GimpGirl Community AoIR9 Presentation
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Transcript of GimpGirl Community AoIR9 Presentation
GimpGirl Grows Up:
Women With Disabilities Rethinking, Redefining, and Reclaiming
Community
What is GimpGirl?
• GimpGirl Community (GGC) started in 1998 •Collaboration of young women with disabilities (WWDs) •Who did not feel that there was community available•Inspired the DO-IT program for teens with disabilities at the University of Washington (http://www.washington.edu/doit/)•Started when Jennifer Cole & mentor Len Burns started "The Center for Breaking Away” • Non-profit for disabled youth transitioning to adulthood•Its GGC project soon became sole focus.•GGC: women supporting women– “girl” first, not about particulars of disabilities.•Members come together to share their lives, experiences, problems and solutions, in a safe space that respects who they are, including women with disabilities of all shapes, sizes, and colors, ages & sexual orientations.
GimpGirl: A Tech Timeline
Started on a MOO called Serenity (1995-), then grew…•GimpGirl.com domain, Girlies mailing list, QueerGirlies & QueerLadies (1998-)•LiveJournal and BohemiGimps in 2003•Second Life parcel donated in 2007•2008 saw MySpace, Facebook IRC #GimpGirl, Twitter communities created
GimpGirl: GrowthWho were the users? what were the challenges? what were the successes? • SerenityMOO• GimpGirl.com domain • Girlies mailing, QueerGirlies QueerLadies, BohemiGimps lists
• more accessible, higher overhead, moderation issues• LiveJournal
• Alejandra Ospina joins team (2002) as MOO & mailing lists are outgrown• Second Life
• attracted financial, academic and research interest• access issues and affordances
• MySpace• Facebook • IRC #GimpGirl
• accommodation for lack of SL support for those with visual disabilities OR older tech
• Twitter community• We like Twitter. Twitter’s good (when it works!), and growing fast
GimpGirl: Governance•Learning Curve
•Volunteers
•Mentorship
•Learning how to Delegate
•Moving to Second Life forced awareness of continual emergence of social networking: we need to be where people are.
GimpGirl: Future
• Becoming a non-profit organization in the U.S. • Reaching out to other disability organizations, online & off•Encouraging meaningful engagement with RL communities• Increasing awareness of disability issues everywhere• Bringing guest speakers to talk about topics of interest to WWD
• Being a hub of resources and info for WWD• Building databases and archives of info of interest for WWD• Professional and research collaborations
• Center for Research on Women with Disabilities, Baylor College of Medicine (CROWD)• 3D Embodiment LLC• Communications and Culture graduate program @ Ryerson Univ.•And more…
GimpGirl: Have a look!
GimpGirl: Moodle
GimpGirl: IRC
GimpGirl: Linked in
GimpGirl: MySpace
GimpGirl: Twitter
GimpGirl: Flickr
GimpGirl: Have a look!
GimpGirl: Have a look!
GimpGirl: Have a look!
GimpGirl: Have a look!