When once I registered for the 2017 Internet Freedom Festival in Valencia, I was added to a mailing list which had a constant flow of information on the festival and the activities related to it. Even before the schedule came out, the festival sounded fascinating, and distinctly different from other conferences, both national and international, which I have attended as of now. The board was diverse, the language was not uber formal and there was a constant chatter about glitter, which intrigued me greatly.
I volunteered for helping out with registrations on the first day of the festival. Womanning the line for names starting with “M-R” with three others for three hours was more than sufficient to give me an idea of just how diverse this festival was going to be. It was one of the first digital rights conferences where there were equal numbers of men and women (47% were women attendees according to the IFF website) as well as a significant number of trans and gender nonconforming persons. It was SO refreshing!
Read the full article in GenderIT.org.
Image: “Prohibition is prohibited”, by Smita Vanniyar