting for something more: marriage equality.

“Femme Fights are all about trying to break down old fashioned prejudiced assumptions about gender,” says Jenkins, “We find the fact that Australia is still so blatantly discriminatory and obsessed with genitals, by dictating who we can love and commit to based on gender, appalling. It makes us want to chuck, so that’s what we’re going to do.”

Jenkins hopes the cake fight will send a message to the Government that women aren’t going to sit pretty waiting for change; they’re prepared to get up and fight for gender equality in marriage.

The event is for anyone who identifies as female, is strictly non-spectator (you show, you biff) and adults only though child minders will be on site. The cakes, which are vegan and made largely from discarded ingredients, will be provided and the rubble collected at the end of the event for compost. Provisions will be made to include those who have physical conditions such as being preggas or sporting broken limbs.

The fight will be followed by a reception with live music so we can lick our tasty wounds.

 Event Details:

Where: Edinburgh Gardens, Fitzroy, by the rotunda
Melbourne, Australia
Date: Sunday 22 January
Time: 3pm
Price: Full $8; Concession $6 (through Midsumma.org.au)
Duration: 60 mins approx

Dress: Bridezilla

Links: http://www.midsumma.org.au/component/jevents/icalrepeat.detail/2012/01/15/1419/-/-

http://www.facebook.com/FemmeFightClub

“Barbielicious” LEGOs. Does LEGO design only for boys? Or does it sell stereotypes? #dontdumbdown #lego #geekgirl

space-rocket-lego

Iconic toy brand LEGO recently launched a new line of toys meant just for girls — but two young women, Bailey Shoemaker-Richards and Stephanie Cole, think the products are unfairly “dumbed down” for girls.

The new line is called LadyFigs, and it’s made up of busty, pastel-colored figurines that come with interests like shopping, hair-dressing, and lounging at the beach. The uninspired toys even come with pre-assembled environments — so there is no assembly (or imagination) required.

Bailey and Stephanie say they’re frustrated that LEGO is pushing outdated gender roles on girls and cheating them of the opportunity to build and discover. So they took to the internet, blogging about what they call the new “Barbielicious” LEGOs and petitioning the toy company to lose the sexist LadyFigs line and go back to empowering both boys and girls with its original products. Click here to sign Bailey and Stephanie’s petition today.

LEGO hasn’t always thought its toys were only for boys. In the 1980s, the company was actually celebrated for a major advertising campaign that spotlighted a young girl and her LEGO creation with the tagline “What it is is beautiful.” But since then, LEGO reversed course and decided to market its products only to boys.

The company claims its research shows girls just don’t appreciate the original LEGO line. But Bailey and Stephanie argue that with LEGO’s renewed emphasis on boys — featuring only boys in its ads and stocking products in the boys’ aisles of toy stores — it’s no wonder young girls wouldn’t think LEGOs were meant for them.

Bailey and Stephanie’s fight to get LEGO to return to its gender-neutral toys is already making waves, with the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Time weighing in on the issue. But LEGO is stubbornly holding its ground and told Business Week that the LadyFigs launch is a “strategic” move to “reach the other 50 percent of the world’s children,” as if girls have never been part of LEGO’s focus.

Public pressure can prove LEGO wrong. If enough people sign Bailey and Stephanie’s petition, it could convince LEGO that the new LadyFigs are bad business and the company should return its focus to empowering boys AND girls with toys that inspire creativity and innovation.

Tell LEGO to stop selling out girls — sign Bailey and Stephanie’s petition today.

Editor’s note: Not everyone agrees and there have been some pretty funky designs built by gurls & boys using the new vibrant brick colours.. (One used them to build a spaceship.) I think it’s a personal choice if you want to condemn LEGO for being driven by what their marketing department tells them what girls actually want. LEGO has tried to counter-act the bad press (even though it’s damage control, rather than genuine insight): and it never hurts to make them think about delivering product to a mixed market with several different goals and interests.GG xox

Entries Now Open: The Other Film Festival #disability #cinema #geekgirl

THE OTHER FILM FESTIVAL 2012 ENTRIES NOW OPEN!

Yes, it’s on again! Australia’s only disability film festival is calling for films made by, with or about people with a disability or who are deaf.

Films may be any form, genre or length. Click HERE for details about how to enter a film.

New!
All entrants will receive a five-day Festival Pass, including our fabulous Opening Night party. Your film will also receive a title page on IMDb.com, the world’s leading film database.

Entries Close 16 March 2012

About The Festival
Since 2004, The Other Film Festival has screened an international program of outstanding contemporary cinema about the experience of disability. In September 2012, the festival will offer forums on cinema, access and disability-related issues, there will be workshops and opportunities for professional development and some surprise international guests that we will announce closer to the festival.

The festival will continue to lead global-best practice in cinema access. In 2012, all films will be captioned (or subtitled) and audio-described; the festival venue will be fully wheelchair accessible; Auslan interpreters will sign all spoken events; and the program will be available in a range of alternative accessible formats.

» Take me to The Other Film Festival webpage