activities for the civic geek

Activities For the Civic Geek: Fix-It-Ups

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Rally your geeky friends and cohorts to help others out by applying your technical, creative, and constructive skills for repair.

It’s easy to take for granted how we can buy stuff to replace broken stuff – though it’s a bit wasteful to just throw things away (and some like electronics are a bit hard to recycle).

It’s also easy to take for granted the skills that let us repair things so we don’t have to throw stuff out.  I imagine you’ve got a few friends or even a whole club very good at making and fixing things, from cosplay to computers.

So, hold a Fix-It-Up Event.

Maybe at a convention or a hackerspace or a church or what have you, go and hold an event where you repair things for people.  You don’t just help them save and reuse things, you might teach people valuable skills:

  • Cosplayer?  Do clothes repair for people or charities.
  • Technical?  Computer repair and reuse or repurposing might be your bag.  If nothing else dead systems can yield parts for others.
  • Handy?  Repair appliances, furniture, and more.
  • Gamer?  Help people repair or clean their treasured old systems.

There’s also many ways you can combine this.  A clothing repair shop can reuse cosplay scraps.  Handy geeks who help out with basic repair can also use their skills to do convention setup.  Combine electronic repair with good recycling practices and education.

Plus, when you team up, you can combine tools, though you’ll probably get very territorial about who owns what.

So go ahead and try and do some fix-ups.

Activities For the Civic Geek: Diversity In Geekdom

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Geekdom is about enthusiasm, intelligent, and imagination.  Those things are better when we have a broad community that supports different people – and it’s the right thing to do.

Geekdom, that grand celebration of enthusiasm and brains and inspiration, is a wonderful place.  However there are times – let us be honest – it has been to narrowly defined.  It’s been defined by race, gender, even sexual preference and economic strata.  The image of the white, nerdy, straight guy still haunt us – even those of us who are white nerdy straight guys.  People in geek history get forgotten because they didn’t fit the mold – or shut out because they don’t.

So it’s up to we geeks to make sure this is a place for everyone.  Otherwise we really can’t call ourselves geeks, can we?

Here’s a few things you can try:

  • There’s many good causes.  Again, simply donate or raise money for them.
  • Donate equipment.  A lot of good geeky causes involve IT skills and training, so maybe you – or your employer or company – can make a donation.
  • Go get involved.  A lot of organizations fighting the good fight for equality and diversity need people to teach, speak, and more.  You may just learn something when you get hands-on.
  • Visibility.  A lot of people don’t know that the issues of bias that can occur in geekdom, so make them visible in your writing, your convention rules, convention events, and more.
  • Invite.  A lot of the organizations listed below (and many others not listed) would be delighted to speak at your business, convention, club, campus, and more.
  • Team Up.  Many causes for geeky diversity and underserved communities involve training and projects, such as teaching coding or website development.  Why not have your club, con, or even business employ people from one of these groups?
  • Think Geek broadly.  Challenge and change yourself.

 

Geekery really isn’t geekery without diversity.  We ignore ideas.  We forget history.  We forget people.  Making an effort for a broader, more historic, more inclusive geekdom is really something for all of us.

See if any of these organizations and groups can help you do more

Geeks Of Color

  • Black Girls CODE – Introduces girls from underrepresented communities to coding. Focuses on community outreach, education, and technology awareness
  • Code 2040 – A nonprofit assisting communities of color by creating paths for education, professional, and entrepreneurial success in technology.
  • Con Or Bust – Focuses on helping geeks of colors and creators of color attend conventions.
  • The Hidden Genius Problem – An Oakland-based nonprofit that encourages technological skills and entrepreneurship for young men of color.

Female Geeks

Computing

  • Anita Borg Institute – A historic institute to assist women in technical careers, fostering innovation by ensuring a broad range of people in technology. Provides a variety of services and ways to get involved.
  • Girl Develop IT – A nonprofit that provides accessible programs for women who want to learn coding.
  • Girls Learning Code – A Canadian non-profit that focuses on helping young women learn technical skills in a supportive atmosphere.
  • Girls Teaching Girls To Code – A Bay Area program where women in CS teach Bay Area high school girls to code.
  • Grace Hopper Celebration – Produced by the Anita Borg institute, this is a celebration of women in computing.
  • Ladies Learning Code – A Canadian non-profit that focuses on helping people learn beginner technical skills in a comfortable, social way.
  • Made With Code – Promotes women in coding with projects, events, and mentoring. Has several alliances and supporters.
  • Mothercoders – An organization focused on helping mothers get tech-savvy and up-to-date for this economy
  • National Center For Women And Information Technology – Focuses on correcting gender imbalance in technology, and bringing the balance of diversity to the industry.
  • Rails Girls – A worldwide group that works to empower women with technology.
  • The Ada Initiative – An organization that supports women in technology, with a heavy emphasis on codes of conduct, training, and an embrace of open source.

STEM

  • Geek Girl Dinners – Promotes geek girl friendly events, resources, and connection.
  • She’s Geeky – An SF Bay organization that provides events and and conferences around the USA for women in STEM>
  • Tech Girls Canada – Provides national leadership for the various industry groups in canada encouraging women in tech careers.
  • Women Rock Science – A blog about women in science, from resources to history to recent discoveries.

Video Games

  • Girls Make Games – A series of international summer camps encouraging girls to explore the world of video games.

Writing

  • Girls Write Now – Supports future female writers with mentoring, advice, and more.

Equality

Fandom

Fans-Firefly

Media

  • The Box Scene – A nonprofit organization focused on representation of people in media

STEM

  • Platform – A nonprofit working to increase the participation of under-representted people in the “innovation economy.” Has an annual conference and works with YesWeCode.
  • Tech Access – Nonprofit focusing on providing students of color access to STEM careers via setting expectations, providing role models, and access.

Writing

  • We Need Diverse Books – Focus on promoting diverse narratives in children’s literature. Reaches out to individuals and groups in children’s publishing, and is always looking for people to help out.

Activities For The Civic Geek: Be A Green Geek

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We’ve got to live on this planet (even if some of us want to explore beyond it), and that means a keeping a healthy environment.  Geeks can do their part to make sure we keep Earth livable.

If you’re at all informed about environment science, you’re probably a bit concerned about the environment.  From global warning to the effects on fracking, it’s a bit hard not to come to the conclusion we could manage our use of the planet much better.  As we geeks are usually quite enthused about science, we’re also painfully aware of the problems we face.

Fortunately there’s no small amount of people out there you can help, get involved with, or donate too.  Everyone’s got the same idea as you, and there have been organizations dedicated to helping us preserve the environment around for a long time.

It’s also hard to know where to start.  Here’s a few suggestions to get you going:

  • Donate or get your geeky club/group/convention to donate to appropriate causes.
  • Donate time.  This is great if you’re particuarly oriented towards either STEM (and the hard science of the environment), have the skills needed by the various groups (such as web work or speaking), or both.  Time is often more valuable than money
  • Spekaers.  Run a convention?  Get speakers from appropriate organizations to discuss the science and issues of the environment.  If you’re part of a fiction-writing geekdom, you can combine good world building with good awareness of how our world has structural problems.
  • Do citizen science – From dedicating time to local citizen science groups, you can often find people focused on daily, hands-on scientific activities from recording to explaining issues.

There’s problems.  Maybe we geeks can do what we can to help out.

Resources

  • Engineering for Change – A community to connect engineers, governments, social scientists, and more to share knowledge and solve problems in a sustainable way.
  • Engineers Without Borders Canada – A nonprofit Canadian organization that supports sustainable community engineering projects around the world.
  • Engineers Without Borders USA – A nonprofit US organization that supports sustainable community engineering projects around the world.
  • Marine Conservation Institute – An organized, sustainability-oriented institute focused on protecting marine ecosystems. Heavily driven by partnerships, alliance, and outreach.
  • Nerds For Nature – And all-volunteer organization that brings together communities, scientists, and technologists to understand and preserve nature, including hands-on projects. Located in California.
  • Oceana – An international organization focused on sealife preservation and marine issues
  • Project Noah – A software platform that brings citizen scientist together in various projects to record and preserve biodiversity and understand nature.
  • Skeptical Science – A site dedicated to explaining the science of global warning. Always looking for help in donations or paper review.
  • World Wildlife Fund – Focuses on preserving and protecting wildlife and related environmental and pollution issues.