Women and Free Software Meeting in Montreal

I had the opportunity to meet some people from Montreal last FISL, and then I told them I would be going to Ottawa this month. Well, they organized a Women and Free Software Day in Montreal, next 24th. I really liked the press release, in which they say being planning to start a PSL Mulheres like group in Montreal.

That would be really, really great!

*Women and Free Software*

On Sunday July 24th 2005, Fernanda Weiden will be of passage in Montreal to open a meeting on the topic of "Women and Free Software". The event will be organized by FACIL, pour l'appropriation collective de l'informatique libre, the Koumbit network, the Laboratoire de Communication Médiatisée par Ordinateur (LabCMO) and Communautique.

The coming of Fernanda Weiden, activist within the Free Software community in Brazil since 2002, has inspired the topic of this conference. Involved in organizing the first women and free software meeting of Brazil in 2003, she has since founded "Projeto Software Livre-Mulheres", a project having the objective to work along organizations of women in order to debate their needs and their participation in the domain of information and communication technologies (ICT) and particularly of free software. Her contribution falls under a process of social integration in the field of free software in Brazil. Her participation in the Debian project (GNU/Linux distribution) and in the "Free Software Foundation of Latin America" will open the meeting on her experience in Latin America.

This event is actually the first step of a medium term objective to create a "Women and Free Software" collective in Montreal. This will be an occasion to gather the people of Quebec interested to participate in its creation. During the presentation, the participants will have the opportunity to determine the stakes of free software through these topics: women and the development of free software, women and the access to training for ICT, social and digital integration, participative uses (network citizens and solidarity) and appropriation models of free software, concerns of the social environment and paradigms of local development. The presentation will be followed by a roundtable where our guests invested in different domains (development, education and IT in Quebec) will share their experience. There will also be a discussion and presentation of books and documents about free software.

The "Women and Free Software" day will be held on Sunday July 24th 2005, between 12h and 16h. The meeting will take place at the Café Utopik, 552 Sainte-Catherine East near Berri-UQAM metro. For more information, please visit the website of the event:

http://femmes.informatiquelibre.info

This event will be also the occasion to discuss the workshops and presentations for the SQIL, Semaine Québécoise de l'Informatique Libre, which will be held between November 12th and 20th 2005:

http://sqil.info

Lia Talbot: 514-948-6644 #227 - lia@communautique.qc.ca;Valérie Dagrain: 450-646-7522 - vdagrain@free.fr