The Eye of the Wikistorm

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By Jade Ulrich, Pitzer College

On Monday, December 2, a fellow FemTechNet (FTN) intern, Susie Ferrell, and I organized an event with funding that we were awarded from the Reclaim Open Learning Contest last summer. FemTechNet is an activated network of scholars, artists, and students who work on, with, and at the borders of technology, science and feminism in a variety of fields including STS, Media and Visual Studies, Art, Women’s Queer, and Ethnic Studies. Participants in the Feminist Dialogues on Technology course at Pitzer College, along with other interested students from the Claremont Colleges community, came together for this three-part event.

PitzerWikiStormStudents

Entitled “The Eye of the Wikistorm: The Future of Feminist Technoculture Histories,” we hosted a moderated discussion between Dr. Adrianne Wadewitz (Occidental College) and Professor Jacqueline Wernimont (Scripps College), to create a dialogue on the keyword, “WikiStorm.” We filmed the hour-long discussion between our two guests. I asked them how they see traditional academic work intersecting with public intellectual labor (such as Wikipedia), and then asked them to share their recent Wikipedia-related projects. To hear their answers, you will have to watch the WikiStorm Dialogue video, which will be up on the Commons as soon as it is edited!

WikiStormScripps PitzerWikiStormStudents2

Following this filmed dialogue, those in attendance embarked on their own Wiki-a-thon. The Wikistorming project seeks to engender a set of digital practices among women and girls, to teach and encourage their participation in writing the techno-cultural histories of the future by becoming active participants in the creation of global digital archives. Experienced Wikipedians helped the new editors, and great work was done on this digital encyclopedia. At the end of the evening, we all enjoyed a delicious Thai dinner, where we socialized and talked about why we were attending the event. Many of us had similar interests, and the conversation flowed easily. In the end, FemTechNet brought together a group of passionate people, filmed a dialogue video that we can add to the FTN archive for future use, and we enjoyed each other’s company throughout an evening of Feminist Technology Networking. What more could we ask for?