My sister and I used to play Lego when we were girls. It was a favorite game until mid-teenage, if not later. We used to build cars, helicopters, statues, trees, bridges, gardens, castles, even animals. Today, I've been looking for a Lego set for my daughter (age six). What a surprise! Apart from the 1-4 years old mixed parts (sold in pink and blue boxes), there is a whole range of Star Wars, Ninja, Disney Cars, Super heroes sets. What if she is not into all this (yet)? The alternative is the barbie-like sets (Lego Friends) for sandwich-making, hair-styling and meeting in a cafe.

Now that's disappointing. What happened with the most favorite and liked company specializing in creativity and imagination for kids of all kinds through construction and building skills? And why is Lego messing up with considering what is Lego for boys and what is Lego for girls? How so it is decided that boys would like playing with ninjas, but not girls? And that only girls like to prepare sandwiches? Ah, and what do sandwiches have to do with building things?

In continuation to the post: Wikipedia-why so few women edit, I decided to summarize my last notes from the WikiWomen Camp and post them online.

Here are the suggestions from the late meeting discussions, related to strategies and next steps, developed in small groups into real launch projects.

After three das of discussions at WikiWomen Camp 2012, there is a long list of possible "reasons" or factors that would possibly influence female participation and contribution to Wikipedia. The big question: why just 9-10% of contributors tend to be women? The fact that women represent about half of the Internet users, and yet, about half of the Wikipedia readers, leaves us surprised about the fact that very few of them feel concerned into building, maintaining and enriching the knowledge collected by Wikipedians.

WikiWomen will be organised as an OpenSpace. The open space is a special type of (un)conference, focussed on a particular topic, where all the participants are actually contributors & decision-makers. There are no special guests/speakers, no passive listeners. The aim is to stress on the skills and expertise of the participants, and to involve all of them in an equal way.

When Virginia Eubanks visited Montreal a couple weeks ago, she stayed at my place. Before she left, I asked her to sing her book for me. At the end, she said: "And thanks for teaching me what hacktivism is."

If I were to sign a book for Virginia, I would say: "and thanks for teaching me what popular technology is". I'd rather explain.

"The Digital Dead End - Fighting for Social Justice in the Information Age" is an awesome reading for every type of reader. It is easy to understand, full of anecdotes, and yet.. very scientificly grounded. What is it about?