#CHIversity 2021

7May - by Angelika - 0 - In #CHIversity

CHIversity is a grassroots community-building, diversity, and inclusion campaign organised by fempower.tech since 2017. It was created by the group becuase we felt we needed to create more space for us to discuss feminist ideas, develop solidarity communities, to meet other likeminded people, and to have spaces to retreat to during the sometimes overwhelming CHI conference.

You can find out more about our past activities at the following link: https://fempower.tech/category/chiversity/

For this year’s CHIversity campaign, fempower.tech have planned a series of events and activities that will be facilitated/document through this miro board with discussions happening at http://tinyurl.com/chiversity2021-social. Feel free to pop into this room at any time, to have informal discussions!

CHI and CHIversity will be very different this year, with a virtual conference. This means that our CHIversity activities will be able to reach a much wider audience – which is brilliant! As always, our events are free and inclusive, welcoming anyone who is a feminist or is trying on that identity, or anyone who wants to find out more about what it means to be a feminist in technology research.

our Miro board has all this information in a visual format:

We are replicating all the information that we have on our miro board here, so we have it for posterity, and to make sure everything that is important is screen-reader accessible. If you want the more visual format of our programme of events and information, please go to this miro link: https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_lIUnw1c=/

Our programme of events

Use this link to access the video conferencing platform we’re using (wonder.me): http://tinyurl.com/chiversity2021-social

MONDAY:

TUESDAY:

WEDNESDAY:

THURSDAY:

We are using wonder.me as a video platform:

All our events will be hosted on wonder.me a social video conferencing platform. On that platform, you are able to move around the ‘room’ and create ‘circles’ with others so you can talk with them and share your screen. This will be open throughout the conference, so you can drop in at any time. However, we cannot promise there will always be someone in the room when you are looking to talk to someone. Because of that, we have created a series of events where there will always be someone in the room to talk to!

Wonder.me is a social platform that allows you to move around the screen as if you were in a room. We have organised our room in a way that it has a few different ‘areas’. These visually separate the room, and can give you starting points for discussion if you’re not sure what to talk about with some of the other people in the room.

Once in the room, you’re able to move around and talk to other people. You do that by joining a ‘circle’. Once you have joined this ‘circle’ you can share your microphone and video so you can hear and see everyone else who is in that specific circle.

The Platform allows for up to 15 people in one circle, but you can of course splinter off into smaller groups.

Once you are in a ‘circle’, you can lock it to create a private space, or keep it open for others to join. Please only make your ‘circle’ pricate, if you are discussing something confidential, or if there is a discussion about something that should remain private for whatever reason. The standard format should be that ‘circles’ remain open, though.

Our feminist CHI programme

We are still working on putting together a series of papers that we think you might be interested in. This will never be complete, as there are likely papers that we have missed. But we are trying our best.

CHIversity-curated-program-CHI-2021Download

Our Code of Conduct

This is not an official affiliated ACM event, nor is it officially connected to the CHI conference. However, it takes place at the same time as the CHI conference, with many of the organisers and attendees also participating in the CHI conference. As such, this board and the linked wonder.me room are all subject to the ACM harassment policies.

There are also some rules for the use of this board:

  • do not delete things that are on this board
  • we try to keep most of the frames locked when we are not running an activity, so things are not moved or deleted by accident

Since the #CHIversity campaign is run by a group of international volunteers, we cannot monitor this miro board or the wonder.me room at all times. We expect people who interact with our materials to do so in good faith, with kindness and care, and with an understanding of our ethos (see the ‘about fempower.tech’ frame). However, we have put some measures in place to support anyone, if something should happen. If you see something that should not be happening on here, please email either Reem (reem.talhouk@northumbria.ac.uk), Daniela (dmarkaz2@illinois.edu), or Emeline. They are themselves attending CHI at the same time as they have to complete their own work and study, so will not be able to respond immediately. However, they will respond as soon as possible. If you would like to bring this to the attention of others, you can also email on the fempower.tech mailing list (if you are a member…or contact someone in the group to find out how to join) or the Feminist HCI slack (again, contact someone in fempower.tech to find out how to join, if you are not already on there). There is also a ‘Help!’ frame on this miro board that you can use and get support from the wider community.

And finally, we are a diverse group of people. While we agree on many things, there will also be things that we don’t agree on. And not everything that is on this board will be agreed upon by fempower.tech members, CHIversity organisers, or people who participate in our activities.

About fempower.tech and some of our other activities

fempower.tech are an international network and collective of feminist researchers, practitioners, and activists working with digital technologies. They aim to raise awareness of feminist issues in technology research by being overtly critical and political within the field, raising voices of underrepresented groups and topics, presenting tangible outcomes, and taking on an activist role for this. They create supportive and collaborative environments in their workplaces, within academia, industry, and at international conferences.

We don’t stop working after the CHI conference. In fact, the CHIveristy campaign is just one of the many things we do! For example, we have written an Interactions blog post, have a weekly ☕️tea/coffee break (Wednesday 5pm BST / 12noon EST), and 💡monthly meetings to discuss activities, events, activism, and how we can be a better network and collective. Join our mailing list to find out when the next events are.

We do not have a hierarchical system, which means that whoever attends our regular meetings gets to decide what activities we engage in and how we do that. You can propose activities and events at the first meeting you attend, or can join meetings without having any particular thing in mind!

Angelika

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.