#CHIversity 2017

Hi,

We would like to work with CHI organisers, leaders, and the community to turn the conference into a more diversity and feminist friendly space. We noticed that you are doing some really cool work, so wanted to invite you to help us out!

Just to say a little bit about who ‘we’ are: We are fempower.tech, a group of intersectional feminists who aim to raise awareness of feminist issues in HCI by being overtly critical and political of the field, giving voice to underrepresented groups and topics, presenting tangible outcomes, and taking on an activist role for this. We are based at Open Lab, Newcastle University and aim to create a supportive and collaborative environment within Open Lab, academia, industry, and beyond.

We’ve got a few things planned to make feminisms and diversity more visible at CHI this year, but also to create tangible artefacts that illustrate feelings people have towards CHI.

• Twitter: We would like people to tweet using the #CHIversity hashtag. We will be doing this from all the keynotes, the diversity lunch, paper sessions, SIGs, workshops, or other times at the conference where we see something that we think should be highlighted.
• Zines: On Wednesday we will have a zine making workshop and dinner to collate all the pages of zines that have been made throughout the conference, as well as look at all the #CHIversity tweets to make a few zines together. We will then share these widely with CHI leaders and the CHI community.
• Blogging: If you’d like to be more involved, we will use our website (openlab.ncl.ac.uk/fempower.tech) as a space to host blog posts about experiences people have at CHI. Let us know if you’d like to write a short piece about a particular experience!
• Fundraising: Please come chat to us about how to donate for Planned Parenthood. We will be cross stitching their logo to raise awareness and to encourage donations for the charity.  
• CHI Programme: We are collating a list of papers that address topics of inclusion, feminisms, social justice, or diversity to make these sessions more visible. Let us know if you want your paper to be featured! 

Throughout the conference we will be hosting little pop up stalls where you can come chat to us, help us make a page or two for a zine or support our cross stitch craftivism.

If you like what we are doing, please share this e-mail with your networks, and please do get involved in any or all of the above ways to make feminisms and diversity more visible at CHI!

Feel free to also have a look around our website to learn more about who we are and what we do beyond our #CHIversity campaign. Follow us on twitter (@fempowertech) for updates the events that we will be running at CHI.

To get in touch with us, please feel free to @ or DM us on twitter or e-mail Angelika at a.strohmayer@ncl.ac.uk if you have any questions, comments, or concerns.

Cheers,
Angelika and the rest of fempower.tech