[okfn-discuss] Women comfortable at speaking at events...

Mon Nov 25 18:33:10 UTC 2013

Hi Gene,

Open Knowledge topics often overlap in informal discussion with technology
topics, since so many OK people utilise technology to a great extent when
doing their OK work. Currently there is a shortage of female speakers in
tech - this is definitely the current view though I don't have data handy
to support it. Actually having data is a bit irrelevant at this stage since
it's so widely accepted, unless you happen to be a researcher specialising
in gender bias in tech.

So those initiatives may not necessarily refer to what you first thought
they refer to, i.e. they don't refer to particular subdomains of Open
Knowledge, e.g. "how biology does Open Knowledge".

The thing is Open Knowledge and tech topics *do* overlap precisely because
of the skills needed to perform the massive data publishing, analysis and
data crunching / visualisation that OK has come to be associated it. So at
an Open Knowledge event quite a lot of the talks (more than half? e.g.
OKCon 2013) will be "how to do this great thing which involves this
technology". Which means that there will be a bias towards a male panel,
and to a lesser extent nowadays, a male audience.

Obviously Open Knowledge is growing beyond "what the techies do with the
data" and that's been a big point in a lot of OKFN's work recently, but
they still converge in conversation.

That's just my understanding of it.

Greetings,
Emanuil

On 25 November 2013 18:12, Gene Shackman <eval_gene at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
> Is this related to open knowledge? Or is it just advertising.
>
> In the areas I'm in, I don't see any dominance of male speakers.
>
>
> Gene
>
>
> ------------------------------
> On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 9:11 AM PST Zara Rahman wrote:
>
> >Perhaps this is of interest to you; the Articulate network is a
> >directory of women speakers in tech and creative industries, aimed at
> >"saving the world from all-male conferences, one event at a time." ;-)
> >
> >It's free to sign up, and if you are organising an event you can also
> >browse through potential speakers online too:
> >http://articulate-network.lanyrd.com/
> >
> >Hope to see many more of you speaking at events very soon!
> >
> >Best,
> >
> >Zara
> >
> >--
> >Zara Rahman
> >International Community Manager | skype: zara.rahman | @zararah
> ><http://www.twitter.com/zararah>
> >The Open Knowledge Foundation <http://www.okfn.org>
> >/Empowering through Open Knowledge/
> >http://www.okfn.org | @okfn <http://www.twitter.com/okfn> | OKF on
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>
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