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This week I took at look at unconferences in Latin America, wondering if women were participating. BarCamp Buenos Aires will be happening next weekend, September 29; Soledad Chianese, one of the organizers and a blogger for web hosting company Elserver.com, is blogging about it.
Barcamp Sao Paulo (photo by Luísa Pécora)
Also coming up this fall is HispanicCamp, November 1, 2007, in Miami, organized by three bloggers there, Danay Escanaverino, Jackie Paz, and Mande White. Danay blogs about SEO and marketing to the Spanish-speaking internet. The organizers are starting off from their perspective on biz dev and marketing, and from their interests in women's rights and in technology I would bet that discussions will get interesting and political, as well as geeky. From the writeup of Barcamp México, this February, I found bloggers Sonia Sánchez, Felicia Salmoran Lopez, and Raquel Hernández (aka maggit, active in many Linuxand in free software groups).
I'm wondering what other BarCamps or unconferences we'll see in Latin America in the next year, and what role women will play in hosting and in participation. I've been to several BarCamps, organized a couple of them, have gone to other open space technical conferences and unconferences, like Supernova, Web2.Open, BlogHer Unconference. I'll be going to She's Geeky in October. On the West Coast of the U.S. I'm aware of several other women closely involved with BarCamp and similar unconferences; Kaliya Hamlin from She's Geeky, Tara Hunt from many BarCamps; Dawn Foster who has worked on several BarCamps in Portland, and Heathervescent and Crystal Williams in Los Angeles.
And, in a few weeks I'm going to Beijing, and so I tried to see if there were any tech meetups or small spontaneous conferences, and I also wondered what the gender balance was. BarCamp Beijing happened last month, and I've been reading Jodi Xu's notes and reading her blogroll and archives.
This whole train of thought was sparked as I got a few questions over IRC (on irc.freenode.net#barcamp) from another woman who is working on a Barcamp this fall. What was it like? And what was the attitude towards women who go to *camps, or who stand up to speak at them? Was anything different? I thought about all the conversations I've had about women at computer conferences, and felt that unconferences are changing that landscape. Here are some points that make unconferences great for women:
- low cost to participate, zero or no conference fees
- you don't have to commit to attend the whole thing
- loose structure, easier to participate if you have children
- you don't have to travel, you can organize one easily in your own region or city
- smaller communities develop, on a human scale, rather than big trade shows or expos of thousands
- you don't have to be an already-famous, L33t, expert to contribute (which I think makes for better cross fertilization of ideas in a field)
- feeling "not geeky enough", this is an internal barrier to some extent, but can be easily overcome by going to an unconference with a group of friends, and talking about whatever you're expert in, or would like to learn
But, the real answer to her question is something that Tara Hunt and Kaliya Hamlin have mentioned in recent posts. (The comments on Tara's post are especially interesting!) Women do the work, they participate, but men, especially in mainstream media, don't mention their names or link to them, and the guys working with them get the fame points.
If you have a career that's part time, in between, non traditional, then it can be hard to find (or to justify) the expense of professional conferences. I don't know what the situation is with geeky women in Latin America, other than what I read from a few blogs and mailing lists like linuxchix. But, I hope that as unconferences continue to take off in Latin American cities, there will be a lot of women speaking at them, adding their expertise and their perspective, and also that I'll get to read their reports of what happens.
I'll write more this week about Italy and FemCamp, to see if I can find posts answering their central question:
Siamo state un po’ in giro ai vari barcamp e la domanda è: dove diavolo sono finite le donne? Poche, troppo poche sia
