I promised to write about how I started to understand the power of the Free Culture License and why we should use it. But somehow lately I am always too busy to sit down and write about this important topic. The good news is, I actually already did!
I wrote quite a few pitches for the One Spark Berlin Crowdfunding Festival and one of the first, was mostly about this topic. So I will share it with you:



 
Amazing Woman of History by Céline Keller is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

We had a wonderful time at One Spark Berlin - Europe's first Crowdfunding Festival! It was a lot of fun and we had so much great feedback and interesting conversations. We also made the 3rd place in the Art Category, yeah! And that gives us lots of motivation to keep going with this project and think about all the interesting ideas to find more supporters others told us about. We still and more than ever want to see the project grow into the community we dream about. We are now busy writing up all these ideas and figuring out the best plan for the near future.

I want to share with you my pitch I was so nervous about, so all of you who couldn't be there have a chance to at least read it:



Thanks so much to Tobias (@Isarmatrose) from netzpiloten !
You can see the other 15 second pitches of more creators they made here :
http://instagram.com/netzpiloten

There were some minor hick ups, like having our booth right next to a really big band, that played almost the whole 12 hours through, which left our voices hoarse for the next couple days. Let me tell you no matter how good the band, if you hear the same songs repeated for a whole day on full volume, while you try to scream your message into people's ears, that can be quite exhausting. :)

One thing I think was a little disappointing was that the idea of a crowdfunding festival didn't get fully across. A lot of people I spoke to thought it was all about competition, which isn't my idea about it at all. I believe a crowdfunding festival (and crowdfunding in general) is a fantastic way to make people realize the power we all have together as a community to make projects happen we really want to see.
For me it wasn't about winning (for sure that would have been nice though) but connecting to other people interested in similar topics, and to explore and find ways how we can support each other.

The other thing that didn't went so well was the voting. I tried to communicate to as many people as possible, that they can actually vote as many projects as they like (up to the entire 50 creators). Most didn't know that and it is quite obvious when you see the stats (almost 5000 visitors and only 1699 votes). But I think that is also due to that we here in Germany aren't yet much accustomed to crowdfunding and voting through apps on our smartphones. Maybe next time, apart from all the super nice volunteers running around with tablets to help people get registered and ready to vote, these voluteers should also have some really prominent booths that have giant signs on top that say:
Vote here!

But all in all Paula and I loved the whole experience. I am very happy we could be part of One Spark Berlin. Thanks so much to everybody involved making it happen:
All the organizers, supporters, sponsors, volunteers and the lovely audience!
And thank you so much to everybody we had all these wonderful and informative conversations with.

We hope next year we can come back and present how our idea has evolved into a much bigger project. We didn't get the funding to work on the community platform we wanted to build, but we don't give up that dream and will be working on alternative possibilities. Maybe we start a google+ community for now to get all the people interested in getting creative about the Amazing Women of History together.

Maybe you reading this also have some great ideas how we can make this all work better, even if for now we don't have money? Please let us know. In the end money isn't all, we can do so much together with the tools already existing. I would be for example super interested in an open source community platform, if there is already one existing. And please we are still looking for mentors, partners and everybody else who wants to get involved. This will get only more powerful and fun, the more people we are. Just drop us a line at amazingwomenofhistory (at) gmail (dot) com , or write a comment.

Because of the difficulties explaining at the booth, we didn't manage to do the voting on which women should be featured next, but we crowdsourced a list we share with you now:
(Please feel free to at yours in the comments)

Bettany Hughes 'Ancient World' documentary on Hypatia and the city of Alexandria 



Hypatia on wikipedia

Hypatia on smithsonianmag

It would be wonderful to see you at One Spark Berlin, Europe’s first live crowdfunding festival!
If you want to help me build a community, that through sharing and creative storytelling, brings all the amazing women of history into the spot light of pop culture, please support us:
#21239 Amazing Women of History

 
Amazing Woman of History - Kassia by Céline Keller is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

One Spark Berlin is already happening next saturday, and I am all busy and nervous practicing my pitch. I didn't have much time to gather many links about Mary Anning, but I found this really nice lecture about her:


Amazing Woman of History - Kassia by Céline Keller is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

If you think there are inherent sex differences we can not change anything about, please read Cordelia Fine: Let’s say good-bye to the straw-feminist. And, while she’s leaving, let’s also close the door behind her antithesis, the value-free mouthpiece of scientific facts  first.



Yesterday I came home from a short trip to see my family. It was nice but there was one thing that really made me sad. One boy I love, who is 10, now seems to express the same ever repeating story of men vs. women I am so tired of. It's not that the people around him don't try to tell him a different story, but the longer he spends time in school, the more he expresses what simply is the much more powerful and visible story around him. Girls can't...Girls are different...Girls are stupid. I think that's not his fault or the fault of the people close to him, it's just him trying to find his place in society. And sure sometimes girls are stupid and mean, because to be fair he actually was one of the boys, who loved pink, until he started kindergarden and was bullied for it mostly by girls.

So what can I do? For sure I talked about it with him, but that's what his parents do too and it seems it's simply not enough. He loves the women around him, but started to hide it at least in front of his peers. And even if he sometimes forgets this and comes hugging and kissing, it's definitely not cool to be liking or admiring girls. (That's even if now it's much cooler to be in love and have a "girlfriend" than when I was that age, it's weird.) I think it's sad, and I don't believe that it is a "normal" or "natural" part of growing up and reaching puberty. I think our society makes this happen by separating genders and through how women and girls are depicted in all the prominent stories around him. We all understand the world through the stories we see and hear, and what he sees is boys and men being active, making cool stuff and being the center of the world. Girls and women just don't seem to play in the same league and yes, a lot of them do seem to like pink. A colour he learned to be ashamed of. It doesn't matter how ridiculous that is, and how many skateboarders I showed him wearing cool pink clothes. Or that I told him pink once was the colour of princes and kings. My stories can't compete with all he evidence around telling him, that these stories I tell him must be exceptions. Not everybody wants to be different and an exception from the norm. Sometimes it feels much nicer to fit in. Much more so if you are a little boy or girl trying to figure out who you are for the very first time.

When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink?

Back in the 1700s, men and women wore pink.

That's one reason I think we have the responsibility to at least try to take it in our own hands, and tell the stories we want to hear and see about women in our society. I want him to grow up surrounded by stories that don't separate him from other perspectives, but help him to feel empathy and be respectful to all human beings no matter what gender or how different on the surface they appear to be from him. I think this would also help him greatly to find love and live healthy relationships later on in his life. But for now he identifies with this still mainstream story about what makes him masculine and different from other human beings. If things go wrong he might end up like a lot of men, not being conscious of the dubious privilege this single story about gender holds for them. These men were never given many chances to learn how to identify with human beings who's stories aren't told that often in our world. It is not their fault and they suffer from this single stereotyping story, as do the women and girls, and all other humans who don't want to identify with either.


Why I was feeling a little gloomy about this yesterday, on twitter somebody (Thanks +Jenny Mackness!) reminded me of a fantastic talk I heard some years ago. I want to share it with you, because Chimamanda Adichie explains much better than I ever could, why telling diverse stories is so important. I think if there had already been more stories visible about why pink isn't for girls only, and why he can be a real man even if he likes pink, then he would have had arguments to defend himself against the mean girls in kindergarden. Not only that, these little girls would have had more role models too. The horizon of possibilities for both of them would have been much wider and open. Maybe now they could be sitting in school doing science projects together, not laughing and bullying each other, but communicating and trusting, that each and every one had a valuable contribution to make, no matter what the topic is.

Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story

"The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story."

"The consequence of the single story is this: It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of equal humanity difficult. It emphazises on how we are different rather than how we are similar."





Some more additional links I would like to share about stereotyped toys, that make kids believe that they don't have a choice in what they should like or dream about achieving in their lives:

LEGO Fusion: A new brick in the gender divide
"Imagine, if instead of gender, LEGO based their marketing around race. Imagine if the Fusion ads showed white people (as they do) playing with the Town, Racing, and Battle lines – and then depicted stereotyped minorities in and using sets based on sports, hospitality, or a factory? Imagine if they produced market research that showed that this was what the minorities in question wanted. That they were just supplying demand. It would rightly be labelled as racism."
manvspink.com

Why does gender-stereotyped toy marketing matter?"How toys are labelled and displayed affects consumers’ buying habits. Many people feel uncomfortable buying a boy a pink toy or a girl a toy labelled as ‘for boys’... And children are taking in these messages about what girls and boys are ‘supposed to like’. They are looking for patterns and social rules – they understand the gender rule ‘This is for boys and that is for girls,’ in the same way as other sorts of social rules, like ‘Don’t hit”. These rigid boundaries turn children away from their true preferences, and provide a fertile ground for bullying."
lettoysbetoys.org.uk

Support Amazing Women of History

"Harriet Tubman escaped slavery to become a leading abolitionist. She led hundreds of enslaved people to freedom along the route of the Underground Railroad." bio

Free Colouring page:

Here is another transparent Png you can use for creating:
Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.

But I also found this one:

I've heard 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' read, and I tell you Mrs. Stowe's pen hasn't begun to paint what slavery is as I have seen it at the far South. I've seen de real thing, and I don't want to see it on no stage or in no theater. 
Harriet Tubman: The Life and the Life Stories

I wonder how she would feel about her heroic story instead being more often on stage and the movies.
There is a documentary I found about the Underground Railroad you can watch, and I hope that you like me, want to find out more about her on your own. If you find some great links about her, or created something yourself please post it in the comments.



There is also a movie from 1978 about her you can watch online:

A Woman Called Moses





Amazing Women of History by Céline Keller is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Hi there.

I don't have any artwork for you today, but this idea and project isn't about my stuff anyway. What I want this to be is a storytelling conversation and I can't do that on my own. Though I am really curious to see what forms my artworks could evolve to if other people use them. But what's most important to me, is trying to make others see the power and possibilities that lie in creating and sharing stories together. I want you to be as excited as I am about it!

One roadblock in the way of collaborative art and storytelling is how some people think about copyright and creativity. My view on creativity is simple. Like Kirby Ferguson I think you can't create anything out of thin air. We are influenced by what we learn and everything we see and hear around us. We learn through copying, that's what humans do. I can't think of anything that you can learn without copying. Do you? Connecting things you learned, you can then create something new. But it's always build on the work and thoughts by others. Where exactly lies the fine line between being inspired by something and copying?

In his documentary 'Everything is a Remix' Kirby Ferguson uses a lot of music examples, because in music it seems crazy that someone could try to copyright the building blocks of music itself. Progressions and melodies that were used many times before. Still this happens. And what about art? What about writing? I think it's the same. The difference between a plagiarism, stealing and a great remix, is that through a great remix something new is created, building on the source. A new thought connection, a new perspective, another story. I am not sure you should spend time writing down in your own words something, someone else already put in perfect words. Just to be able to then write down your own conclusion that builds up on it. Though what I am sure about, is that you should attribute the source.

I think the copyright debate is so hot, because the topic is loaded with so much fear. I very much want artist to make money, I am one of them too. Still I know from how being creative works, that copying and remixing is something we do all the time. Hopefully we let others know where we took our influences and inspiration from, but sometimes you don't even realize that you are using something that you have seen or heard before. It's not always conscious, and that's probably because art isn't so different to music after all. Both is communication and works like a language.

And now we got this instrument, this huge, giant instrument, we can all play together! People are already doing that. Mine is not a new idea, but focusing on what changes we could consciously help creating through collaborative storytelling and remixing art together is something I think hasn't been explored too much before. And we urgently need a change in our mindset about gender, because despite a lot of trying to change gender politics so far nothing really has gotten to the root of the problem. I believe collaborative and open ended storytelling through art and remix can help with this, because it's a conversation and we can actively learn and explore the topic. Making and playing with stuff is how humans learn most effectively.

I would like to write much longer about this topic, but it's almost 4 o'clock in the night. So I postpone this, and leave you for now with Kirby Ferguson's documentary. If you haven't seen it yet, it's really worth watching. But I will come back to this topic soon, since I really want to share with you, why and how I lost my own fear of sharing.

Hope to see you back soon, till then. Good night!

Support Amazing Women of History

Copy, transform, combine— the concepts of creativity





Everything is a Remix

Taken from the first slide of Valerie Aurora's wonderful Talk: 

Rebooting the Ada Lovelace Mythos
It's super interesting and I highly recommend watching.
Learned a lot about Ada, I didn't know before.
(starts 10:30)



"The world's first programmer was a woman, and also the first open source software programmer."

After telling the story of Ada's life, Valerie talks about how Ada was portrayed throughout history.
She talks about the effect, the stories we tell have, on society. How important they are.
Think of how easily Ada could have been forgotten and how the perception of Ada changed,
based on single books telling one dimensional stories. But  Valerie's solution to this problem is not cleaning up and only allowing one true story. She encourages us to o explore what Ada Lovelace means to us, and invent many new and different stories.

Valerie Aurora: "I really want people to write Ada Lovelace stories!"
Here are Valerie's ideas for new stories we could tell about Ada:


Wouldn't it be fantastic if there was a place, where people could collect, make and share their own stories and creations about Ada and all the other Amazing Women of History?

We could be making remixes, mash-ups together, creating a much bigger story than we could ever tell on our own. Storytelling more like a conversation, something interactive we can all be part of.
Just because it's fun and we want to tell, hear, read and see these stories.

I would love being part of such a community!
Wouldn't you?

What resources about Ada Lovelace do you wish would exist?
What could you share to make that resource a reality?

I for example would love to listen to podcasts about her.
There are great tutorials out there about podcasts,
we could collect them together on a tutorial page.
Maybe there is a musician who'd share a jingle?
Or someone who can help make some sound design for a radio drama?
You could also try it yourself using freesound.org , bfxr.net.
and audacity to mix your tracks together.
And sure, I would be very happy if someone would use my artwork to promote such a podcast.

There are already many people out there creating, sharing and collecting resources.
But I think what's still missing are more and varied communities to find each other and these resources.
For people new to or sceptical about sharing through a Free Culture License, communities are also where they can experience first hand why sharing is so powerful and fun.

If you think a community like this would be great too,
come visit our #onesparkberlin project #21239
http://www.beonespark.com/berlin/discover/creator_projects/amazing-women-of-history
and please let me know what you think in the comments below.


Free Ada Lovelace Colouring Page:
Ada could be thinking or dreaming about all the fantastic stories you could tell about her.

Great Ada Lovelace links:

wiki

Webcomic - 2d Googles or The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage

Ada Lovelace Paperdoll (Sydney Padua)

Ada Lovelace, action mathematician (Paperdoll!)
Ada Lovelace - Steampunk version
(more scientist paperdolls)

Coloring book - "Ladyada's E is for electronics"

Ada Lovelace short film for kids

Ada Initiative - Supporting women in open technology and culture

AdaCamp

Finding Ada 
Celebrating the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths
Ada Lovelace Day 14 October 2014


Amazing Women of History by Céline Keller is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Free colouring Page:
Make your own GIF resources below.

Today I am in a hurry, and have no time to compile a list of links for you.
So I hope you find out more about Kassia on your own.
If you find great links please let me know in the comments.

wiki:

"Kassia (Greek: Κασσιανή Kassiani; 805/810 - before 865) was a Byzantine abbess, poet, composer, and hymnographer. She is one of the first medieval composers whose scores are both extant and able to be interpreted by modern scholars and musicians."





Make your own GIF resources:
transparent PNGs you can use for your own animation or artwork.
(If you create something please link to this page and post it in the comments,
would love to see it.)


If you like Amazing Women of History you can support us.


Amazing Woman of History - Kassia by Céline Keller is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Amazing Woman of History - Valentina Tereshkova by Céline Keller is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.