1 The Genderchangers Academy [GCA] The eclectic tech carnival [/etc]

2 GCA -women, technology and the freedom of information -holistic approach to technology and skills sharing

3 GCA run by a small group of volunteer women. It was founded in Amsterdam The Netherlands. We encourage for women to crash computers, turn them inside out and put it all back together again.

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6 “The overriding desire of most children is to get at and see the soul of their toys, some at the end of a certain period of use, others straight away? I do not find it to me to blame this infantile mania; it is the first metaphysical tendency.” - Charles Baudelaire, 17th April, 1853, The Philosophy of Toys.

7 where it all began... ASCII: amsterdam subversive centre for information interchange squatted internet workspace. Projects such as: AMSTERDAM WIRELESS Involvment from mebers of the dyne:bolic community. The GNU/Linux liveCD multi-media operating system

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10 ASCII- machines were salvaged or donated and then rebuilt and installed with free operating systems. To demonstrate the fact that outmoded ware is often perfectly suitable for the average computer user to surf, send receive , word processing and basic functions.

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12 WHAT IS A GENDERCHANGER? a gender changer can be different things. Technically speaking a gender changer is a small device, an adapter that changes the *sex* of a computer cable, device or port.

13 * In a more figurative sense we see a genderchanger as a graduate of the GCA, or someone who wants to change the way the world perceives things. A Genderchanger makes any connection a possibility.

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15 * We encourage the use of second hand computer parts and open source projects like Linux. We are inspired by the GNU/Linux movement. We share how can do almost anything with a computer without actually having to buy the software, nor do you have to victimise yourself by using cracks.

16 * A majority of world population who use computers, do not even know there a spectrum of Operating System (OS) choices are even available! The GNU/Linux or free software foundation (FSF)

17 /etc eclectic tech carnival = Genderchangers GCA on the road generative collision of skills share net technology, open source, programming, sys-admin, art craft and tech.

18 /etc 2002 Pula - Croatia 2003 Athens/Greece 2004 Belgrade/Serbia 2005 Graz/Austria 2006 Timosoara/Romania Linz/Austria Sao Paulo/Brazil 2008 – Amsterdam/Netherlands Sao Paulo/Brazil Forthcoming – 2009 Umea – Sweeden Istanbul - Turkey

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20 Workshops such as: Sys admin issues GNU/Linux distros Shell basics HTML/CSS Intro to text editors Mailist etiquite d.i.y sex toys Screen printing Pure Data graphical signal processor also- command line tools and *nix concepts filenames, input and output redirection, regular expressions.

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22 e-waste (valuable, hazardous materials problems caused by ewaste -disposa,recycling - to which countries its exported - how much manufacturer companies take responsibility... etc )

23 Main Aims -Promote the idea and practice of open source knowledge sharing -Open the particpation to on-line and on-site communities -Foster employment of FOSS in artistic creation -One day we hope that eventually we would contribute and support FOSS development more fully.

24 posters and images

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29 * Ironically technical experts who have certain defined methods and formulas, often end up becoming completely unintelligible to people in outside the Information *Communication* Technology subculture.

30 What happens if entire systems continue to process even though basic human understanding has broken down?

31 Nancy Mauro-Flude