1 00:00:08,373 --> 00:00:10,578 Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome 2 00:00:10,578 --> 00:00:12,711 the chair of Wikimania 2012, 3 00:00:12,711 --> 00:00:14,996 James Hare. 4 00:00:14,996 --> 00:00:24,039 [applause] 5 00:00:24,039 --> 00:00:25,815 Good morning everyone. 6 00:00:25,815 --> 00:00:28,260 On behalf of Wikimedia District of Columbia 7 00:00:28,260 --> 00:00:29,808 I would like to welcome all of you 8 00:00:29,808 --> 00:00:32,256 to Wikimania 2012. 9 00:00:32,256 --> 00:00:41,793 [applause] 10 00:00:41,793 --> 00:00:44,920 I would like to thank our partners and collaborators: 11 00:00:44,920 --> 00:00:47,778 the US Department of State Office of E-Diplomacy, 12 00:00:47,778 --> 00:00:49,262 the Library of Congress, 13 00:00:49,262 --> 00:00:50,890 the Wikimedia Foundation, 14 00:00:50,890 --> 00:00:52,565 Wikimedia Deutschland, 15 00:00:52,565 --> 00:00:55,077 the National Archives and Records Administration, 16 00:00:55,077 --> 00:00:58,264 OpenHatch, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, 17 00:00:58,264 --> 00:00:59,364 for working with us to make 18 00:00:59,364 --> 00:01:01,136 this conference possible. 19 00:01:01,136 --> 00:01:09,422 [applause] 20 00:01:09,422 --> 00:01:11,185 I would also like to thank our sponsors: 21 00:01:11,185 --> 00:01:15,165 Google, Ask.com, Zoomph, the Encyclopedia of Life, 22 00:01:15,165 --> 00:01:17,630 the Richard Lounsbery Foundation, Wikia, 23 00:01:17,630 --> 00:01:19,842 the Saylor Foundation and wikiHow 24 00:01:19,842 --> 00:01:21,900 for their generous contributions. 25 00:01:21,900 --> 00:01:27,896 [applause] 26 00:01:27,896 --> 00:01:29,054 Finally, I would like to thank 27 00:01:29,054 --> 00:01:31,131 our incredible conference organizing team 28 00:01:31,131 --> 00:01:33,139 which has been working in one way or another 29 00:01:33,139 --> 00:01:37,333 since January 22nd 2011 to make 30 00:01:37,333 --> 00:01:39,130 this conference possible. 31 00:01:39,130 --> 00:01:41,895 Nicholas Bashour, Katie Filbert, Tiffany Smith, 32 00:01:41,895 --> 00:01:45,288 Orsolya Virág, Deror Lin, Sage Ross, 33 00:01:45,288 --> 00:01:47,732 Chad Horohoe, and our legion of volunteers 34 00:01:47,732 --> 00:01:49,535 all led by Danny B. 35 00:01:49,535 --> 00:01:58,084 [cheers and applause] 36 00:01:58,084 --> 00:01:59,165 I would also like to point out 37 00:01:59,165 --> 00:02:00,367 that during this conference there will be 38 00:02:00,367 --> 00:02:02,631 many side events taking place during the evening. 39 00:02:02,631 --> 00:02:04,679 Tonight we have GLAM Night Out at the Newseum 40 00:02:04,679 --> 00:02:06,367 and the official Wikimania Happy Hour 41 00:02:06,367 --> 00:02:08,524 sponsored by Zoomph at Tonic. 42 00:02:08,524 --> 00:02:09,738 Check out the information desk on the 43 00:02:09,738 --> 00:02:11,205 third floor of the Marvin Center if you'd 44 00:02:11,205 --> 00:02:16,526 like to learn more about our side events. 45 00:02:16,526 --> 00:02:17,883 I'm glad you could join us this morning 46 00:02:17,883 --> 00:02:19,285 with this excellent weather. 47 00:02:19,285 --> 00:02:21,614 You see, I edited the Wikipedia article 48 00:02:21,614 --> 00:02:23,026 on DC summers to say that 49 00:02:23,026 --> 00:02:25,671 we don't have 100 degree heat waves 50 00:02:25,671 --> 00:02:27,759 and apparently it worked! 51 00:02:27,759 --> 00:02:32,907 [laughter and applause] 52 00:02:32,907 --> 00:02:34,855 If you have attended a previous Wikimania 53 00:02:34,855 --> 00:02:36,103 welcome back! 54 00:02:36,103 --> 00:02:37,492 If this is your first Wikimania, 55 00:02:37,492 --> 00:02:38,798 I'd like to introduce you to the 56 00:02:38,798 --> 00:02:40,508 events of the next few days. 57 00:02:40,508 --> 00:02:42,521 Wikimania is where you go to meet the people 58 00:02:42,521 --> 00:02:44,847 who work on Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 59 00:02:44,847 --> 00:02:47,122 which is maintained by volunteers 60 00:02:47,122 --> 00:02:49,756 and operated by the Wikimedia Foundation 61 00:02:49,756 --> 00:02:52,823 That's Wikimedia with an "M". 62 00:02:52,823 --> 00:02:56,877 The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organization 63 00:02:56,877 --> 00:02:59,673 that runs Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, 64 00:02:59,673 --> 00:03:03,637 Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikinews, Wikiversity, 65 00:03:03,637 --> 00:03:06,096 Wikispecies, the MediaWiki software project, 66 00:03:06,096 --> 00:03:08,966 Wikimedia Commons, and I'd like to introduce 67 00:03:08,966 --> 00:03:12,557 our latest project under development, WikiData. 68 00:03:12,557 --> 00:03:18,602 [applause] 69 00:03:18,602 --> 00:03:20,743 Volunteers for all these projects and more 70 00:03:20,743 --> 00:03:23,066 will be here today, discussing their latest findings, 71 00:03:23,066 --> 00:03:25,933 and pondering the future of the Wikimedia projects. 72 00:03:25,933 --> 00:03:30,016 It is going to be an exciting four days. 73 00:03:30,016 --> 00:03:32,446 But first I would like to introduce our first speaker 74 00:03:32,446 --> 00:03:33,846 Dawn Nunziato. 75 00:03:33,846 --> 00:03:35,922 Professor Nunziato is an internationally recognized 76 00:03:35,922 --> 00:03:39,450 expert in the area of free speech and the Internet. 77 00:03:39,450 --> 00:03:41,646 Her primary teaching and scholarship interests 78 00:03:41,646 --> 00:03:45,234 are in the areas of Internet law, free speech and digital copyright. 79 00:03:45,234 --> 00:03:46,599 She recently published her book 80 00:03:46,599 --> 00:03:49,932 "Virtual Freedom: Net Neutrality and Free Speech in the Internet Age" 81 00:03:49,932 --> 00:03:51,710 and has lectured and written extensively on 82 00:03:51,710 --> 00:03:53,880 issues involving free speech and the Internet. 83 00:03:53,880 --> 00:03:57,107 Ladies and gentlemen, Professor Dawn Nunziato. 84 00:03:57,107 --> 00:04:01,107 [applause] 85 00:04:06,724 --> 00:04:09,795 Good morning and thank you for that kind welcome. 86 00:04:09,795 --> 00:04:12,530 On behalf of GW Law School 87 00:04:12,530 --> 00:04:16,808 I'd like to welcome you all to our Lisner auditorium. 88 00:04:16,808 --> 00:04:19,160 It's a great honor for GW Law School 89 00:04:19,160 --> 00:04:21,737 to partner with the Department of State 90 00:04:21,737 --> 00:04:25,329 on important and exciting events like this one. 91 00:04:25,329 --> 00:04:29,118 And GW Law School, under our relatively new dean, 92 00:04:29,118 --> 00:04:32,481 Paul Berman, is particularly committed to 93 00:04:32,481 --> 00:04:36,845 bridging the gap between the ivory tower of academia 94 00:04:36,845 --> 00:04:42,616 and the real world of law and policy and practice. 95 00:04:42,616 --> 00:04:44,842 We're particularly committed to capitalizing 96 00:04:44,842 --> 00:04:48,502 on our location in the nation's capital 97 00:04:48,502 --> 00:04:51,998 and are very honored to sponsor and support 98 00:04:51,998 --> 00:04:54,021 events like this. 99 00:04:54,021 --> 00:04:58,154 As we said, at GW Law, professors like myself 100 00:04:58,154 --> 00:05:01,651 are particularly focused on cyberlaw issues. 101 00:05:01,651 --> 00:05:06,966 I teach in the area of Internet law, digital copyright 102 00:05:06,966 --> 00:05:08,719 and free speech. 103 00:05:08,719 --> 00:05:12,981 And toward that end with Microsoft's generous support 104 00:05:12,981 --> 00:05:16,456 my colleague Artuno Carrillo and I created 105 00:05:16,456 --> 00:05:19,179 a program and a speaker series 106 00:05:19,179 --> 00:05:22,352 on global Internet freedom and human rights. 107 00:05:22,352 --> 00:05:24,363 We're very excited to be sponsoring 108 00:05:24,363 --> 00:05:25,742 a number of speakers in connection with 109 00:05:25,742 --> 00:05:27,110 that speaker series: 110 00:05:27,110 --> 00:05:29,986 Vint Cerf is going to come and speak to us 111 00:05:29,986 --> 00:05:31,663 in a couple of months; 112 00:05:31,663 --> 00:05:35,487 Ai Weiwei, Chinese human rights activist, 113 00:05:35,487 --> 00:05:38,506 is hopefully going to be let out of China 114 00:05:38,506 --> 00:05:42,252 to come speak to us on global Internet freedom issues; 115 00:05:42,252 --> 00:05:44,323 we sponsored Rebecca MacKinnon, 116 00:05:44,323 --> 00:05:46,941 the author of "Consent of the Networked", 117 00:05:46,941 --> 00:05:50,272 an Internet free speech activist, 118 00:05:50,272 --> 00:05:52,639 last year as part of the Distinguished Speaker Series, 119 00:05:52,639 --> 00:05:54,728 so we're really excited about that. 120 00:05:54,728 --> 00:05:59,377 GW Law was recently chosen to be the new home 121 00:05:59,377 --> 00:06:02,688 of the Federal Communications Law Journal, 122 00:06:02,688 --> 00:06:04,253 we look forward to working with the 123 00:06:04,253 --> 00:06:06,418 Federal Communications Bar here in DC 124 00:06:06,418 --> 00:06:09,181 on cutting-edge issues of communications law. 125 00:06:09,181 --> 00:06:13,865 And in connection with that, FCC Chairman Genachowski 126 00:06:13,865 --> 00:06:15,328 is going to come to speak to us 127 00:06:15,328 --> 00:06:18,595 to launch that new journal in a few months. 128 00:06:18,595 --> 00:06:22,073 So we're very active on these types of issues 129 00:06:22,073 --> 00:06:25,259 and we're very exciting to be sponsoring 130 00:06:25,259 --> 00:06:28,061 and supporting events like these. 131 00:06:28,061 --> 00:06:30,525 I'm also very proud of the work of my colleagues 132 00:06:30,525 --> 00:06:33,884 Dan Solove and Orin Kerr, 133 00:06:33,884 --> 00:06:35,315 who you may be familiar with, 134 00:06:35,315 --> 00:06:37,215 who are leaders in the areas of 135 00:06:37,215 --> 00:06:40,348 Internet privacy and cybercrime. 136 00:06:40,348 --> 00:06:41,404 So we've got a lot going on here 137 00:06:41,404 --> 00:06:44,763 at GW Law, and in particular our new dean, 138 00:06:44,763 --> 00:06:49,676 Paul Berman, is a world-reknowned expert in Internet law issues 139 00:06:49,676 --> 00:06:52,249 and the author of a well-regarded casebook 140 00:06:52,249 --> 00:06:54,473 on the subject. 141 00:06:54,473 --> 00:06:57,665 So once again welcome to all of you 142 00:06:57,665 --> 00:07:00,105 and on with the show! 143 00:07:00,105 --> 00:07:05,320 [applause] 144 00:07:05,320 --> 00:07:07,438 At Wikimania we have the great privilege 145 00:07:07,438 --> 00:07:09,550 of working with the US Department of State 146 00:07:09,550 --> 00:07:11,141 for our Tech@State track. 147 00:07:11,141 --> 00:07:14,488 Our next speaker Richard Boly is a career US diplomat 148 00:07:14,488 --> 00:07:17,102 and the current Director of the Office of eDiplomacy 149 00:07:17,102 --> 00:07:21,037 an applied technology think tank for the US Department of State. 150 00:07:21,037 --> 00:07:23,138 Previously he was a National Security Affairs Fellow 151 00:07:23,138 --> 00:07:25,722 at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University 152 00:07:25,722 --> 00:07:28,259 where he launched a global entrepreneurship program. 153 00:07:28,259 --> 00:07:30,263 Ladies and gentlemen, Richard Boly. 154 00:07:30,263 --> 00:07:38,325 [applause] 155 00:07:38,325 --> 00:07:41,726 Good morning Wikipedians and Wikimedians! 156 00:07:41,726 --> 00:07:47,010 [applause] 157 00:07:47,010 --> 00:07:48,169 My name's Richard Boly and 158 00:07:48,169 --> 00:07:51,063 I am part of the Office of eDiplomacy 159 00:07:51,063 --> 00:07:53,656 at the State Department, despite the suit, 160 00:07:53,656 --> 00:07:57,849 we feel that we are kindred spirits with you! 161 00:07:57,849 --> 00:08:00,195 Uh, actually I would like to ask 162 00:08:00,195 --> 00:08:03,848 all the people from eDiplomacy here to stand up briefly 163 00:08:03,848 --> 00:08:07,060 just stand up so you can search them out 164 00:08:07,060 --> 00:08:08,885 and find out more about what we're doing. 165 00:08:08,885 --> 00:08:14,285 [applause] 166 00:08:14,285 --> 00:08:15,963 We're so excited about being able to partner 167 00:08:15,963 --> 00:08:19,111 with you and with GW Law School 168 00:08:19,111 --> 00:08:22,892 and we will have as part of our Tech@State track 169 00:08:22,892 --> 00:08:24,865 some really interesting presentations 170 00:08:24,865 --> 00:08:27,994 which dovetail perfectly with the conference. 171 00:08:27,994 --> 00:08:31,979 Actually one of the two best known platforms 172 00:08:31,979 --> 00:08:34,360 that we have or products that we offer 173 00:08:34,360 --> 00:08:37,374 in eDiplomacy are Tech@State, 174 00:08:37,374 --> 00:08:39,256 this quarterly conference on the convergence 175 00:08:39,256 --> 00:08:42,258 of technology, foreign policy and development; and 176 00:08:42,258 --> 00:08:45,886 the other is Diplopedia, built on MediaWiki. 177 00:08:45,886 --> 00:08:47,991 And you'll get a chance tomorrow morning to hear 178 00:08:47,991 --> 00:08:49,700 from Tiffany Smith and Chris Bronk 179 00:08:49,700 --> 00:08:51,734 who will be talking about that as part of 180 00:08:51,734 --> 00:08:55,670 the Tech@State track. 181 00:08:55,670 --> 00:08:57,420 I also wanted to give a shout out to Tim Hayes 182 00:08:57,420 --> 00:08:59,509 who has been curating these Tech@States, 183 00:08:59,509 --> 00:09:01,066 and I think he's still over at the Marvin Center 184 00:09:01,066 --> 00:09:02,255 checking people in. 185 00:09:02,255 --> 00:09:04,327 Tim has been a huge driver in making 186 00:09:04,327 --> 00:09:07,100 this collaboration possible. 187 00:09:07,100 --> 00:09:11,868 But really, my goal here is to bring the words 188 00:09:11,868 --> 00:09:14,615 of our Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. 189 00:09:14,615 --> 00:09:17,167 The Secretary of State would have loved to have been here 190 00:09:17,167 --> 00:09:18,641 but unfortunately is travelling. 191 00:09:18,641 --> 00:09:21,792 And she did pen a letter that she asked me 192 00:09:21,792 --> 00:09:24,762 to share with you and we will scan the signed letter 193 00:09:24,762 --> 00:09:29,813 and make it available obviously on the wiki website. 194 00:09:29,813 --> 00:09:32,641 So here goes. 195 00:09:32,641 --> 00:09:34,003 Dear friends, 196 00:09:34,003 --> 00:09:36,733 On behalf of the US Department of State, 197 00:09:36,733 --> 00:09:40,301 I am delighted to extend my heartfelt congratulations 198 00:09:40,301 --> 00:09:43,652 on the opening of Wikimania 2012 199 00:09:43,652 --> 00:09:47,042 and the Tech@State Wiki.gov. 200 00:09:47,042 --> 00:09:49,106 I commend each of you for your dedication 201 00:09:49,106 --> 00:09:51,441 to enhancing global understanding 202 00:09:51,441 --> 00:09:53,565 through the many projects and initiatives 203 00:09:53,565 --> 00:09:57,553 that the Wikimedia Foundation supports. 204 00:09:57,553 --> 00:10:00,045 Wikimania 2012 highlights the intersection 205 00:10:00,045 --> 00:10:02,640 of government and community goals. 206 00:10:02,640 --> 00:10:05,644 It demonstrates how we are breaking down the barriers 207 00:10:05,644 --> 00:10:08,779 between governments and the citizens they serve 208 00:10:08,779 --> 00:10:11,831 by making readily available critical information 209 00:10:11,831 --> 00:10:15,253 that is often difficult to find. 210 00:10:15,253 --> 00:10:17,049 The US Department of State supports these 211 00:10:17,049 --> 00:10:20,355 endeavours in technology, knowledge sharing, 212 00:10:20,355 --> 00:10:22,822 and community building, as they are important 213 00:10:22,822 --> 00:10:26,927 pillars of our 21st century state-craft agenda. 214 00:10:26,927 --> 00:10:29,903 I am a staunch advocate of bringing technology 215 00:10:29,903 --> 00:10:32,850 and knowledge to citizens around the world 216 00:10:32,850 --> 00:10:35,007 and I believe it is vitally important that 217 00:10:35,007 --> 00:10:38,270 our diplomats understand the huge potential 218 00:10:38,270 --> 00:10:40,253 of using connection technologies 219 00:10:40,253 --> 00:10:43,917 as a way to reach foreign audiences. 220 00:10:43,917 --> 00:10:45,793 The world is more connected now 221 00:10:45,793 --> 00:10:47,478 than ever before. 222 00:10:47,478 --> 00:10:50,260 But there is still much work to be done 223 00:10:50,260 --> 00:10:52,734 to fully capitalize on the potential of 224 00:10:52,734 --> 00:10:55,030 this interconnection. 225 00:10:55,030 --> 00:10:56,077 There are many people who are 226 00:10:56,077 --> 00:10:59,781 disenfranchised because they lack access to information. 227 00:10:59,781 --> 00:11:01,424 There are others whose contribution would 228 00:11:01,424 --> 00:11:04,630 make our collective knowledge richer 229 00:11:04,630 --> 00:11:08,036 but they face risks and difficulties in doing so. 230 00:11:08,036 --> 00:11:10,467 Your work in the Wikimedia Foundation 231 00:11:10,467 --> 00:11:13,071 contributes greatly to achieving our shared goal 232 00:11:13,071 --> 00:11:17,601 of making information more open and accessible. 233 00:11:17,601 --> 00:11:19,025 Thank you for your efforts 234 00:11:19,025 --> 00:11:21,338 and please know you have my best wishes 235 00:11:21,338 --> 00:11:25,749 for a productive and enjoyable Wikimania 2012. 236 00:11:25,749 --> 00:11:28,089 With appreciation and best regards, 237 00:11:28,089 --> 00:11:31,070 I am, sincerely yours, signed, 238 00:11:31,070 --> 00:11:32,920 Hillary Rodham Clinton. 239 00:11:32,920 --> 00:11:33,916 Thank you. 240 00:11:33,916 --> 00:11:45,596 [applause] 241 00:11:45,596 --> 00:11:47,319 Now I would like to introduce 242 00:11:47,319 --> 00:11:50,535 our keynote speaker for Wikimania 2012, 243 00:11:50,535 --> 00:11:52,125 Mary Gardiner. 244 00:11:52,125 --> 00:11:53,460 She is an open source developer, 245 00:11:53,460 --> 00:11:55,120 computer science graduate student, 246 00:11:55,120 --> 00:11:56,823 and women in open source advocate 247 00:11:56,823 --> 00:11:59,138 with over 10 years of experience. 248 00:11:59,138 --> 00:12:01,368 Mary's research is in lexical semantics 249 00:12:01,368 --> 00:12:03,713 and concentrates on how changes in word choice 250 00:12:03,713 --> 00:12:06,275 can affect meaning and tone. 251 00:12:06,275 --> 00:12:07,893 Before entering graduate school she worked 252 00:12:07,893 --> 00:12:09,980 as a senior software engineer for a year 253 00:12:09,980 --> 00:12:11,866 and contributed code to the Python-based 254 00:12:11,866 --> 00:12:13,584 Twisted project. 255 00:12:13,584 --> 00:12:16,343 In 2011, she co-founded the Ada Initiative, 256 00:12:16,343 --> 00:12:19,068 supporting women in open technology and culture. 257 00:12:19,068 --> 00:12:21,379 Ladies and gentlemen, Mary Gardiner. 258 00:12:21,379 --> 00:12:25,379 [applause] 259 00:12:34,507 --> 00:12:35,885 Good morning Wikimanians, 260 00:12:35,885 --> 00:12:39,240 good morning Tech@State attendees. 261 00:12:39,240 --> 00:12:45,570 [laughter] 262 00:12:45,570 --> 00:12:49,338 So as interesting as computational lexical semantics 263 00:12:49,338 --> 00:12:52,845 and computational sentiment analysis are 264 00:12:52,845 --> 00:12:55,059 I am not going to talk about my PhD work today 265 00:12:55,059 --> 00:12:57,338 I am talking about my new project, 266 00:12:57,338 --> 00:12:59,287 work with my new project, the Ada Initiative, 267 00:12:59,287 --> 00:13:01,537 which is a US-based non-profit 268 00:13:01,537 --> 00:13:03,722 supporting women in open technology and culture, 269 00:13:03,722 --> 00:13:06,878 which very much includes wiki projects 270 00:13:06,878 --> 00:13:08,461 and other open knowledge projects, 271 00:13:08,461 --> 00:13:13,238 also open source, remix culture, open government, 272 00:13:13,238 --> 00:13:15,458 open data projects and similar. 273 00:13:15,458 --> 00:13:17,176 And what I'm going to talk about specifically 274 00:13:17,176 --> 00:13:19,530 is fostering diversity in these kinds of projects. 275 00:13:19,530 --> 00:13:23,260 Broadly, uh, not only gender diversity 276 00:13:23,260 --> 00:13:26,191 but diversity across different economic backgrounds, 277 00:13:26,191 --> 00:13:28,793 different geographic origins, different ethnic origins, 278 00:13:28,793 --> 00:13:31,744 and so on. 279 00:13:31,744 --> 00:13:33,759 Ah, so I subtitled my talk maybe 280 00:13:33,759 --> 00:13:35,803 in a slightly inflammatory way, 281 00:13:35,803 --> 00:13:40,293 I wrote "not a boring chore, a criticial opportunity" 282 00:13:40,293 --> 00:13:42,217 because there can this temptation 283 00:13:42,217 --> 00:13:45,478 hopefully not succumbed to too much within this room 284 00:13:45,478 --> 00:13:49,091 to view diversity as essentially a PR exercise 285 00:13:49,091 --> 00:13:55,326 that a more diverse project looks better. 286 00:13:55,326 --> 00:13:58,995 It is however of course crucial in a project 287 00:13:58,995 --> 00:14:03,104 with a mission like that of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects 288 00:14:03,104 --> 00:14:08,554 to encompass some, in the case of Wikipedia 289 00:14:08,554 --> 00:14:13,038 an encyclopedia covering the um, the sum of human knowledge 290 00:14:13,038 --> 00:14:16,883 ultimately, obviously to incorporate the sum of human knowledge 291 00:14:16,883 --> 00:14:21,174 you need to incorporate the sum of humans in some crucial way. 292 00:14:21,174 --> 00:14:26,482 So it should be fairly obvious that therefore 293 00:14:26,482 --> 00:14:35,939 diversity is one of the key goals of Wikimania projects. 294 00:14:35,939 --> 00:14:39,169 OK, so first of all I just want to talk a little bit about 295 00:14:39,169 --> 00:14:41,220 wiki projects as social change. 296 00:14:41,220 --> 00:14:44,878 Uh, it's not what everyone involved in wiki projects 297 00:14:44,878 --> 00:14:47,941 is aiming for, uh, I mean there are different 298 00:14:47,941 --> 00:14:49,956 reasons you want to build the sum of human knowledge 299 00:14:49,956 --> 00:14:53,249 and creating social change is only one of them. 300 00:14:53,249 --> 00:14:56,379 But it is something that happens as we build these projects 301 00:14:56,379 --> 00:14:59,378 and make them freely available, that things change 302 00:14:59,378 --> 00:15:01,452 both because of the project and ah, 303 00:15:01,452 --> 00:15:06,060 with the momentum of the projects. 304 00:15:06,060 --> 00:15:08,716 So just ah as a very narrow example, 305 00:15:08,716 --> 00:15:11,674 this is from Joseph Reagle's keynote last year, 306 00:15:11,674 --> 00:15:13,109 he mentioned the Aardwolf article 307 00:15:13,109 --> 00:15:15,693 back in 2001 on Wikipedia, 308 00:15:15,693 --> 00:15:18,478 back when each Wikipedia title had to 309 00:15:18,478 --> 00:15:20,140 contain at least two captial letters, 310 00:15:20,140 --> 00:15:23,939 which is why it's AardwolF with a captial F. 311 00:15:23,939 --> 00:15:30,565 And South AfricA, yes, so it has a terminal A and so forth. 312 00:15:30,565 --> 00:15:34,509 Anyway so apparently the article read in total 313 00:15:34,509 --> 00:15:36,965 "Aardwolf, small animal from South Africa, 314 00:15:36,965 --> 00:15:38,861 related to the hyena, lives in the ground, 315 00:15:38,861 --> 00:15:41,027 nocturnal hunter." 316 00:15:41,027 --> 00:15:46,229 And now you have the typical Wikipedia zoological article 317 00:15:46,229 --> 00:15:49,848 with zoological classifications, behavior characteristics, 318 00:15:49,848 --> 00:15:51,413 geographic distribution and so on. 319 00:15:51,413 --> 00:15:52,814 So, OK, so that's not social change, 320 00:15:52,814 --> 00:15:56,166 that's Wikipedia changing. 321 00:15:56,166 --> 00:16:02,325 Stepping out to one particular individual. 322 00:16:02,325 --> 00:16:08,247 That, that's me when I was fourteen years old. 323 00:16:08,247 --> 00:16:09,690 The reason this is not the most flattering 324 00:16:09,690 --> 00:16:11,882 photo of me at fourteen years old is that 325 00:16:11,882 --> 00:16:13,828 I mean I was pretty sort of awkward and gawky and so on 326 00:16:13,828 --> 00:16:15,482 but it's not the most flattering photo 327 00:16:15,482 --> 00:16:17,696 and the reason is that I asked my father to scan these 328 00:16:17,696 --> 00:16:19,145 and this was the most flattering photo 329 00:16:19,145 --> 00:16:20,096 of the ones he sent. 330 00:16:20,096 --> 00:16:24,235 [laughter] 331 00:16:24,235 --> 00:16:26,868 So the Wikipedia related point here is that 332 00:16:26,868 --> 00:16:30,755 I was a pretty nerdy teenager, um, I would have been 333 00:16:30,755 --> 00:16:31,608 about fourteen. 334 00:16:31,608 --> 00:16:33,048 For my fourteenth birthday I got 335 00:16:33,048 --> 00:16:34,595 a reference work for my birthday. 336 00:16:34,595 --> 00:16:36,952 It was "The Penguin Book of Curious Interesting Numbers". 337 00:16:36,952 --> 00:16:39,264 It goes from minus one up to Graham's number 338 00:16:39,264 --> 00:16:42,699 skipping some numbers in between. 339 00:16:42,699 --> 00:16:47,129 Ah, and I read it in numerical order. 340 00:16:47,129 --> 00:16:49,304 And this is a person who really needed Wikipedia, 341 00:16:49,304 --> 00:16:53,304 but it didn't exist. 342 00:16:53,769 --> 00:16:58,434 OK, so now that person, when I wrote these slides 343 00:16:58,434 --> 00:17:01,326 these were the last fifteen or so Wikipedia pages 344 00:17:01,326 --> 00:17:02,935 that showed up in my browser history 345 00:17:02,935 --> 00:17:05,139 skipping all articles I read on individual 346 00:17:05,139 --> 00:17:06,640 members of the Beatles, because 347 00:17:06,640 --> 00:17:08,019 that wouldn't be very interesting. 348 00:17:08,019 --> 00:17:11,469 [laughter] 349 00:17:11,469 --> 00:17:12,850 So, you know, OK, that's not social — 350 00:17:12,850 --> 00:17:15,347 I mean that's social change in that it affected me 351 00:17:15,347 --> 00:17:18,554 but it's important to note that like, 352 00:17:18,554 --> 00:17:21,719 I am in my early thirties 353 00:17:21,719 --> 00:17:23,545 I've been taken from this thing of you know 354 00:17:23,545 --> 00:17:25,810 having my one book, my one precious book 355 00:17:25,810 --> 00:17:27,291 of numbers that you know 356 00:17:27,291 --> 00:17:30,643 I read to death, through to be able to 357 00:17:30,643 --> 00:17:33,633 read about colorectal cancer and T-Mobile USA 358 00:17:33,633 --> 00:17:40,014 in the same two day period. 359 00:17:40,014 --> 00:17:43,385 OK. Uh, again social change that Wikipedians 360 00:17:43,385 --> 00:17:44,684 are very familiar with. 361 00:17:44,684 --> 00:17:48,524 In 1990 Encyclopedia Britannica sold, had their 362 00:17:48,524 --> 00:17:50,277 highest sales volume before or since of 363 00:17:50,277 --> 00:17:53,437 120 000 printed copies of the encyclopedia. 364 00:17:53,437 --> 00:17:56,124 I never had one, I spent most of my— 365 00:17:56,124 --> 00:17:57,343 maybe not when I was fourteen 366 00:17:57,343 --> 00:18:01,553 but I spent most of my pre-teen years wishing that I did. 367 00:18:01,553 --> 00:18:04,730 OK, well, a couple of years ago as you know 368 00:18:04,730 --> 00:18:07,098 they sold around 8500 copies and they closed 369 00:18:07,098 --> 00:18:08,561 their printed edition down 370 00:18:08,561 --> 00:18:09,798 but they did report that they had 371 00:18:09,798 --> 00:18:12,283 450 million visits to their website. 372 00:18:12,283 --> 00:18:15,954 That does include the Merriam-Webster dictionary. 373 00:18:15,954 --> 00:18:21,452 Way back in 2006, practically pre-history, 374 00:18:21,452 --> 00:18:23,613 18% of the world's population was using the Internet 375 00:18:23,613 --> 00:18:27,490 only 3% of the, of the two continents listed here 376 00:18:27,490 --> 00:18:29,843 are the two smallest percentages reported on 377 00:18:29,843 --> 00:18:32,820 that Wikipedia page that I'm using as a reference. 378 00:18:32,820 --> 00:18:34,252 And I'm told you're not meant to do that, 379 00:18:34,252 --> 00:18:35,816 I'm not sure if that's true in this crowd. 380 00:18:35,816 --> 00:18:37,897 [laughter] 381 00:18:37,897 --> 00:18:40,947 3% of the African population using the Internet 382 00:18:40,947 --> 00:18:43,079 and 11% of the Asia-Pacific population 383 00:18:43,079 --> 00:18:45,209 using the Internet. 384 00:18:45,209 --> 00:18:48,980 OK, again using Wikipedia as a reference 385 00:18:48,980 --> 00:18:52,678 35% of the world's population using the Internet, 386 00:18:52,678 --> 00:18:57,622 13% of the African population, a four times increase. 387 00:18:57,622 --> 00:19:00,359 27% of the Asia-Pacific population, more than doubled 388 00:19:00,359 --> 00:19:01,711 using the Internet. 389 00:19:01,711 --> 00:19:04,393 So here we have real social change. 390 00:19:04,393 --> 00:19:08,071 And Encyclopedia Britannica has gone away 391 00:19:08,071 --> 00:19:10,796 and 35% of the world's population is using the Internet. 392 00:19:10,796 --> 00:19:13,069 So this is the kind of story that as you know 393 00:19:13,069 --> 00:19:15,605 Wikimedia projects are part of. 394 00:19:15,605 --> 00:19:18,003 The mooted at least death of print, 395 00:19:18,003 --> 00:19:22,993 open access, e-books, ultimately the Internet. 396 00:19:22,993 --> 00:19:29,198 OK, so we get to the topic of diversity 397 00:19:29,198 --> 00:19:30,577 and how that relates. 398 00:19:30,577 --> 00:19:37,295 So, the good news with Wikipedia is that 399 00:19:37,295 --> 00:19:44,809 as Internet projects go it's definitely a very diverse project 400 00:19:44,809 --> 00:19:46,625 along many dimensions. 401 00:19:46,625 --> 00:19:49,773 At the end of May there were 285 Wikipedias, 402 00:19:49,773 --> 00:19:52,102 four of them had over a million articles, 403 00:19:52,102 --> 00:19:57,375 forty including that four — English, German, French, Dutch — 404 00:19:57,375 --> 00:19:58,760 I think are the four, 405 00:19:58,760 --> 00:20:00,838 have a hundred thousand articles, 406 00:20:00,838 --> 00:20:03,190 112 have at least ten thousand articles. 407 00:20:03,190 --> 00:20:05,406 So that's 112 different languages 408 00:20:05,406 --> 00:20:07,229 you can read ten thousand articles 409 00:20:07,229 --> 00:20:09,834 about human knowledge in. 410 00:20:09,834 --> 00:20:12,410 That's extremely diverse. 411 00:20:12,410 --> 00:20:15,045 There are of course somewhere between 412 00:20:15,045 --> 00:20:16,652 it depends on what you define as a language 413 00:20:16,652 --> 00:20:22,092 somewhere between 3000 and 8000 languages spoken worldwide 414 00:20:22,092 --> 00:20:24,478 of which the vast majority have no written form 415 00:20:24,478 --> 00:20:30,215 but maybe that ultimately that won't stop Wikimedia projects. 416 00:20:30,215 --> 00:20:32,672 But I'm not here today to argue that 417 00:20:32,672 --> 00:20:35,893 there's a linguistic diversity problem at least with, 418 00:20:35,893 --> 00:20:39,804 as compared with your competitors. 419 00:20:39,804 --> 00:20:43,264 OK, again. some figures from the Wikipedia survey of 2010 420 00:20:43,264 --> 00:20:45,137 of editors and contributors. 421 00:20:45,137 --> 00:20:46,364 The pie chart shows every country 422 00:20:46,364 --> 00:20:49,851 that constituted more than 1% of respondants. 423 00:20:49,851 --> 00:20:52,604 A great number of diverse countries represented here. 424 00:20:52,604 --> 00:20:59,356 Poland, the Czech Republic, China, the USA, Russia, and so on, 425 00:20:59,356 --> 00:21:01,919 India is in there, although as a share of 426 00:21:01,919 --> 00:21:05,656 its world population it's vastly underrepresented. 427 00:21:05,656 --> 00:21:09,065 OK, so less good news again as many people here will know 428 00:21:09,065 --> 00:21:14,100 is that about a third of Wikipedia readers 429 00:21:14,100 --> 00:21:15,537 who responded to this survey 430 00:21:15,537 --> 00:21:17,787 reported being women. 431 00:21:17,787 --> 00:21:19,567 And even less good news is that 432 00:21:19,567 --> 00:21:22,712 slightly less than a tenth of the editors 433 00:21:22,712 --> 00:21:24,228 reported being women despite 434 00:21:24,228 --> 00:21:29,710 women comprising 51% of the world's population. 435 00:21:29,710 --> 00:21:35,598 Ah, which, one is inclined to suspect that there is a link. 436 00:21:35,598 --> 00:21:37,798 That if women are not using Wikipedia, 437 00:21:37,798 --> 00:21:39,308 if they are not finding it useful 438 00:21:39,308 --> 00:21:40,712 in the same numbers that men do, 439 00:21:40,712 --> 00:21:46,949 they find it even less interesting to contribute to. 440 00:21:46,949 --> 00:21:48,961 So in addition to other factors 441 00:21:48,961 --> 00:21:52,445 the usefulness and representativeness 442 00:21:52,445 --> 00:21:55,772 of the knowledge contained within Wikimedia projects 443 00:21:55,772 --> 00:21:58,337 will affect the willingness of diverse people 444 00:21:58,337 --> 00:22:02,317 to contribute to them. 445 00:22:02,317 --> 00:22:05,065 Okay. So having made this argument that 446 00:22:05,065 --> 00:22:11,932 Wikimedia projects are part of social change 447 00:22:11,932 --> 00:22:15,714 whether or not Wikimedia projects are always 448 00:22:15,714 --> 00:22:19,631 intending to drive social change, they are in some way part of social change 449 00:22:19,631 --> 00:22:22,265 and sometimes they are intending to be part of 450 00:22:22,265 --> 00:22:25,166 driving social change, giving people like my 451 00:22:25,166 --> 00:22:28,201 fourteen-year-old self more information about 452 00:22:28,201 --> 00:22:29,755 colo-rectal cancer. 453 00:22:29,755 --> 00:22:36,164 I want to talk a little bit about the general 454 00:22:36,164 --> 00:22:38,516 principles of diversity. So if we wish to increase diversity 455 00:22:38,516 --> 00:22:41,130 in the project, well, why do you want to do that? 456 00:22:41,130 --> 00:22:44,169 And then I'll say a little something about 'how'. 457 00:22:44,169 --> 00:22:47,750 Okay. So the term used a little bit in some of 458 00:22:47,750 --> 00:22:50,731 the literature about instrumental diversity 459 00:22:50,731 --> 00:22:53,681 in particular: so, instrumental diversity is essentially 460 00:22:53,681 --> 00:22:58,548 the question of how diverse participation make 461 00:22:58,548 --> 00:23:02,031 Wikimedia projects better. 462 00:23:02,031 --> 00:23:06,207 So, the argument would be: we have people 463 00:23:06,207 --> 00:23:07,864 with different perspectives and different knowledges 464 00:23:07,864 --> 00:23:10,948 coming in - their knowledge might make Wikipedia 465 00:23:10,948 --> 00:23:13,683 more comprehensive, more representative 466 00:23:13,683 --> 00:23:15,297 Okay, that's instrumental 467 00:23:15,297 --> 00:23:17,298 because you are primarily arguing for diversity 468 00:23:17,298 --> 00:23:20,831 in order to help Wikipedia rather than the other way around 469 00:23:20,831 --> 00:23:23,580 You can argue the other way around: 470 00:23:23,580 --> 00:23:26,964 that a more representative Wikimedia project 471 00:23:26,964 --> 00:23:31,581 with knowledge to more people will benefit those people 472 00:23:31,581 --> 00:23:34,814 At the extreme end, the instrumental argument 473 00:23:34,814 --> 00:23:39,337 is sort of the PR argument - that is one of the instrumental arguments. 474 00:23:39,337 --> 00:23:41,914 It makes us look better to have diversity 475 00:23:41,914 --> 00:23:46,175 so that helps us. It also makes the actual product better. 476 00:23:46,175 --> 00:23:48,063 So you have to balance these arguments. 477 00:23:48,063 --> 00:23:50,406 You can't think entirely in terms of instrumental diversity 478 00:23:50,406 --> 00:23:52,697 because it's not fair to the people you are asking 479 00:23:52,697 --> 00:23:54,664 to give to you. 480 00:23:54,664 --> 00:23:57,477 It has to be an exchange where 481 00:23:57,477 --> 00:24:01,098 in order to ask people to make the Wikimedia 482 00:24:01,098 --> 00:24:04,199 projects better, there has to be some 483 00:24:04,199 --> 00:24:09,684 way the Wikimedia projects plan to serve those people. 484 00:24:09,684 --> 00:24:18,219 We have here one of the more difficult things 485 00:24:18,219 --> 00:24:19,752 to accept about diversity: 486 00:24:19,752 --> 00:24:21,998 this slogan, "nothing about us without us" 487 00:24:21,998 --> 00:24:24,593 comes out of the disability activist community 488 00:24:24,593 --> 00:24:29,869 which in turn adopted it from the foreign affairs community 489 00:24:29,869 --> 00:24:39,664 What this is is essentially you cannot dictate 490 00:24:39,664 --> 00:24:42,497 to people with a particular interest: 491 00:24:42,497 --> 00:24:43,738 you cannot tell women, you cannot tell people 492 00:24:43,738 --> 00:24:45,631 with different ethnic backgrounds and so on 493 00:24:45,631 --> 00:24:47,730 "this is how we are making things better for you" 494 00:24:47,730 --> 00:24:52,099 "This is good, we have done this" 495 00:24:52,099 --> 00:24:55,094 If you choose not to accept this, you are 496 00:24:55,094 --> 00:24:57,677 being ungrateful and diversity is no longer our problem 497 00:24:57,677 --> 00:24:59,878 it is yours. 498 00:24:59,878 --> 00:25:02,343 This is difficult, right, because you have a vicious 499 00:25:02,343 --> 00:25:04,582 cycle. Well, you don't have any people from 500 00:25:04,582 --> 00:25:07,012 a certain background participating 501 00:25:07,012 --> 00:25:11,993 but then there's nobody to ask to participate 502 00:25:11,993 --> 00:25:15,759 so you end up spinning your wheels. 503 00:25:15,759 --> 00:25:17,744 So the question then is outreach. 504 00:25:17,744 --> 00:25:20,485 You simply have to identify your failings 505 00:25:20,485 --> 00:25:23,018 and reach out to people. 506 00:25:23,018 --> 00:25:27,977 Essentially, keep the project, keep the discussions 507 00:25:27,977 --> 00:25:30,627 open to criticism which says 508 00:25:30,627 --> 00:25:34,280 this would make it easier for you to participate, 509 00:25:34,280 --> 00:25:38,400 this would make it beneficial for me to participate. 510 00:25:38,400 --> 00:25:40,834 Constantly asking, constantly listening to their 511 00:25:40,834 --> 00:25:42,628 responses and believing them. 512 00:25:42,628 --> 00:25:49,781 Talking just quickly about the rationale for diversity: 513 00:25:49,781 --> 00:25:55,378 in the Western liberal philosophical tradition, 514 00:25:55,378 --> 00:25:57,112 the traditional argument is it promotes oneness 515 00:25:57,112 --> 00:25:59,213 and harmony, essentially. 516 00:25:59,213 --> 00:26:02,883 That as people talk more, we will converge 517 00:26:02,883 --> 00:26:07,221 on one point of view, converge on one culture 518 00:26:07,221 --> 00:26:09,944 and one way of thinking. 519 00:26:09,944 --> 00:26:12,761 As I expect you know, that's not a very popular 520 00:26:12,761 --> 00:26:14,394 view at present. 521 00:26:14,394 --> 00:26:20,077 A more contemporary argument is that it 522 00:26:20,077 --> 00:26:22,393 enables all people to change and grow. 523 00:26:22,393 --> 00:26:26,232 To integrate contact between diverse peoples 524 00:26:26,232 --> 00:26:29,750 allows them to borrow from each other while 525 00:26:29,750 --> 00:26:31,893 continuing to maintain some of their differences 526 00:26:31,893 --> 00:26:33,918 both in points of view and cultural traditions 527 00:26:33,918 --> 00:26:35,378 and so on. 528 00:26:35,378 --> 00:26:38,080 So, very quickly, an example of this discussed 529 00:26:38,080 --> 00:26:41,465 by Peter Emberley in a 2011 book chapter 530 00:26:41,465 --> 00:26:45,228 is two Indian art cultures that are both affiliated 531 00:26:45,228 --> 00:26:47,598 with religious practice. 532 00:26:47,598 --> 00:26:57,733 The Docra(?) of India are sculptors traditionally 533 00:26:57,733 --> 00:27:01,549 sculpting the divine forms. 534 00:27:01,549 --> 00:27:04,577 And Emberley argues that as they have had more 535 00:27:04,577 --> 00:27:07,543 contact with Western culture in particular, 536 00:27:07,543 --> 00:27:11,366 that their art forms, especially in the younger artists, 537 00:27:11,366 --> 00:27:16,195 while continuing to maintain artist-driven, 538 00:27:16,195 --> 00:27:19,844 culture-driven integrity to themselves 539 00:27:19,844 --> 00:27:23,888 are moving away from divine forms to secular forms 540 00:27:23,888 --> 00:27:28,866 and moving into 2D rather than 3D representations, 541 00:27:28,866 --> 00:27:30,692 but at the same time, not moving to actually 542 00:27:30,692 --> 00:27:33,093 produce Western art. 543 00:27:33,093 --> 00:27:40,362 Likewise, the Baul people who are Bengali musicians, 544 00:27:40,362 --> 00:27:46,710 Emberley argues in the music produced by the 545 00:27:46,710 --> 00:27:52,361 younger people now, they are starting to move 546 00:27:52,361 --> 00:27:55,552 again towards some representation of less 547 00:27:55,552 --> 00:28:00,804 eternal, more ephemeral aspects of human nature 548 00:28:00,804 --> 00:28:03,478 and they are utilising things like musical notation, 549 00:28:03,478 --> 00:28:08,094 musical recording, anthropological recordings of their own culture 550 00:28:08,094 --> 00:28:10,934 in order to maintain it. But at the same time, 551 00:28:10,934 --> 00:28:13,911 viewing themselves as continuing in their own 552 00:28:13,911 --> 00:28:16,310 traditions, integrating the aspects of Western 553 00:28:16,310 --> 00:28:20,149 modernity that they can use but without moving 554 00:28:20,149 --> 00:28:23,993 their music towards a more mainstream Indian 555 00:28:23,993 --> 00:28:29,049 or Anglo style of music, but allowing them to 556 00:28:29,049 --> 00:28:32,828 access the audience through modern means. 557 00:28:32,828 --> 00:28:35,718 So in terms of Wikimedia projects, you may have 558 00:28:35,718 --> 00:28:39,469 the same effect, part of the contribution of 559 00:28:39,469 --> 00:28:41,393 Wikimedia projects in documenting the sum of 560 00:28:41,393 --> 00:28:43,478 human knowledge is allowing people to preserve 561 00:28:43,478 --> 00:28:46,493 their own traditions and ways of thinking 562 00:28:46,493 --> 00:28:51,932 for themselves rather than necessarily only 563 00:28:51,932 --> 00:28:54,549 benefiting me as a person who wants to learn 564 00:28:54,549 --> 00:28:56,432 more about Indian art. 565 00:28:56,432 --> 00:29:00,631 Okay, I wanted to talk about, well, this has been 566 00:29:00,631 --> 00:29:01,931 very abstract. What do we do 567 00:29:01,931 --> 00:29:04,953 if we want to recruit diverse peoples? 568 00:29:04,953 --> 00:29:07,012 And I just wanted to talk about some 569 00:29:07,012 --> 00:29:08,478 general principles there. 570 00:29:08,478 --> 00:29:11,561 The first is, so Sue Gardner has mentioned this 571 00:29:11,561 --> 00:29:13,760 in conversations about various things, is the 572 00:29:13,760 --> 00:29:17,355 power of invitation is one way of talking about this. 573 00:29:17,355 --> 00:29:20,899 So there's a story about this that I know fairly well. 574 00:29:20,899 --> 00:29:24,943 In 2006, the GNOME free desktop project, 575 00:29:24,943 --> 00:29:28,176 they ran Google Summer of Code. 576 00:29:28,176 --> 00:29:30,815 It's a programming project - Google 577 00:29:30,815 --> 00:29:34,103 Summer of Code invites university students 578 00:29:34,103 --> 00:29:39,713 working on the project with a stipend. 579 00:29:39,713 --> 00:29:43,516 They got 200 applications and there were zero from women. 580 00:29:43,516 --> 00:29:45,779 You know, zero with an '0'. 581 00:29:45,779 --> 00:29:54,870 Two GNOME developers - Chris Ball and Hannah Wallach - created what 582 00:29:54,870 --> 00:29:57,127 they called the GNOME Women's Outreach Project, 583 00:29:57,127 --> 00:30:00,046 which was almost - they were paid slightly less money 584 00:30:00,046 --> 00:30:04,598 - almost identical to the Google Summer of Code 585 00:30:04,598 --> 00:30:08,461 except it was the GNOME Women's Outreach Project. 586 00:30:08,461 --> 00:30:10,997 They received 186 applications, I believe, 587 00:30:10,997 --> 00:30:13,576 all of them from women. 588 00:30:13,576 --> 00:30:15,801 There was some question: why didn't they apply 589 00:30:15,801 --> 00:30:18,414 for the other one, which was the same except 590 00:30:18,414 --> 00:30:20,726 paying slightly more money and slightly more 591 00:30:20,726 --> 00:30:22,685 prestigious in that you were selected from 592 00:30:22,685 --> 00:30:24,677 a wider field. 593 00:30:24,677 --> 00:30:26,917 The answer seems to be somewhere between 594 00:30:26,917 --> 00:30:30,143 two things: 595 00:30:30,143 --> 00:30:31,535 you have a picture of a woman computing student 596 00:30:31,535 --> 00:30:33,978 and you read a thing saying "spend your summer 597 00:30:33,978 --> 00:30:36,102 working on a coding project", you have a picture 598 00:30:36,102 --> 00:30:38,628 in your head of someone who's not necessarily 599 00:30:38,628 --> 00:30:42,900 you working on a summer coding project. 600 00:30:42,900 --> 00:30:45,394 It's usually that guy, you know, "that guy". 601 00:30:45,394 --> 00:30:50,213 The one you think of as spending all his time 602 00:30:50,213 --> 00:30:52,077 in front of a computer. 603 00:30:52,077 --> 00:30:54,293 So by saying "for women", the picture automatically 604 00:30:54,293 --> 00:30:58,681 changes: "well, I'm the woman in my classes 605 00:30:58,681 --> 00:31:01,727 who spends all her time in front of a computer." 606 00:31:01,727 --> 00:31:04,831 The other thing is that other women were really 607 00:31:04,831 --> 00:31:07,845 keen: other computer science professors in this case 608 00:31:07,845 --> 00:31:11,418 were really keen to do outreach for them 609 00:31:11,418 --> 00:31:13,444 once they had explicitly said that this is for 610 00:31:13,444 --> 00:31:16,344 women, it welcomed women, it was in order 611 00:31:16,344 --> 00:31:17,811 to promote women. 612 00:31:17,811 --> 00:31:20,843 Women computer scientists were forwarding it 613 00:31:20,843 --> 00:31:24,362 to each other, some were encouraging 10 or 15 614 00:31:24,362 --> 00:31:26,766 of their students to apply, so you had this 615 00:31:26,766 --> 00:31:31,348 double effect of encouraging people, tapping 616 00:31:31,348 --> 00:31:33,854 into networks of people who specifically want to 617 00:31:33,854 --> 00:31:35,644 mentor women. 618 00:31:35,644 --> 00:31:38,236 Saying "oh, this is for us, I've set up a network 619 00:31:38,236 --> 00:31:40,993 waiting to give women opportunities, here's 620 00:31:40,993 --> 00:31:43,310 a woman opportunity coming along". 621 00:31:43,310 --> 00:31:45,344 So you have this double invitation. 622 00:31:45,344 --> 00:31:47,470 The second one is simply reaching out to groups. 623 00:31:47,470 --> 00:31:55,242 What that means is you find more than one: 624 00:31:55,242 --> 00:31:58,430 to use women as an example, if you invite one 625 00:31:58,430 --> 00:32:02,765 woman into your editathon or hackfest, and 626 00:32:02,765 --> 00:32:06,292 suddenly she is THE woman. 627 00:32:06,292 --> 00:32:09,446 There's some statistical figure, it is around 20% or 30% 628 00:32:09,446 --> 00:32:13,476 where women stop feeling like "the woman". 629 00:32:13,476 --> 00:32:15,679 They stop feeling like everything they do will 630 00:32:15,679 --> 00:32:17,459 be read as "well she only says that because 631 00:32:17,459 --> 00:32:20,448 she's a woman", or "she only does that because 632 00:32:20,448 --> 00:32:22,002 she's a woman" or "we'll ask her opinion about 633 00:32:22,002 --> 00:32:24,542 women". 634 00:32:24,542 --> 00:32:26,800 If you can bring in more than person at a time 635 00:32:26,800 --> 00:32:28,931 by identifying existing groups of diverse people 636 00:32:28,931 --> 00:32:32,176 that reduces that effect. 637 00:32:32,176 --> 00:32:39,117 The final thing is: once you've recruited diverse 638 00:32:39,117 --> 00:32:40,686 people, there's a tendency to say... 639 00:32:40,686 --> 00:32:44,131 Say I identify as a woman Wikipedia editor 640 00:32:44,131 --> 00:32:47,367 (actually, I do, I do edit Wikipedia) 641 00:32:47,367 --> 00:32:49,429 there's a tendency to believe the two identities are 642 00:32:49,429 --> 00:32:51,727 in conflict: the more I identify as a woman 643 00:32:51,727 --> 00:32:53,881 Wikipedia editor, it becomes more like: 644 00:32:53,881 --> 00:32:57,677 WOMAN (Wikipedia editor). 645 00:32:57,677 --> 00:32:59,431 And that the only way to get me to identify 646 00:32:59,431 --> 00:33:02,285 as a Wikipedia editor is to discourage my 647 00:33:02,285 --> 00:33:06,344 woman identification. 648 00:33:06,344 --> 00:33:11,954 Now that's not actually true. Identity is 649 00:33:11,954 --> 00:33:13,726 not a zero-sum game like that. 650 00:33:13,726 --> 00:33:16,510 It turns out the more you encourage people to 651 00:33:16,510 --> 00:33:19,511 retain parts of their identity that are important 652 00:33:19,511 --> 00:33:20,795 to them: in my case, being a woman is important 653 00:33:20,795 --> 00:33:24,084 to me in that way. 654 00:33:24,084 --> 00:33:30,060 To retain and enhance my ability to continue 655 00:33:30,060 --> 00:33:32,793 as a woman, that also increases my identification 656 00:33:32,793 --> 00:33:36,312 as a Wikipedia editor. 657 00:33:36,312 --> 00:33:38,202 So you get this false problem sometimes, 658 00:33:38,202 --> 00:33:45,424 people will argue that having the groups for 659 00:33:45,424 --> 00:33:47,695 women or the groups for diverse participants 660 00:33:47,695 --> 00:33:51,843 discourages them, an isolationist kind of thing. 661 00:33:51,843 --> 00:33:54,060 It actually encourages both identities. 662 00:33:54,060 --> 00:33:56,440 That's a very important principle of diversity 663 00:33:56,440 --> 00:34:00,463 too, that you allow people to acknowledge 664 00:34:00,463 --> 00:34:03,774 that they are part of a minority within a larger culture 665 00:34:03,774 --> 00:34:09,901 and to embrace being part of a minority within a larger culture. 666 00:34:09,901 --> 00:34:13,694 To conclude my talk, I want to give a couple of 667 00:34:13,694 --> 00:34:18,478 specific examples of possible outreach avenues 668 00:34:18,478 --> 00:34:20,116 for diversity. 669 00:34:20,116 --> 00:34:26,629 I have had the pleasure of meeting people over 670 00:34:26,629 --> 00:34:29,300 the last week who work with Wikimedia on diversity 671 00:34:29,300 --> 00:34:32,649 and outreach, and outreach to different groups 672 00:34:32,649 --> 00:34:36,870 and educational projects, so not to say that 673 00:34:36,870 --> 00:34:40,288 none of this has occurred to people in the room 674 00:34:40,288 --> 00:34:44,650 so a couple examples of how outreach might happen: 675 00:34:44,650 --> 00:34:48,830 first, let's use an example of primarily technological 676 00:34:48,830 --> 00:34:51,311 outreach which I didn't really expect. 677 00:34:51,311 --> 00:34:55,545 I talked a little bit to Andy Gunn at the Open Technology Institute 678 00:34:55,545 --> 00:35:06,578 which is in turn part of the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition here in the United States 679 00:35:06,578 --> 00:35:09,451 working with people in Detroit in particular. 680 00:35:09,451 --> 00:35:15,367 Non-white people who are young, building up 681 00:35:15,367 --> 00:35:22,311 communication and access to media and technology. 682 00:35:22,311 --> 00:35:27,044 Their overall mission statement is that people and 683 00:35:27,044 --> 00:35:29,243 organisations in Detroit who believe that communication 684 00:35:29,243 --> 00:35:35,441 is a fundamental human right. 685 00:35:35,441 --> 00:35:41,677 This is an excerpt: they have the principles of digital justice on their website. 686 00:35:41,677 --> 00:35:46,098 The webpage is quite long, there are 20 principles; 687 00:35:46,098 --> 00:35:48,560 I recommend having a look at the web page 688 00:35:48,560 --> 00:35:49,844 for all of them. 689 00:35:49,844 --> 00:35:51,822 You'll notice, I have an excerpt here: equal access 690 00:35:51,822 --> 00:35:56,345 to media and technology as producers as well as consumers. 691 00:35:56,345 --> 00:35:59,810 Prioritising participation of people who have traditionally been excluded. 692 00:35:59,810 --> 00:36:03,160 Advancing our ability to tell our own stories: 693 00:36:03,160 --> 00:36:06,887 again referring to people who have traditionally been excluded. 694 00:36:06,887 --> 00:36:10,503 The creation of tools and technologies that are freely shared. 695 00:36:10,503 --> 00:36:13,444 Now, points 1 and 4 are very compatible with 696 00:36:13,444 --> 00:36:16,561 the broader open movement, open access, 697 00:36:16,561 --> 00:36:22,027 open knowledge, wiki culture and so on. 698 00:36:22,027 --> 00:36:25,695 Points 2 and 3 relate more to diversity concerns. 699 00:36:25,695 --> 00:36:29,653 So I emailed them and Andy, what immediately 700 00:36:29,653 --> 00:36:33,312 leapt to mind, was technological outreach. 701 00:36:33,312 --> 00:36:37,531 He sees the problem with getting his community 702 00:36:37,531 --> 00:36:40,061 to participate in Wikimedia projects is technological. 703 00:36:40,061 --> 00:36:43,635 They are very focussed on mesh networking, 704 00:36:43,635 --> 00:36:44,926 community, neighbourhood mesh networking 705 00:36:44,926 --> 00:36:48,060 setting up ad-hoc wifi networks that have a 706 00:36:48,060 --> 00:36:52,144 flaky, not-always-on uplink to the Internet 707 00:36:52,144 --> 00:36:55,361 so you primarily exchange information within 708 00:36:55,361 --> 00:36:57,810 your mesh network. 709 00:36:57,810 --> 00:37:00,646 So what he said was "well, in order for 710 00:37:00,646 --> 00:37:03,093 Wikipedia to be useful, we would have to 711 00:37:03,093 --> 00:37:06,360 cater for those uses", which is of course 712 00:37:06,360 --> 00:37:08,284 possible under the license but it wasn't 713 00:37:08,284 --> 00:37:14,677 in fact immediately obvious to him 714 00:37:14,677 --> 00:37:18,835 that there was something now that could be