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/

#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.

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

Take care and love to all! #geekgirl

See you all in 2012. Geekgirl is now on holidaze!!

GNOME Outreach Program for Women internships #gnome #opensource #downunder #geekgirl

In an effort to get more women involved in Free Software, the GNOME project is sponsoring several internships for women from December 12, 2011 to March 12, 2012. These dates are aimed at the college women from the Southern Hemisphere who will have a school summer break during this time, but any woman available for a full time internship is welcome to apply. Please consider applying for the program, encourage someone else to apply, or help us spread the word!

The application deadline is October 31. The applicants need to get in touch with individual GNOME projects that participate in this effort ahead of time to decide which project they are interested in working on and make a small contribution to the project.

Participants will work remotely from home, while getting guidance from an assigned mentor and collaborating within their project’s team and the rest of the GNOME community. The projects include developing software for the core desktop, file management, messaging, popular applications, educational activities, and the platform libraries. There are also non-coding projects, such as graphic design, documentation, and marketing. The stipend for the program is $5,000
(USD).

Please visit http://www.gnome.org to learn more and apply. The mentorship opportunities are also available throughout the year for anyone interested in getting started contributing to GNOME outside of the internship program.

‘The art of Hacking’ with all my favourite gurls #hacking #ethics #code #geekgirl

With works by: Heath Bunting, Harmen de Hoop, moddr_, Cornelia Sollfrank, The Yes Men, ÜBERMORGEN.COM <http://xn--bermorgen-p9a.COM> and Nancy Mauro-Flude / Mez Breeze / Sara Platon. 
 
‘The art of Hacking’ focuses on the artistic side of hacking. The artists in this exhibition highlight the imperfections of our surroundings and daily lives. The projects subvert, improve on or circumnavigate ‘official’ systems and practices and offer alternatives. Superficially, hacking is often associated with spreading online viruses and other digital attacks. Officially these criminal activities are not really known as hacking, but as ‘cracking’. The real practice of hacking is done based on far more positive and artistic motives. It’s a state of mind and there are elaborate ethical codes within the hacker community. 
 
In short creative hacking combines artists’ technical skills with the optimism to solve problems and the urge to overcome artistic limitations. The basis for these works lies in a technical, online methodology that spreads into the physical world through the tangibility of the artworks. 
 
About the works:
The British artist Heath Bunting gives insight into the networks at play that constitute an identity, like banks, health care and education. By using these different networks Bunting creates new synthetic identities. In his ‘Identity Bureau’ one can purchase official and legal UK identities. This project has been made possible in collaboration with SKOR | Foundation for Art and Public Domain. http://irational.org/ 
 
The American creative activism duo, a pair of notorious troublemakers The Yes Men (Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno) targets leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else in order to publicly humiliate them, a practice that they call ‘identity correction’. Next to displaying a few projects by The Yes Men, NIMk collaborates on a ‘Yes Lab’ together with the Amsterdam Fringe Festival, the Dutch Theatre Festival, SKOR | Foundation for Art and Public Domain, and Partizan Publik. http://theyesmen.org/ 
 
The office installation “DOUBLETHINK Knowledge Bureau” reflects and demonstrates both the Austrian art collective UBERMORGEN.COM’s artistic actionism as well as the necessary tools and rules for any clandestine media hacking operation today. http://www.ubermorgen.com/ 
 
The Rotterdam based lab moddr_ has hacked digital ‘footprints’ with projects like ‘Web 2.0 Suicide Machine’ and continues to do so more recently with the ‘Bin Lover’ project; a new piece by moddr_ residence artist Philipp W. Teister. ‘Bin Lover’ gives trashed files a new lease of life. The piece cleverly uses the apparent security of desktops, and will be shown alongside a number of related projects. http://moddr.net/ 

The German artist Cornelia Sollfrank presents three works in which art hacking strategies are being used to deconstruct myths about genius, originality and authorship. http://www.artwarez.org/ 
 
And by using the work by the Dutch artist Harmen de Hoop, you yourself can get started as an activist by copying and spreading pamphlets containing the text ABOLI$H CAPITALI$M NOW! in the public domain. http://www.harmendehoop.com/ 
 
Error_in_Time(v.t_3)_ sister0, Ko66 and Netwurker_Mez give us insight into geek space from the perspective of a female hacker. This isn’t a work about identity – its about identity theft. Nancy Mauro-Flude: Artistic and Conceptual Director, in collaboration, like any good homebrewed craft, with Australian artist Mez Breeze explores environments that involve online socializations or encounters. http://unhub.com/netwurker
 
Swedish/Dutch Sara Platon founder of www.genderchangeracademy.com deals with computers the hard way, demystify its senses, follows the busroute to the CPU and touches it innerparts.

Nancy Mauro-Flude exiled co-founder of Moddr_&  a Genderchanger Academy convert, is based in Tasmania and continues her performance-based collaborations&  interrogations of the possibilities and constrictions of media technologies. http://sister0.tv/ 
 
  With:
 • An artist talk by Heath Bunting, Harmen de Hoop, and moddr_ on
 Sunday the 11th of September at 15.00 hrs.
 • A panel discussion on the subject of hacking moderated by Jaromil
 and Cecile Landman with Rop Gonggrijp, Karin Spaink, Patrice Riemens
 and Heath Bunting taking place in October.
 • moddr_ presents several workshops within the framework of ‘The Art
 of Hacking’. 
 
 Information about these activities will be announced on www.nimk.nl and via other social media. 

Science Graduates – Stop Explaining and Start Dancing! 2011 Dance Your Ph.D Contest #geekgirl @alexburns

_Science Graduates – Stop Explaining and Start Dancing! _  _2011 Dance Your Ph.D Contest :: Closes 10 October 2011_ 

The dreaded question: “So, what’s your Ph.D. research about?” You take a deep breath and launch into the explanation. People’s eyes begin to glaze over. At times like these, don’t you wish you could just turn to the nearest computer and show people an online video of your Ph.D. thesis interpreted in dance form?  Now you can. And while you’re at it, you can win $1000, achieve immortal geek fame on the Internet, and be recognized by Science for your effort.  This year, Dance Your Ph.D. is sponsored by TEDxBrussels. The creator of the best Ph.D. dance gets a free trip and hotel stay in Brussels to be crowned the winner at the TEDx conference on 22 
November 2011. http://gonzolabs.org/dance/

Make More Monsters – Deborah Kelly #monsters #geekgirl

beastliness by deborah kelly

Gallery Projects
20 July – 21 August 2011

Make More Monsters consists of two interrelated components that use the gallery space as a site of both presentation and production. The exhibition is an exhortation and an open-ended proposition: let us work, what can we make?  In the form of an evolving month-long workshop, interested participants will be invited to come and engage in a collective collage, using the vast array of sources and elements Deborah Kelly has collected since adolescence. 

Dedicated in part to marking twenty years since the publication of Donna Haraway’s 1991 Cyborg Manifesto, the workshops will consist of shared readings of this seminal work, and other texts suggested by participants, informal discussions thereof, as well as the collaborative creation of a large-scale collective collage. Make More Monsters is intended to prefigure optimised social relations; to rehearse, in the words of Sydney collective Squatspace, a brief utopia.  

Kelly will also present her most recent work Beastliness (2011), an animation based upon a series of analogue paper collages completed over the past three years, having worked with animators Christian Heinrich and Chris Wilson, as well as The Brutal Poodles who have produced the original soundtrack. Beastliness manifests and exemplifies a number of the central concerns within Kelly’s collage practice: the vigour of hybridity and the representation and mythologizing of the feminine.  

The workshops will be held at Artspace on Sundays 2-4pm for the duration of the exhibition, with a final session 2-4pm Saturday 20 August in which participants will decide the fate of the collective work.  

ARTSPACE, Sydney
43 – 51 Cowper Wharf Road
Woolloomooloo NSW 2011
Sydney Australia

T: +61 2 9356 0555
F: +61 2 9368 1705
artspace@artspace.org.au
www.artspace.org.au
Gallery Open 11am – 5pm Tues – Sun
Office Open 10am – 6pm Mon – Fri
Closed on public holidays
Admission is free, except for special events