Gender, open technology and culture

The ADA Initiative

The Ada Initiative (http://adainitiative.org/) is a newly-formed organisation which aims to support and promote women in open technology and culture. They have just launched their first annual census — a broad survey of open technology and culture participants — to find out more about what projects and communities people are involved in, and how they feel about women’s inclusion and representation in the field.

The term “open technology and culture” is used to refer to a wide range of activities and communities based around free/open licenses, and other forms of open, decentralised, and grassroots participation in technology and related fields. This includes:

Open source/free software
Open source hardware
Open geodata and maps
Open government
Open data
Open standards and formats
Open educational initiatives (open access journals, open source curricula, etc)
Open/decentralised social networking (including Diaspora, StatusNet, etc)
Creative Commons and free culture
Wikipedia and other wikis
Open crisis response and humanitarian projects
Barcamps and unconferences
Online/digital activism
Remix/mashup culture
Transformative works fandom, including fan fiction, fan art, and fan vidding
Maker/DIY community
Hacker spaces
Coworking

If you’re involved in any of the above areas, we’d like to get to know who you are, what you’re working on, and your thoughts on how women are doing in your community. We welcome participation by people of any gender, although we are particularly interested in women’s responses.

The survey only takes about five minutes, and can be found at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/adacensus2011-email

It would be great if you could do this survey – if you are of the appropriate gender persuasion.  Male participants can also be involved….

All the best

S

 

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